Backing up Blog Post 3 from DrakeG's blog

Welcome to another round of HypnoChat. I’m your host, Drake. Today we are going over, what to expect with hypnosis. As always this is based on my own opinions and experience. It is worth noting that depending on a number of factors including but not limited to: the hypnotist’s experience, preferences, and mood and the subject’s experience, preferences, and mood, and the setting and goals; some of the steps I discuss may be skipped, merged, or may blend from one step to the next.
The first step in hypnosis is the pretalk. This is where the ground work is set for everything else. The hypnotist starts building rapport with the subject and educating them about hypnosis. The subject will also let the hypnotist know what they are trying accomplish. This is the best time to ask any questions, since if everything goes to plan, this will probably be the only chance before starting to go into a trance. Also, even if the hypnotist doesn’t ask, this would be a good time to make sure they are aware of any medical conditions you may have. Mental illness, heart or lung issues could lead to complications. This is not to say that having them prevents you from getting hypnosis, but a doctor may need to be consulted.
Next up is susceptibility tests. These are a way to gauge how quickly someone will go into a trance. The old school of thought about hypnosis is that there is a certain percent of the population who can’t be hypnotized. I think the number was something like 20% of people, but if you think back to part one of this, I said that hypnosis is just guiding someone into a trance and that trances are something that everyone experiences. So if everyone naturally goes into a trance, it doesn’t really make sense that 20% of people can’t be hypnotized. We will come back to this in a minute. 
Now in modern hypnosis, susceptibility tests can still be used, normally for one of two reasons. The main reason is for stage hypnosis. In those settings, it is important to quickly find the people who are going to go into a trance the fastest, so that the show can progress quickly. The other less common use, is they can be used to help someone ease into a trance. These tests start building the subjects confidence in the hypnotist by showing that there is something happening that the subject doesn’t seem to be in full control.
Third up is the induction. This is the part that most people think of as actual hypnosis. This is where the subject is lead into a trance. There are a number of really common ways to do this but they all come down to one goal: get the conscious mind out of the way. We will discuss induction methods more in depth in the future, but one of the older and more commonly known ones is called progressive relaxation. The hypnotist will lead the subject through relaxing their entire body, until eventually they drift off into a trance.
 Now lets go back to that 20% who supposedly can’t be hypnotized. If you are someone who is highly analytical, have ADD or ADHD, progressive relaxation is rarely going to work. Progressive relaxation works by getting you to stop thinking but with these types of conditions, people can’t and/or won’t. So with more modern understanding there are other inductions methods like trying to create a PGO spike, confusion, pattern interrupt, or even just conversation. We will break all of those down at a later date.
Next up is the deepener. Once in a trance, depending on a lot of factors, the hypnotist will probably need to get you farther into it. While you are not asleep in a trance, it does work as a good metaphor. So imagine you just got into bed, you start to get comfortable, and then right as you are starting to fall asleep, you hear something in the kitchen. Most people will startle back awake. Some people will fall asleep as soon as their head touches the pillow and will never hear the noise. As for the people who do hear it, especially if you are in a new or unfamiliar environment, you are likely to go check what it was. Now as you get more comfortable and familiar with the environment, the random noise will stop bothering you. You know it’s just the ice maker or the house settling. The same idea happens in hypnosis. The first time you are hypnotized, you are likely to be in a very light trance that distractions can easily break you out of. Some people will naturally fall deeper than others but the more you are hypnotized, the faster and deeper you will go.
Now we get to the heart of hypnosis, the change work. This is where the hypnotist will take that information from the pretalk and start putting it into action. They guide the subject to new information, form new habits, break old ones, or what ever steps are needed to accomplish the subject’s goals. Depending on the goal or goals, all of the changes may be able to be done in one session or they may need to be done in multiple. 
So at this point, it is important to note that human memory is awful. Your brain lies to you constantly and so completely that most people never notice. For example, your vision only has a couple square inches of high resolution quality that you can see at any given time. Your eyes scan the area quickly moving this focus point around to get more details but to hide this, your brain fills in extra details about the world around you so that you think you are seeing everything in high definition. Your brain also edits the information that you receive tuning out things it deems unimportant, like your nose. You can always see your nose but until you focus on it, your brain filters it out. This is important because if you can’t trust what you are really seeing in the moment, how can you be trusted to remember something accurately? The answer is that you can’t. Your brain does not like to admit it doesn’t know or remember something, so it can and will make up details or memories. 
This is important because with hypnosis your mind is open to suggestion. Creating or modifying memories is so easy that it can be done by accident. The most common scenario for this with hypnosis is time loss. Once the subject is in trance at least 30 minutes, the chance of time loss starts to increase. This can become so complete that the subject does not remember anything that happened while in trance at all. This is the same way that while listening to music, reading a good book or watching an enthralling movie, you can lose time. The hypnotist can also use this to their advantage. First if the subject suddenly realizes they lost time, it proves to them that the hypnotist did something. The other advantage is that this ability to create or modify memories can be used for entertainment. This is the basis for hypnosis shows.
Now we move on to awakening. The hypnotist will then guide the subject to come back to a normal state. There is no chance of a subject getting stuck in a trance. A trance is a in-between state. Without the hypnotist maintaining it, the person will either naturally wake up or fall asleep. That being said, if the hypnotist doesn’t guide the person to wake, it can lead to some confusion, headache, and disorientation. It is as if you were suddenly startled awake.
Finally we come to post care or post talk. It is common for people to still be more suggestable for 5 or 10 minutes after coming out of a trance. To that end, it is common to just sit and talk for a few minutes after the trance ends to make sure that nothing extra gets unexpectedly changed. I heard a story where after a long session to help someone make a lot of changes, they were feeling really great about them. The subject ran out to say how great they felt to their ride. Their ride said that they didn’t seem different and asked if they were sure it actually worked. In this more suggestable state, it undid the work that had been done. In a lot of cases this post talk won’t even be about the hypnosis itself, just small talk to pass time.
That gives a basic overview of hypnosis and what to expect from it. Next time, we will start diving into more specifics on different parts.