By Greg Turner | January 31, 2017
Can I Be Hypnotized? That is a question I get a lot these days. Also, I get a variation on that, the statement, “I can not be hypnotized.” Well, let me tell you, if you have fear of public speaking, or social anxiety, or a phobia, not only are you hypnotizable, but you are hypnotized right now!
Say what? You may be thinking? If you are letting fear in some way rule your life, you are hypnotized right now!
Let me explain how that works. I will use fear of public speaking as my example, but what I write about here applies to social anxiety and phobias. Basically, in the back of your mind, that part of your mind that you are not aware of, you are imagining all kinds of bad things happening from getting up and speaking before an audience.
Perhaps, you are imagining the audience laughing at you, or throwing things at you, or perhaps yelling bad things at you. Now, mind you, all that is happening in the back of your mind, what I like to call the unconscious, but it is there. And you are reacting to it as if it were true. So you are reacting with feelings of fear and trepidation. And that, my friend, is what I call being hypnotized. You are hypnotized by all the bad stuff you are imagining in the back of your mind. I am saying you are hypnotized because you believe it all to be true and are reacting as if it were true. You have hypnotized yourself into believing your imagination to be true and are reacting as if it were true. That is the essence of being hypnotized.
When I work with individuals with fear of public speaking, I work on de-hypnotizing them. And I work on having my clients hypnotized to believe in themselves, believe that their speech will be well received, and believe that they will get a standing ovation. Hypnotizing it means believing it which means reacting positively and giving a great speech.
Please note, that what I’ve written here is just as true for social anxiety and phobia.
Topics: Fear