The One About Hypnotic Myths

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:00]:
Hypnosis? Oh, isn’t that a bit scary? I wouldn’t like to give somebody else that much control over me. Can’t they make you do anything even if you don’t want to? If those are the sorts of things that come up for you when you think of hypnosis, you really need to have a listen to this episode.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:49]:
Hey. Hello. Hello. Welcome. Welcome to another episode of the Keith Blakemore-Noble Radio Show. Great to have you with us. Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:00:59]:
Do remember, as always, give us a like, a comment, a share, subscribe, or it all give us a review on your favorite platform. All helps to spread word and and get, get this in front of more people, particularly today’s one because today, we’re looking at hypnotic myths. There are a lot of myths around hypnosis, about what it is, what it can do, and sometimes this can put people off, using hypnosis, which is a shame because it really can help people to make major changes in their life. We’ve kind of touched on some of these, in previous episodes, but I thought it would be interesting to just have a another sorry. Excuse me. To have another fresh look at it. We’re just gonna explore a couple of couple of myths about hypnosis, what it is, what it isn’t, and so on. Hopefully, you’re gonna enjoy this.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:01:52]:
As I say, give us a like, comment, share, subscribe, and review. Remember, you can also catch us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Audible, Spotify, YouTube, Grow Radio. Anywhere where you can get a podcast, you’ll be able to find us. So hypnosis, what is hypnosis? What is hypnosis? Well, the most important thing to realize and to remember or to even to know about hypnosis is it is not mind control. That is the most important thing. It’s not mind control. Nobody can use hypnosis to make you do something against your will, and that is crucial thing to remember. Hypnosis is a perfectly natural state.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:02:40]:
It’s it’s basically it’s a state of trance. And, what does it feel like? People often assume it’s gonna feel otherworldly, zoned out, swarthy, psychedelic colors, all that sort of thing. That’s illicit substances that they’re thinking of. Hypnosis feels nothing like that. It’s a perfectly natural state. We we all enter it, sometimes many times, each day. It’s not the same as sleep. It’s it’s where your intense you can be really, you’re deeply relaxed with hypnosis, and your mind is kind of just focused on one single thing, an intense focus on one single thing.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:22]:
In the early days of hypnosis, one of the one of the names that was proposed for it was monoideaism, which is a bit of a mouthful, but it does describe what it is. Single-minded focus on one single idea. That term didn’t, catch on. Unfortunately, hypnosis did. We’re coming from hypnosis sleep. So lots of people think hypnosis is sleep. It’s not. When you’re in, hypnosis, you can be completely unaware of what’s going on, or you can be completely very, very aware of what’s happening.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:03:59]:
It varies from person to person, varies from trance to trance. But I’ll give you some examples of natural trances that we go into. Have you ever been reading a book or perhaps watching a film, and you are so engrossed in it? You are right there. You are in the midst of it. You are completely engrossed by it to the extent that you forget where you actually are. You lose awareness of your surroundings, and then somebody walks in and says hello and gives you that fright of your life. Oh, god. I didn’t hear you come in.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:04:31]:
That you were in a state of trance. You were in a state of trance there. People sometimes get it, when driving, particularly if you drive, say, a long boring motorway journey or if you’re driving a route that you’ve done countless times, time after time, day after day. How how often have you driven a route, got to the end, and thought, I don’t remember driving half of that. Were you asleep? Absolutely not. You were in a trance. You were not asleep. If something happened that required your attention, you snapped into into it immediately.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:05:11]:
You weren’t asleep. You’re just in trance. Why do we use trance? In a, therapy setting, trance is used to work so that we can work directly with the unconscious mind without the conscious mind getting in the way and, messing things up, basically. That’s all it is. It’s it’s a way of suspending the conscious mind so we can talk directly with the unconscious mind and help it to make different choices, help it to find ways to do the things that you you want to do, and that’s a crucial thing. With hypnosis, you’re gonna want to make whatever change it is that it’s suggesting. You’re gonna want to make that change. If you don’t want to make the change, it’s not gonna happen.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:05:56]:
So for example, if somebody comes to you and says, hey, Keith. See if you use that hypnother stuff to make me a nonsmoker. Not even gonna bother, because it’s not gonna work, because they don’t want to be a nonsmoker. It’s not gonna work. However, if they want to be 1, hey. Can you help me to quit smoking? Can you help me to stop biting my nails? Can you you can you help me to have more confidence? Absolutely, it works because the burning desire to get the result is there. So your unconscious mind wants it, it just doesn’t know how to get it, and that’s where we can use hypnosis to work directly with your unconscious mind to help it make the changes. So a question for you, who is in control in, in a trance, in hypnosis? Who is in control? It’s not the hypnotist.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:06:45]:
It’s the person going into trance. It’s the the the client is the person who is in control at all times. You go into hypnosis and you’re not doing that now, no way, you’re not gonna be going into hypnosis during this this episode, so do not worry. Don’t worry. But if you were to go into hypnosis, the hypnotist guides you and they offer you suggestions, but it’s up to you whether or not you take those suggestions on board. Even going into, hypnosis, you’re the one who does it. The hypnotist offers suggestions, but you are the one who has to do what they say. So when they say a thing like, relax, close your eyes, feel yourself, and you’re not.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:30]:
Please don’t do that now, especially if you’re driving. Keep your eyes open. Right? But when they say all of those things, you still have to close your eyes. You still have to relax. You have to do the things. If you don’t do them, which you are perfectly free to choose to not do them, you’re just not gonna go into trials. You are in control the whole way. So what happens if you are in, trance? You’re in hypnosis.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:07:57]:
In hypnosis, in a trance, hypnotic trance, they’re all the same thing. It’s the same thing. Different words for the same thing, because why not? But when you’re when you’re in hypnosis, if the hypnotist offers a suggestion that just doesn’t gel you, it’s against your will or it’s against your principles, it’s against your morals, it’s just something you don’t want to do, no matter how persuasive the hypnotist is, you’re not going to do it because you are in control. The hypnotist cannot make you do anything. You are in control. What would happen if they offer that such a suggestion? 1 of 2 things. Either you’ll just kinda sit there, let it float on past, ignore it, and wait for whatever they say next, or you’ll pop out of trance. Your mind will just go, nope.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:08:51]:
We’re not doing this. Either way, if you don’t wanna do something, you won’t do it. The hypnotist cannot make you do it. Ah, but what about, what about in stage shows where they get people up there doing silly things and plucking like a chicken and all that sort of thing? Why is it always a chicken that people go to when they they think about hypnosis? Yeah. If if you’re a statue, and they they get you to do all those things, then the hypnotist is making that person do it. The hypnotist is controlling them. Right? No, completely wrong. They are not controlling them.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:09:24]:
See, here’s what happens. Does the hypnotist pluck random people out of the audience and make them do stuff? No. Because that ain’t gonna work. It’s gonna be a really rubbish show because most people aren’t gonna do anything. Here’s what happens. When you go to a hypnosis show, you know what to expect. Right? You know roughly the sorts of things that are going to happen, and that’s why you’re choosing to go there. The hypnotist will ask for volunteers to come up on stage.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:09:56]:
When you volunteer, you know what’s going to be asked of you, you know what’s going to be expected, you know what’s, what’s going to happen. You are volunteering because you want to go up on stage, and you want to take part in whatever whatever silliness the, the hypnotist has in mind. You’re doing it because you want to. Hypnotists will the stage hypnotist will do various tests and checks, which most of the time you won’t notice because they cleverly weave it into their performance. But they’ll be checking to see who are most susceptible. By which, I don’t mean people who are most likely to do whatever the hypnotist tells them. No. I mean people who are more likely to be able to go quickly into a trance.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:10:41]:
The hypnotist is gonna select those people. The hypnotist is gonna select the people who who seem to be, following the the the guidance. The hypnotist is gonna weave out people who I mean, you all from time to time will get people going, yeah, I’m gonna volunteer and go up just to prove that you can’t hypnotize me. You know what? If you think you can’t be hypnotized, you ain’t gonna be hypnotized. The hypnotist doesn’t care. He’s got not he or she’s got nothing to prove. They simply have an audience to entertain, and if you’re being an idiot and not following the instructions, very quickly the hypnotist will send you back to your seat. The people who end up performing the skits, the sketches, the routines, etcetera, are doing so.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:11:25]:
They’re following their hypnotist suggestions because they want to. They want to experience this. They want to take part in the fun. If they’re doing something daft, that they wouldn’t necessarily do out of trance, they’re okay. They’re happy to do it in trans because, 1, they volunteered. They want to do this. 2, they know the audience is expecting to do this. So the audience isn’t gonna turn on them.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:11:52]:
People aren’t gonna go, oh, what are you doing, you strange person? The audience is gonna go, oh, wow. Yeah. This is so funny. So it feels comfortable to do it. They’re doing it because they want to. There will be times where a hypnotist will off the stage hypnotist will offer suggestion to someone. The The person just does not want to do it. They just won’t do it.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:12:14]:
It happens probably more often than you’d think. Does the stage hypnotist make a big song and dance about it? No. They gloss over it. They work around it. They maybe get that person doing something they’re a bit more comfortable with instead while they go focus on somebody else. They’re not gonna get them to do something they don’t want to do and it’s the same with therapeutic hypnosis. The hypnotist, no hypnotist can make you do things you don’t want to do. It’s at this point that very often somebody will say, yes, but what about that time that Darren Brown hypnotized somebody to shoot Stephen Fry, and they genuinely thought they were shooting Stephen Fry with a real gun? Proves you can make thing make people do things against their will.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:05]:
No. Now, obviously, I’m not gonna reveal how Darren did it because he’s a performer. It’s his trick. I’m not gonna reveal how he did it. What I will say is that when you look very carefully, it was it wasn’t a one off. He didn’t just pick somebody at random, hypnotize them, and and say, go and shoot, Stephen Fry. It was a long process over several weeks, potentially months. You only saw bits of it in the in the episode.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:13:36]:
Obviously, they didn’t show the whole lot. And it started at the, at the the beginning of it, he had an audience and he was inviting people up, or he he’d, had some people volunteer, to take part in some tests, which were the tests to identify who would be the person most likely for this to work upon. Have you noticed one of the tests is a hypnotized people and got them to think they were throwing acid at somebody? Most people didn’t. This person did, which already shows this is somebody who’s prepared to do these sorts of things. Watch the show very carefully, and you’ll realize, he didn’t pick a random person. It takes a lot of work to identify and find somebody who would be okay with doing that. So he didn’t take a random person and make them into an assassin. He took somebody who already had those sorts of tendencies or who didn’t have, as much hesitation at potentially injuring another person and worked through that and built that up.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:14:43]:
And it was over a long period of time. So, no, a hypnotist isn’t gonna make you do something you don’t want to. If I were to hypnotize you in a coaching session and then I ask you to give me your the PIN for your credit card, you’re not you’re not gonna do it because you don’t want to. You’re perfectly safe in hypnosis. You are the one who’s in control always. And if you feel uncomfortable anytime, you can just pop straight out of trance as easy as that. And you can. You can choose to pop out of trance at any point that you wish.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:15:19]:
You have always got full control. So remember, the key things to remember with hypnosis are you are the one who’s in control. It only works because the person wants to make the change, and the person is following the directions. What’s the difference between stage hypnosis and, therapy hypnosis? The only difference is in the intended outcome. With, stage hypnosis, the intention is have a bit of fun for a short period of time, and then completely remove all of those suggestions and go back to normal life. Indeed, good stage hypnotists will spend a not insignificant, part of their, their time removing all of those suggestions again, so the person is back to how they were before they came in. In therapeutic hypnosis, the aim is to help the person to make permanent change because they want to make that permanent change. That’s the only difference is the intended outcome, but always you have to want to do it.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:16:20]:
You are the one who follows the instructions because you choose to or follows the directions because you choose to. I say instructions. If you don’t wanna do it, you ain’t gonna do it. And one final, one final hypnotic myth. I can never be hypnotized. There are people who can’t be hypnotized. Well, here’s the thing. If you decide you can’t be hypnotized, you’re not gonna be hypnotized because you won’t be able to be hypnotized because you’re not gonna follow the directions.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:16:49]:
Please relax and close your eyes. No. I’m gonna sit here tense up with my eyes open. Well, obviously, you’re not you’re not following the directions, you’re not gonna go into trance. However, anyone can be hypnotized. Any normally functioning adult can be hypnotized if they want to be. The the, where this thing about not being able to be hypnotized comes from is there are kind of 3 different categories of people. You’ve got a small number, maybe about a 5th of the population, who are who will go to trials very easily, very, very, very easily go into trials.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:17:27]:
They’re often the ones who’ve got a really active imagination. They’re really good at imagining things, picturing things. Tend to be more intelligent because that gives you greater ability to to create all these scenarios. Also, people who have been hypnotized, the more often you’re hypnotized, the easier you find it to go into trance because you know what you’re doing, and so it’s easier to go into it. So you got those, a small number of people, then you’ve got the bulk of the population, maybe 3 fifths of the population, then go into trance, and it takes a little bit of time, a little bit of practice. You normally need to do the the gentle, relax, count back, blah blah blah, which can take take a little a bit of time. And then you’ve got maybe a 5th of people who find it really difficult to go into a trance. Usually, because either they’re not very good at imagining things or because their mind is hyperanalytical.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:18:20]:
And every time the hypnotist offers a suggestion, their mind is going, oh oh, now why did they say that? What do they mean by that? What what what do they hope is gonna happen there? Which, of course, is the exact opposite of relaxing. That said, people in all three categories can go into trance. They can be hypnotized if they want to be, and if the hypnotist knows what they’re doing. I mentioned the stage hypnotist kind of sorts through for the people who are more likely to go into trance. They’re looking for the 5th of the population who who can go into trance really quickly, really easily. Because nobody wants to go to a show where you spend half an hour watching the hypnotist gradually relax and so on into trance. They want people they want to just get on with the show. So the hip the stage hypnotist is looking for the people in in that top that top top category.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:19:10]:
They’re absolutely going to send back to to the seats the people who are very hard to hypnotize. That said, I was sorry, and that’s why I had I had a friend saying said to me, I can’t be hypnotized. How do you know? Well, a couple of stage hypnotists told me I couldn’t be hypnotized. Again, the stage hypnotist actually meant it would take you take too long to hypnotize you for the purposes of the show, so I’m gonna send you back to your seat and focus on these people. However, that person that believes they can’t be hypnotized just makes it a little bit harder for them, but they can still be hypnotized. I worked with one person one time who is incredibly hyper analytical, has never had never been able to to be hypnotized. They even studied hypnosis. They fully understand how it works.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:19:58]:
They’re really good at hypnotizing people or getting people in into trance. But even the person leading the course wasn’t able to get them into hypnosis. So I had a chat with this person and, we kind of explored things and figured out why they were finding it hard to go into trance, hyper analytical, their mind is always analyzing what’s going on. So I did I created a custom, custom induction, especially for them. Basically, overload the mind, gets it gets it out of the way, and then get them into into trans. With their permission, we tried it, and sure enough, within minutes, they were in trance. Anyone can be hypnotized if they want to be. If you don’t want to be hypnotized, you won’t be.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:20:44]:
And at all times, you are the one who is in control. Not the hypnotist, but you. And if you’re ever if their hypnotist ever suggest something you don’t agree with, you don’t wanna do, you won’t do it. If they keep trying to make you do stuff you don’t want to do, you’ll just pop back out of trance. You are always in control. It’s not mind control. It’s not something hypnotist does to you. It’s something that you follow because you want to, because you want the results.

Keith Blakemore-Noble [00:21:16]:
And it’s a perfectly natural state that we all enter from time to time anyway. That’s that’s what I wanted to cover about hypnosis, today. What do you think? Any thoughts, comments, suggestions? Let me know. Do give us a review, share, subscribe. Pass it on to, to to other anyone else you think might find this interesting, and I will catch you in another episode very soon. Until then, take care. Look after yourself. Bye for now.