Hypnotic Language: Its Structure and Use

Hypnotic Language

Its Structure and Use

John J. Burton EdD & Bobby G. Bodenamer DMin

Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Preface

Part One: The Three Facets that Allow the Mind to Be Susceptible to Hypnotic Language Patterns

Introduction: Hypnosis and the Cognitive Pathways It Travels

Chapter 1 The Conscious–Unconscious Mind Split

Chapter 2 Cognitive Factors in Hypnotic Language

Chapter 3 Gestalt Perceptual Principles in Hypnotic Language

Part Two Case Examples Showing the Application and Effect of Hypnotic Language Patterns

Chapter 4 Language Patterns Addressing Beliefs, Behaviour and Possibilities

Chapter 5 Language Patterns Addressing Time Orientation

Chapter 6 I: Language Patterns Addressing Perception

II: Language Patterns Addressing States and Behaviours Through Perceptual Shifts

Chapter 7 Language Patterns Addressing Spiritual Matters

Chapter 8 Language Patterns Addressing States of Mind–Emotion

Chapter 9 The Milton Model of Language

Bibliography

Index

Copyright

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my gratitude to the fine people at Crown House Publishing. This includes Martin Roberts, Bridget Shine and Matt Pearce whose patience and skill allowed this book to become a reality.

I would also like to extend my appreciation to Bob Bodenhamer for immeasurable contributions and guidance.

I would also like to thank Michael Hall for sharing his mind, giving feedback and for his written contributions to this work.

I would like also to acknowledge Milton Erickson for his crucial contributions toward making hypnosis what it is today. What a fine model for combining genius with compassion.

Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to the source and foundation who makes all available.

John Burton EdD

2000

Foreword

Imagine meeting someone on the street or in a coffee shop, or at your office tomorrow who whispers something important to you. They take you aside for just a moment and say,

You can, by just saying some words, send people into wild and wonderful places and give them altered experiences, and possibly change their lives, empower them with new abilities, and much more.

Would you believe that person? Would such magic and power seem possible? By just talking?

There is a language that makes this possible. We call it the language of trance. Such language invites us out of any present moment and into a state of the mind where we ‘go inside’ and see, hear, feel, smell, taste and experience an altered reality. Did I say, ‘altered’? That’s probably over-stating it. ‘Different’ may be more accurate. We call this state ‘hypnosis’ yet that too miscommunicates more than it communicates. Because, as Dr Burton will show in this book of language patterns, we cannot not experience trance-states. To ‘think’ about another time and place is to transition out of this moment and to hallucinate another time, whether past or future.

That language hypnotizes, you know well when you think about it. Any good storyteller, minister, mother, novel, etc. can invite us out of the present and into a world constructed in our mind. From the outside all of this seems mysterious. Even spooky. From the outside the person seems to be asleep (hence the word hypnotism). But from the inside, ah, from the inside—your mind is never more alert and awake, more in control and expansive. And it all occurs upon the wings of language.

But how does language do this? Wherein lies the magic? What kinds of words facilitate this near magic-like process? This book will first of all give you an extensive understanding of some of the mental or cognitive processes that make it so and then will put into your hands some of the most powerful hypnotic language patterns. In this work, John uses his extensive knowledge of Neuro-Linguistics and Neuro-Semantics—his field of expertise—child developmental psychology, Gestalt psychology and even Meta-states.

Meta-states? You know, a state of mind or emotion that relates to another state as when you begin to feel really curious about learning about hypnotic language patterns. The learning state is one thing, feeling excited and full of anticipation about your learning is a higher state. And now that you can go in and make sense of that, I’m sure that you can just as easily appreciate your skills at feeling excited as you expect to expand your skills in the process of this learning, can you not?

If that doesn’t invite you to trance out, we only have to add another level, or seven more. Each shift upwards invites you into a hypnotic state as the referents do not exist ‘out there,’ but ‘in there’ (imagine me pointing to your head, ah, another invitation to trance!). See, it’s inevitable. Accordingly, Dr Burton along with Dr Bob Bodenhamer have taken Meta-states as the newest NLP model and used it to articulate many new language patterns in the context of assisting people to make the kind of transformations in their mental maps that will give them a new lease on life.

Should you buy this book? Yes, of course, if you’re interested in how language works its magic. Yes, if you’re interested in becoming more playful with your language skills. Yes, if you’re interested in inducing powerful states that can enable others to become more empowered and skilled, buy this book. In fact, it seems to me that from psycho-hypnotists, psychotherapists, coaches, consultants, to teachers, writers, trainers, marketers, advertisers, parents, lawyers, politicians, many will want to get their hands on this volume. But that’s just a suggestion.

L. Michael Hall PhD

Colorado

Preface

In 1996, I received a call from John Burton who had an interest in taking the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) training that I offered. I learned that John worked as a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Greenville, SC. This thrilled me, as I love training counselors in the skills of NLP. Soon John was with me in the NLP summer practitioner training course.

We were not very far along in the training before I realized that in John Burton I had a unique student. John brought with him immense knowledge and keen insight. I learned that John received a doctorate from Vanderbilt, a highly acclaimed university in Nashville, Tennessee. John did his doctoral studies primarily in the field of developmental psychology.

During the NLP master practitioner training, I and the other students stood in awe as John began delivering hypnotic language patterns. I have had other students who could outdo their trainer with hypnotic languaging. But, never, and I mean never, have I heard language patterns flow from a person as they did from John.

John comes up each year and teaches the hypnosis training of my master practitioner training. He was up last December for my present students. Three months have passed since John last taught and those students are still talking about John Burton and their amazement at his skill.

Thanks to Crown House Publishing, you now have access to his genius. I know that on the front of this book you have both our names as the author. However, I cannot lay claim to the genius of this book. Inside these covers you will find numerous examples of ‘doing hypnosis’. Most of the patterns come from actual client sessions.

Also, in the first three chapters you will learn the ‘how’ of hypnosis. Indeed, you are in for a real treat and for an understanding of ‘how’ hypnosis works based on the latest in the cognitive sciences and from developmental psychology.

Indeed, I am honored to have been just a small part of this work.

Bobby G. Bodenhamer DMin

Part One

The Three Facets that Allow the Mind to be Susceptible to Hypnotic Language Patterns

Introduction

Hypnosis and the Cognitive Pathways it Travels

Suppose you treat a mistake, any mistake, like an oil spill at sea? What then? The oil recovery team will place barriers around the oil to contain the spill. As you imagine this, notice how the ocean outside the containers remains clear and clean. Also, knowing that oil is lighter than water and floats, resting only on the surface. This allows the water underneath the oil to remain clear and clean.

This means that the only task remaining is to remove the oil by skimming the oil from the sea… so that you can see it disappear slowly or quickly and as you do, noticing the feeling as the oil departs to leave more and more sea to see and feel…the clear and clean return. Now, how will you enjoy the sea sight as you set your sights on your future?

I used the above hypnotic language pattern with a client who came in complaining of depression. He had a foolproof way of creating depression. Any time he made a mistake he would generalize from the mistake and contaminate his whole self. He would conclude, ‘I made a mistake, therefore I am a bad person’.

Does that sound familiar? He was an expert in making a bad person out of himself. He would stew for days in self-criticism, which resulted in constant feelings of depression. A vicious circle of self-criticism, pessimism and self-depreciation would put him in and keep him in a state of depression. He had the depression strategy down pat. Once he heard this pattern, it changed his way of viewing his mistakes.

From this point on, he saw any mistakes he made as isolated errors and relied on his positive memories of his many successes to nullify these mistakes. Instead of generalizing from his mistake to the whole of himself, he generalized to the part making the error and thereby brought his successful self to bear on this part. In doing this, he thus nullified any depression (a Meta-stating process—more about Meta-states later).

He reported in our next session how he had made some errors, but was not upset by them, rather he went right on working toward solutions. He stated that, for a change, he was enjoying being in a good mood and that he was feeling very competent. That was our last session.

A follow-up over six months later revealed that he continued feeling good and no longer had any of those self-criticism spells. He even began resuming some of his favorite hobbies that he’d given up while trying so hard to prove his competence.

What happens in the mind that empowers it in such a way that it can hear a few hypnotic words, and the listener turns her world totally around? You will find out as you learn the concepts in these first three introductory chapters.

All communication invites the receiver into a hypnotic trance.

In this text, a hypnotic state or trance refers to a focusing of attention on a thought, idea, concept, thing, etc. which excludes all other focusing on anything else.

It is important to recognize that all communication invites the receiver into a hypnotic trance. Whenever we make a statement, the person hearing our statement cannot help but respond to those words and to the thoughts that they stimulate. They will connect some meaning to what we say, and, at least for a moment, as they focus on that meaning, it puts them into a state—a hypnotic state of inward focus. When they focus on the meaning that they give to our statement for that moment, they enter trance.

In this text, a hypnotic state or trance refers to a focusing of attention on a thought, idea, concept, thing, etc. which excludes all other focusing on anything else. Now, as we focus on just one chunk of data, we are able to move or transport that chunk to another. In effect, we take the first thought and apply it to another thought.

For instance, if I have a problem and, during hypnosis, my focus moves from my problem to focusing on a resource for healing my problem, I can so focus on the resource that I realize its ability to solve my problem. Then, I can move that resource to the problem and solve my problem by putting new meaning to the problem (Meta-stating). The process resembles using a computer to put up a picture of a person’s face on the screen and then ‘try on’ different hairstyles or colors. In hypnosis you can take the problem to the infinite collection of possibilities and select the one that works for you.

The content of the problem becomes open to change from the new information that exists in our memories or imagination. This information resides in the unconscious mind. Trance permits taking conscious mind material (the problem in this example), cut off from the unconscious mind, and integrating it with the rich resources of the unconscious mind (the resource). To distinguish conscious from unconscious mind you could think of your conscious mind as represented by where you are physically, right now, as you read this. Your unconscious mind is everywhere else in the universe. And since your response to this statement is a trance, just imagine the possibilities.

Chapter One

The Conscious–Unconscious Mind Split

This book explores the function of three particular factors that allow the mind to be susceptible to hypnotic language. These three factors are the conscious–unconscious mind split, the cognitive style of processing information that we rely on during our childhood years and the perceptual principles of Gestalt psychology. After describing these concepts and their dynamics, we will explain the role they each play in generating hypnotic language. This will allow us to identify and understand the construction, purpose and effect of hypnotic language.

The bulk of the text consists of hypnotic language patterns that will illustrate these three principles. We will explain the logic and purpose of these language patterns. Additionally, case examples will show the application and effect of these language patterns. Hypnotic language rarely provides the entire solution to a client’s problem; rather it may provide a sort of linguistic loosening or tightening device. This means that in the process of arriving at a solution, hypnotic language provides this loosening device that allows the client to release rigid thoughts, emotions or behaviors.

Hypnotic language rarely provides the entire solution to a client’s problem; rather it may provide a sort of linguistic loosening or tightening device.

Hypnotic language may also provide the final tightening after a mental, emotional or behavioral shift to hold the change in place. And certainly, at times, hypnotic language may truly stimulate the full change process. This now leads to identifying and explaining the concept of hypnotic language through the three facets that allow the mind to be susceptible to hypnotic language.

The Conscious–Unconscious Mind Split

Most forms of communication create a trance. It happens when we develop an exclusive focus on the message that the communicator is sending to the receiver. Communication occurs through any one of the five senses alone, or in combination.

Consider the chef who creates a collection of flavors and textures for your palate. If prepared properly, you will lapse into a trance filled with delight over the flavors, texture and other aspects of the culinary masterpiece. You will want more and will probably return to that restaurant. Even the invitation to partake in the gustatory trance involves trance through the visual and olfactory and, at times, auditory senses. The foods you choose and the style of foods you prefer come to be so, in part, because the chef succeeded in ‘trancing’ or entrancing you. Of course, while in this trance you will decide if the experience is satisfying enough for you to want to repeat it in the future. But a trance must happen before you determine the quality of the experience.

The way all communication involves trance holds true for your other senses. Consider having a massage from a masseuse. The pathway to the intended relief travels through a trance state. You miss the message of the massage if your mind wanders from the physical sensations to some task in your past or future. One of the reasons some people buy the clothes they wear is because of the way the clothes feel on their skin (kinesthetic buyers). Before purchasing they will feel the material with their fingers and evaluate if the fabric feels right to them. This evaluation involves a light trance as this person focuses on the ‘feel’ of the material and then imagines what it will feel like when they wear that piece of clothing.

Music easily induces an auditory trance-state. The musician’s ability to induce a trance through music determines whether or not the listener accepts the music. Music-induced trance makes for one of the most popular and easily accessed kinds of trances. Lovers of music spend millions of dollars each year buying music just because it induces an enjoyable trance within them. There are even certain sounds that induce a trance and pre-determined response. Various bells, whistles and sirens automatically activate a certain response. Some research indicates that various types of background music can encourage a person to buy more in a store or to eat more in a restaurant than normal.

Think about trances induced through the olfactory (smell) sense. Remember the enticing scent of a perfume or cologne. Or recall the emotionally warming aroma of bread baking. What about the concept of aromatherapy? This treatment banks on the trance inducing ability of scents for improving health and well-being.

Scents for the sense to make cents, how do all those words I sent to you sound?

Certainly we do not want to overlook trance induced through visual means. The visual artist, whether painter in any medium, sketch artist or photographer seeks to induce a trance by getting the attention of those who view her work. Go into an art gallery and watch the intense observers go into trance. If the visual aid propels you into a trance and in this trance your experience appeals to your emotions, you may buy the work of art. And what is very often the first catalyst of attraction between two eventually romantically involved people? Before you meet someone, what you see and then think provides the motivation for getting to know this person.

No doubt you can think of many other examples of how communication through the senses produces a trance in the receiver. If effective, the receiver of the communication goes into a trance. Consider these questions:

♦ What features make some communication more effective than other communication for inducing a trance?

♦ What makes the receiver of linguistic communication respond to the invitation and go into trance?

♦ What takes place while one is in trance that makes this form of communication produce change in the receiver?

Hypnotic language presupposes a conscious mind and a rich resource filled unconscious mind.

To answer these questions we first explore the mental ingredients that play a role in hypnotic trance. Hypnotic language presupposes a conscious mind and a rich resource-filled unconscious mind. Another way of viewing the ‘split-mind’ involves what I refer to as primary and secondary awareness.

Primary awareness (the conscious mind) consists of your current awareness, in any given moment, your conscious mind. For instance, you are focusing on the words on this page right now. This is primary awareness. Secondary awareness (the unconscious mind) consists of all the other information you have gathered throughout your life, but do not presently realize in your primary awareness. Secondary awareness refers to the storehouse of information residing in your unconscious mind. You probably were not aware of your right big toe until these words just now called attention to it. Well, your unconscious mind or your secondary awareness knew about it all the time. You just weren’t aware of it consciously.

George Miller (1956) determined the nine value upper limit of your primary awareness. His studies indicated that we can consciously hold 7±2 items in awareness at any given moment of time.

George Miller (1956) determined the nine value upper limit of your primary awareness. His studies indicated that we consciously hold 7±2 items in awareness at any given moment of time. Yet, it would appear that we experience subtle ‘knowings’ that ‘all other information’ resides within. For example, you may get a ‘gut feeling’ that something’s wrong like leaving a stove burner on after leaving your house. You don’t know just what is specifically wrong but you trust this ‘instinct’ and return home to check the stove.

We believe that hypnotic language overwhelms our primary awareness limitations in order to communicate with our secondary awareness.

We believe that hypnotic language overwhelms our primary awareness limitations in order to communicate with our secondary awareness. Secondary awareness represents everything not of primary awareness or everything other than your awareness now. Secondary awareness has knowledge of the complete resource inventory within your conscious and unconscious mind. The style and content of hypnotic language invites your primary awareness to focus upon the content of the spoken words, but then the content exceeds the processing ability of the primary awareness. This results in passing the information to the secondary awareness where everything becomes possible.

The Thalamus and Cortex

Further, it seems that the thalamus and cortex play a role in this primary and secondary awareness. While likely remaining unproven, I will present this position for your consideration. Alfred Korzybski took this position in his class work that initiated the field of general semantics, Science and Sanity (1994 [1941]).

The thalamus serves the role of initial processing site for all incoming sensory information with the exception of the sense of smell—Korzybski’s lower abstraction level.

Some say the sense of smell can trigger a memory faster than the other senses. Perhaps this bypassing of the thalamus is the reason for this. This is an established fact in neurology, as noted by both Bandler and Grinder, in The Structure of Magic and Korzybski in Science and Sanity. After the other senses pass information to the thalamus for general identifying and categorizing, the thalamus then passes the sensory information to various lobes of the cortex for more detailed analysis and complex meaning making.

Support for the role of the thalamus and cortex in simple and complex processing of stimuli comes, in part, from the work of Jean Piaget (1965).

Support for the role of the thalamus and cortex in simple and complex processing of stimuli comes, in part, from the work of Jean Piaget (1965). Piaget studied the cognitive development of many hundreds of children of various ages. His research spanned several decades. One way Piaget studied children’s cognitive development involved observing their ability to process and understand information of varying degrees of complexity. Piaget presented children of different ages with a reasoning problem. He observed how the children understood the variables within the problem and how they manipulated the information to reach their conclusion.

For example, Piaget would show children a photo of two trees. The two trees differed in type and height. Piaget then asked children of different ages which tree was older. Invariably, children below the age of seven, or thereabouts, chose the taller tree as the older. Children older than about seven years of age asked when the trees were planted to find out the age of the trees. The older children had the ability to take more information into account for reasoning. They could do more complex thinking involving simultaneous consideration of different categories of information. The children over seven years of age not only looked at the height of the trees but thought about additional factors that may account for the difference in height. They did this through the higher level (Meta-level) processes of the cerebral cortex.

Data Categories of Complexity

We list here the four different categories of data that represent ever-increasing degrees of mental/cognitive complexity (the capacity of processing more and more complex abstractions—meta-level processes). These categories are nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio.

Nominal data represents itself in all-or-nothing terms. When you place any information within a category or give it a general label it becomes nominal data. Information fitting into this data level includes: winning–losing, pregnant–not pregnant, good–bad, etc. This level of data contains no gray area. Nominal data also evidences itself when a person speaks in all-or-nothing language patterns, i.e. ‘You are either with me or against me’. Some information naturally lends itself to fitting as nominal data (pregnant or not pregnant) and sometimes people force-fit data into the nominal category by ignoring the shades of gray, i.e. ‘You are either with me or against me’.

This nominal perceptual style (way of processing information), or Meta-program in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), limits awareness and choice (see Hall and Bodenhamer, Figuring Out People, 1997a). This type of thinking frequently accompanies limiting beliefs and their consequences. Young children cannot escape this style of thinking due to their cognitive limitations. They cannot simultaneously hold differing or competing ideas so their evaluations of situations become either–or types. When under stress some adults revert to the child-like either–or thinking style.

This style of thinking may also occur in adults when they feel emotional stress. Information within nominal data fits in one of two groups. The information is dichotomized into either–or categories. The details either don’t exist, such as when a woman is pregnant or not pregnant, or they get left out of the evaluation. This leaving out of details is one of the trademarks of personality disordered people. In particular, borderline personalities do a process that is called affective splitting. These people either hate someone or love someone. No middle ground exists. Another example could be someone believing that someone is all good or all bad with no in-between. Reframing as a therapeutic tool relies on this nominal category because it seeks to change the meaning of a circumstance. In doing this, it shifts the meaning from one category to another more resourceful category of meaning. For example, just because you changed some behavior and now someone objects doesn’t mean you have to return to your former ways. It actually means you have successfully changed and that you can now more fully strengthen this new way, reaping the benefits.

Watzlawick, Weakland and Fisch (1974) talk about reframing in these terms:

In its most abstract terms, reframing means changing the emphasis from one class membership of an object to another, equally valid class membership, or, especially, introducing such a new class membership into the conceptualization of all concerned. (p. 98)

Watzlawick et al. (1974) emphasized three aspects related to reframing. They state that our experience of the world is based on categorization of the objects we perceive into classes. The authors also state that once an object is conceptualized as the member of a given class, it is extremely difficult to see it as belonging also to another class. This class membership of an object is called its ‘reality’. Thus, anybody who sees it as the member of another class must be mad or bad.

Once an object is conceptualized as the member of a given class, it is extremely difficult to see it as belonging also to another class. This class membership of an object is called its ‘reality.’

Finally, what makes reframing such an effective tool of change involves frame stability. That is, once we perceive the alternative class membership(s), we cannot so easily go back to the trap and the anguish of a former view of ‘reality.’

The second category for evaluating the complexity of mental processing ability is that of ordinal data. Ordinal data provide a way of ranking the complexity of information in terms of the increasing or decreasing of some quality within the data. Ordinal data compare stimuli and generate an order or rank using relative comparisons from within the group.

As an example, when children run a race they receive recognition in terms of where they are placed at the finish. Ordinal data reveal which child ran faster than another child, though all the children ran. The child finishing second is not twice as fast as the child finishing fourth. The positions contain no flexibility or degrees. Positions exist, but not on a sliding scale. Within ordinal data no true zero exists because the data represent comparisons within the group rather than comparisons to an entity outside the group. All data in the group possess some degree of the quality measured, so results are relative. Within individuals, emotional states may receive ranking in terms of being stronger or more intense than other states on a continuum. For one person, anxiety may rank as a stronger state than worry and worry more intense than concern. Or a person may say that they feel more scared than angry about his child being very late coming home one evening.

Interval data include the characteristics of the first two categories and adds more sophistication through more abstraction. Not only do the items within interval data relate to each other in terms of rank, but they also vary in degrees of a relationship with each other. The interval between items has meaning. The