Turning off the Critical Voice Part 2

Since my previous blog post I have been developing this idea still further, road testing ideas, and putting it into real world contexts of both hypnotherapy and street. This morning for example I utilised the methodology to remove a client’s phobia of spiders, and then her fear of confined spaces, all in about 10 minutes including repeated testing. Along the way I may have used a new approach to phobias?

To simplify, I removed the critical voice that believed she had a phobia of spiders. I did so linguistically, rather than the process in my previous blog. Whilst this voice was suspended I had her exposed (ethically) to spiders. She was fine. I then allowed the voice to return and left her with a state of confusion. She knew that she had just been nicely with a spider, reacting neutrally, and yet she also knew she had a phobia of spiders – a quick piece of linguistic guidance to make a choice between her reactions, and she decided to be neutral, and was again successfully exposed to the spiders to embed the new response.

I then repeated the same with the fear of confined spaces, again successfully.

It is important to note that just removing the critical voice IS NOT enough to make the changes stick. To do that the exposure is necessary, so they have the new experience. I don’t want my clients relying on faith that it will work – I want them to have the absolute belief based on real world tangible experience. The removal of the critical voice just allowed this to be possible.

(For reference, the phobia of spiders was not anticipatory, so my first tool of choice would previously have been the FPC. The fear of confined spaces was anticipatory, so I would have used Nick Kemp’s excellent voice tempo process. I just decided to do some real world testing of my current line of thinking.)

I had seen this client at her place of work, and I gave a few HWT card and hand sticks to her colleagues as a warm up for what was to come afterwards. I wanted to continue to play with the idea of just removing the voice responsible for reality and just suggest a new reality directly.

I popped into a sports shop on the way back to my truck to test my ideas in a real world situation. Again, I don’t want to rely on faith that these new thoughts would work – I want belief based on tangible evidence.

I asked a shop worker if he was willing to experience a mind trick that was really cool, got his agreement, got him to place his hand flat on the wall, and asked “what do you think if I told you your hand was stuck to the wall?” I quickly then elicited his critical voice which was responsible for that reality, turned it off, told him his hand was stuck fast and this he could believe, now, and got a perfect hand stick. From here I could have used James Tripp’s hypnotic loop and ramped up the phenomena, but was too excited!

I’m going to continue to play with it in a street setting, to see what works and what doesn’t, continuing to test and explore. I hope the readers who are hypnotists will also do so. And I will also continue to explore in my hypnotherapy setting, as my clients can only benefit from the results.

Now, I’m not a stage hypnotist, yet if I was, I can already see a few really good applications for this methodology. To start with, how about removing the critical voice which blocks entry into hypnosis? And then removing the critical voice responsible for holding back inhibitions, allowing the subjects to be more extroverts? And then removing the critical voice that is responsible for that subject’s link with reality? I’ve already been using this linguistically, and I’m sure it won’t take someone long to work out how to bring it into their stage patter. Imagine having nearly the whole audience as possible good subjects, or even using the whole audience as a subject unified as one? In my mind I’m seeing some massive changes to stage hypnosis as a result of this, shaking off the old tried and tested for something new and fresh. Combine this with AIM and HWT and you may just be bringing something new, and much needed, to the show.

As before, if as readers you are a hypnotist, please go out and play with the ideas presented here. Let me know your thoughts, ideas, questions, developments – pop me an email to gary@garyturner.co.uk. You can’t patent an idea like this – taking methodologies that have been around for decades and applying them in a new direction – so let’s get our knowledge out there, and all of us become better hypnotists.