How to Install a Post Hypnotic Suggestion

It is important to point out the vast importance of post hypnotic suggestions.  So you become very aware of how powerful they are as well as how important they are in your practices as a Conversational Hypnotist.  A post hypnotic suggestion is a suggestion that calls for an action when a certain behavior, or trigger, is activated.  The actual post hypnotic suggestion is of something that will take place in the future regardless of whether or not the hypnotist is present.

The protocol for how to use a post hypnotic suggestion is a page right out of Dr. Milton Erickson’s book, so to speak.  His instruction for using post hypnotic protocol was very similar to all that you are about to read.

The first step in placing a post hypnotic suggestion is to induce a trance; there are different aspects to this first step that we will review more in depth when we get to the COMILA Formula.  In the meantime just know you must first induce a trance. 

As you induce this trance you will want to concentrate on giving the unconscious many different options about how to do things.  You will also want to include things that will motivate the listener to respond to the new behavior, in this you can use motivators like their beliefs and values.  Another aspect of your training you will want to incorporate in the trance stage is to use your framing to get the right state for what you are attempting to accomplish.

After you induce a trance you are going to suggest a behavior.  This is the second step in the post hypnotic suggestion process.  Suggesting a behavior can be a very direct thing or you can do it more covertly.  Covert and indirect will give you the best results, especially as you are starting out.  In this step you will use the seeding of ideas skills you learned quite some time ago. 

You will seed ideas about the behaviors you are suggesting to your listener.  While you are seeding these ideas you will more than likely do it through stories either about yourself or others.  As you get more into the depth of the ideas and behaviors you will slowly present them as things your listener should consider doing. 

Suggesting behaviors is often done well when you use open ended questions or statements.  As you use an open ended question or statement it leaves room for the person it is directed at to imply certain things as well as fill in the blanks, often more fully than they would if it were not an open ended question or statement. 

Other helpful skills and tools in the behavior suggestion phase are to use frames and presuppositions to imply or assume certain things.  You want them to tell you when something will happen, not if it will happen.  You want the listener to simply assume from your language that it is inevitable that the behavior will happen and therefore the only question left is when.  When you do this you are also going to be bypassing some resistance because you are implying a thing.

Now in this step you also need to remember to set a trigger for the listener, at this point it can be a series of options of triggers.  This is the action or signal to the person that they will use in the future to put the post hypnotic suggestion into action.  Anything can really be a trigger, a door shutting, a dog barking, a light turning on or off; really whatever you want that will signify the right time to put your suggestion into action. 

Even though you will be giving you listener a list or set of options for triggers you will still want to make one of them a clear trigger point.  You can be as direct or indirect as you want about the different triggers you are suggesting.  You can say, ‘you will do this when’, or you can say, ‘it may or may not happen when’. 

The more options for trigger points you allow the more likely it is that they will be unable to resist putting the suggestion into action.  This will happen because one of the many triggers will retain the majority of the resistance while the others still allow the action to take place.  Another reason to give many different trigger options is that it will make the action you suggest seem more like a part of their everyday life; it will feel more natural to your listener when the triggers compel them into action.

The third step in the post hypnotic suggestion is to create some amnesia.  This is something you have read about already and you will know how to do.  Some ways to create amnesia are to tell stories and use nested loops, use a language pattern and change the topic as you are talking.

Remember that there is a certain amount of amnesia that will naturally take place simply because you are using a trance process; it is a type of side effect of hypnosis.  This will be expounded upon if you are using fractionation as well.  Fractionating, if you remember, is when you continuously take a person in and out of trance. 

Amnesia is an important part of the post hypnotic suggestion process because it will in a way hide your suggestion so the listener is not too in tune to it.  Once the suggestions are deeply embedded it is fine for the person to realize where they came from but in the beginning there can be resistance and then your suggestion is less likely to be put into action so storing it away with amnesia is a perfect camouflage in the meantime.

The fourth step is to return to the original trance you started with.  This is much like using the two different trance processes in nested loops.  You are creating a trance on both sides of the suggestion and sealing the top with amnesia so there is no escape for the suggestions you are planting. 

Finally the fifth and last step in the post hypnotic suggestion process is to build up the listeners self esteem.  This is a little bonus for both you and the subject.  By building up and working on their self esteem they will correlate the suggestion and behaviors with words that make them feel good about themselves.  People are more apt to do a thing if the believe it will make them better, stronger, smarter or what have you.  You do things to improve yourself. 

The other reason to do this is just because it is a nice thing to do for the person you are helping, like a little icing on the cake.  This icing keeps the unconscious coming back for more cake, it makes listening to you a more rewarding experience.

For more information please visit http://www.conversational-hypnosis.com