Hypnosis: the third mode of the brain

There is a scene in the Soviet film “The Apprentice of the Doctor”: the famous healer, looking intently into the eyes of a paralyzed woman, orders: “Get up!” And she, after some hesitation, takes timid steps on the grass … French psychiatrist Jean-Martin Charcot showed similar miracles in the XNUMXth century: he cured patients of severe paralysis, introducing them into a trance. Charcot discovered that some bodily lesions may be the result of strong self-hypnosis. So, the reciprocal suggestion can heal the patient. This is how hypnotherapy was born.

Freud himself, the founder of psychoanalysis, began with a passion for hypnosis, hoping to use it to see the unconscious of his patients. And although in the end he became disillusioned with this idea, preferring the method of free association, the technique was in demand by his colleagues and followers.

Popular culture has given hypnosis mixed publicity. Many do not trust him, considering trance techniques to be charlatanism or, conversely, calling such interference in the psyche dangerous. Yet more and more people in the helping professions are learning hypnosis to treat phobias, addictions (for example, tobacco and alcohol), pain relief, exploration of unconscious life, and the recovery or erasure of traumatic memories.

There are many possibilities hidden in this technique that have yet to be explored – if only we ourselves are ready to treat it with due respect, discarding prejudices and fears.

Falling back into childhood

One of the reasons why hypnosis is so mesmerizing and terrifying at the same time is its apparent simplicity. We all know about scammers who, in a matter of seconds, without weapons and intoxicants, swindle money, phones and jewelry from passers-by. Those who have experienced it for themselves only shrug their hands in confusion: how, at what moment did they give an outsider the keys to their will? Why are you reaching for your wallet? In fact, there is no magic here – only intuitive knowledge of the “master keys” of the human psyche.

According to clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Rashit Tukaev, the hypnotic effect is based on a universal and very ancient biological mechanism. “Not only our brains, but the brains of all higher vertebrates can operate in three basic modes: sleep, wakefulness, and a third mode, which in human terms is called hypnosis,” explains the therapist. “It turns on in special circumstances when we cannot either make a decision or implement it.”

This is what scammers achieve when they try to confuse or scare the victim. But the therapist can also cause the same effect to help the patient cope with anxiety, fears and depression, to relieve pain.

Finding itself in a dead end situation, the brain, as it were, “falls into childhood” – it returns to that stage of development when the search for a solution was faster and easier. “In an adult, abstract thinking is concentrated in the left hemisphere, and figurative thinking in the right,” explains Rashit Tukaev. – But in childhood this separation did not exist yet.

When entering a hypnotic state, the left hemisphere “remembers” how it worked before. And the brain begins to work as in childhood: figuratively perceiving and describing reality. This allows children to quickly learn and grasp new things. In hypnosis, people also perceive everything “at once”.

Feelings available to everyone

“A subject to hypnosis is often prone to hysteria and always suffers from nervous pathology.” The neurologists Georges Gilles de la Tourette and Paul Richet were not shy in their expressions in 1887 when they wrote about a new progressive method in their Encyclopedic Dictionary of Medical Sciences. At that time, crowds of people poured into the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris to stare at the hysterics who were convulsing under the hypnosis of Professor Charcot.

Today, experts believe that the hypnotizability, that is, the pliability, of a person as a whole does not depend on his personality type. More important is his willingness to trust the therapist.

Indeed, in order to enter a hypnotic trance, no special predisposition is needed. Moreover, from time to time we “fall” into it ourselves, although we do not realize it. “For example, when we ride the subway or in a car,” says psychotherapist Vladimir Dashevsky. – Sometimes something happens to us – and we miss a stop or a turn. On the other hand, in the same state, insight can come to us: a sudden solution to a problem, a fresh idea or an image of a desired future.

Although such dives may visit us several times a day, we do not know how to properly dispose of them. To use the trance state as a resource for change, you need a guide.

“The therapist works like a mirror,” explains Rashit Tukaev. “You look at it, it draws your attention to some details, and thanks to this, changes occur.”

True, if the mirror is cloudy or cracked, it will only distort the picture. It should be looked at with caution. At 30, Elena decided to quit smoking. She turned to a specialist after reading reviews about him on the Internet. She had a very unpleasant memory of the session.

“I ended up in a dark office with diffused light,” Elena recalls. – They told me to sit in a chair and relax, but they didn’t explain anything. He never once asked me what state I was in, whether I understood what he was saying. I found him very confident. Then I had the impression that he was trying to hypnotize me, to “enter me” by force. I failed to follow him.

In the end, I told him that he did not succeed with me. He looked at me in surprise and replied: “No, everything worked out,” and said that I would stop smoking. It wasn’t there!” To calm down and celebrate the end of the torment, Elena went outside and immediately lit a cigarette.

On the way to trance

Giving another person the keys to the innermost part of your “I” is a decision that requires a lot of trust. It is difficult to relax in the presence of a stranger. Moreover, go for a walk with him to the land of dreams and metaphors, to the world of your fantasies. All this requires skillful preparatory work.

Hypnotherapy does not mean at all that a person crossed the threshold and immediately found himself in a land of dreams. Hypnosis itself is only part of the work. Maybe half the session time. “First you need to understand who came and why. Popular ideas about hypnosis differ significantly from reality, says Rashit Tukaev. “That’s why I’m doing educational work first. I explain that this is not a dream, but an active state into which a person can enter himself. And my role in the process is a consultant.”

Next, the doctor must find out how sensitive the patient is. After all, everyone succumbs to hypnosis in different ways: some are more susceptible to visual stimuli, others to voice or touch. Sometimes the specialist does not understand the patient’s request or communication is not established.

Therefore, a good therapist tries to move gradually, adjusting to the interlocutor and removing his defenses gently, without violence. For example, he tries to learn something about the patient, to become interested in him, his motivations and beliefs.

Finally the fun begins.

“I suggest that the client fix his attention on something – on sounds, sensations in the body, on my speech,” says Vladimir Dashevsky. – It is not the words that I pronounce that are important, but the intonation, the timbre of the voice. Do you remember how your grandmother used to tell you fairy tales and you fell asleep? We can say that she also induced a trance, although she did not know about it.

Listening to the therapist, the client succumbs to the rhythm that he sets, and this is how the switch to the “third mode” occurs.

A world you can control

A hypnotized person is not like a weak-willed zombie who can be instilled with anything.

Psychiatrist Milton Erickson, the founder of his own direction in this art, argued that attempts to “break” a person’s deep mental attitudes will not work. Erickson himself taught his followers to work gently, not imposing their own interpretations, but by studying the world of the client and teaching him to find a way out on his own. At the same time, the effect is impressive: in a few sessions with a hypnologist, you can overcome the fear of air travel or tune in to pass a driving test.

Vladimir Dashevsky classifies Ericksonian hypnosis, which he himself has been practicing for 18 years, as a short-term method of psychotherapy:

“If your heel has fallen off, you can go to the store for a new pair of shoes. But you can contact the nearest workshop, and they will help you faster and cheaper. The same with hypnosis: the task is not to “pick up” the emotional scratches of the client, but to heal them and forget about them as soon as possible.

The deeper the hypnosis, the more opportunities for work open up for the therapist and the client. In deep hypnosis, the problem that worries a person is transformed in his mind into a certain image.

This may be an unusual perception of the body – for example, emptiness in the place of internal organs or a parasite that has settled between the ribs. But the image can also take on the shape of the world where the person is.

“I am not trying to interpret what this or that symbol means for the patient,” explains Rashit Tukaev. – For me, there are other criteria – better-worse, higher-lower. I orient a person in this figurative reality, find out that he wants to change, where to go. And then he starts to act. Suppose there is a stone in front of him that blocked the flow of the river. I don’t know what the stone or the river means. But I see that the patient does not like it.

He says: I want to move a stone to cross the river. And I help him.”

It all seems like a figment of the imagination: how, by moving a non-existent boulder, can one find a way out of the labyrinth of real worries in which we wander? But for the child within us, the feeling of helplessness or freedom has a concrete embodiment. And if he learns to manage it, albeit in such a symbolic form, then he conveys this feeling of strength and power to our adult “I”.