How Do You Know If You Were Hypnotized?
After a hypnotherapy appointment, how do you know if you were hypnotized? Speaking only from my practice of hypnotherapy, the answer is simple: everything else being equal, you were hypnotized if you got positive results.
Sometimes, hypnosis feels just like your normal state of consciousness. Suppose you tried your hardest to change the problem and then sought out hypnotherapy. Then, looking back on your hypnotherapy appointment, you feel like all that you did was close your eyes, and nothing else occurred. IF you still got your desired results, then that seems to indicate that your unconscious mind received and accepted the posthypnotic suggestions that were given at the appointment.
In fact, if you got your results, but everything else, including your state of consciousness, seems like business as usual, this is, at least in my experience of hypnotherapy, a sign that the hypnosis was particularly effective. This is because the unconscious mind is always in the present. When it accepts a change, then it takes that change as the base reality, without any reference to the past. Therefore, the unconscious does not perceive that there has been a change, only that what is true now is always true.
When a client tells me that s/he is feeling better now, but that s/he was probably going to get better anyway, strange as it may sound, there is a good chance that the hypnosis worked, and worked very well, indeed. This is because the desired effects that the person has come to hypnotherapy to make real have been seamlessly included in that person’s unconscious perception of the natural progression of life.
This is a truly beautiful experience for all concerned. Perhaps it could be described as a feeling that the good results were bound to happen anyway, and that no foreign elements were introduced into the sanctuary of self. Of course, since the posthypnotic suggestions were those requested by the client, nothing foreign was introduced.
Not realizing that hypnotherapy can work to reinforce and tap each person's individual strengths, many people seek out hypnotherapy only after they have tried to change their situations on their own. They are now seeking outside help, a process which may, at first, feel like the introduction of a foreign element. This may give pause for thought in people would rather solve their problems on their own. However, when a hypnotherapist makes the suggestions that the person requests and these suggestions are accepted and implemented by the unconscious mind, ideally, the resulting change becomes so much a part of the person's base reality that the hypnotherapy seems to have been an incidental factor. Then, ironically, the hypnotherapy has been consummately successful.
The enfoldment of the desired posthypnotic suggestions into the individual's sense of self shows how willing and able the mind is to use all available resources to seek self-healing. If a resource has been a good source for self-healing, then it is internalized for future use. People are more sure of what they want the next time they see a hypnotherapist, and their use of self-hypnosis becomes more and more expert. Since we all have minds, this power to seek self-healing is available to all of us at all times. Hypnotherapy is just one very relaxing way to switch it on.