Emotional Freedom Starts Here

Dr. John J. Murphy Psychologist and Hypnotherapist

8730 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 418 Beverly Hills, CA

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Part 4: Hypnotherapy: Negotiating with your Agent

To understand how hypnotherapy works and how this communication occurs, we must first understand a very popular type of therapy in clinical psychology known as 'cognitive-behavioral therapy' or CBT[6].

Cognitive Behavioral therapy is a therapy that helps through a combination of – you guessed it – cognitive and behavioral therapy.

An example of behavioral therapy is eliminating a phobia through systematic desensitization. It's a fancy way of saying, "experience a small part of your phobia until you're comfortable, then add more and more elements of the phobia until you're able to handle the snake, or fly in the airplane, or do whatever you couldn't do before." First, Ruth would see a picture of a snake. She might feel nervous at first, but if she looks at it enough, she'll begin to feel more and more relaxed. Then, she'll see a movie of a snake. Again, she'll feel nervous but then calm down progressively. Stage eight through ten is handling a live, albeit harmless snake and a very happy and relieved Ruth.

How does this work in terms of the Secret Service Agent? Let's say the Queen of England wants to travel to Chad, a nation in Africa, but the Secret Service Agent refuses. The Secret Service Agent may instead let her fly to the canary islands, right off the coast of Africa. They all go, and see that she's well received. Next, they fly to Madagascar. Again, at first the Secret Service Agent is concerned, but he sees everything goes well, so he relaxes. Next, a trip to South Africa and finally the trip to Chad[7].

Cognitive therapy relates to amending the Secret Service Agent program through conversation rather than action. There are some problems better addressed through behavioral therapy (i.e. specific phobias) and others better addressed through cognitive therapy (i.e. generalized anxiety). That's why psychologists use both.

If behavioral therapy is brining the Secret Service Agent along to progressively safer nations, cognitive therapy would be sitting him down for a little chat, and questioning his rational. As we can see from Rule number 2, the rational of the Secret Service Agent is quite bizarre in this day and age, but from rule number 3, he's open to reason. In addition to bringing the Secret Service Agent along as he and the Queen travel, the Queen also gives him lots of information about how safe the countries are. She makes him aware of the Queen of Scotland and the Prime Minister's recent visit to Chad and how well they were received. She challenges his perceptions of their safety, pointing out when they are contradictory and when evidence disproves them. The Secret Service Agent doesn't like to be inconsistent.

With Ruth, she wants to fly but is scared of turbulence. Her Secret Service Agent doesn't know what the hell turbulence is. As far as he's concerned, it means that Ruth is out of control. He hates it when Ruth is out of control because the last time she was out of control, she was hurt. And this time she might not make it out alive. He is also not very familiar with the feelings of turbulence and he knows that unfamiliar feelings are generally dangerous.

First, Ruth learns that turbulence is simply air-pockets in the sky. Most flights experience turbulence. It's the equivalent of pot-holes making a bumpy ride on the road. She is challenged to consider if every time turbulence occurred, an airplane would crash, so as to see how ridiculous that idea is. She gathers evidence of who in her life has experienced flights with turbulence and lived to tell the tale. Ruth then considers how, even with pretty strong turbulence, the stewardess still serves drinks and reads books and talks with other stewardesses. Finally, Ruth relates flying to gaining a level of control, through realizing how much effort the airlines, the pilots, and the mechanics put into protecting her and her flight. If all goes according to plan, she feels much better about flying.

So, where does hypnosis come into play?

Hypnotherapy seems to accelerate cognitive-behavioral therapy. In essence, it acts as a virtual reality environment for behavioral modification and serves as a gateway for the cognitive restructuring[8]. Allow me to explain: As anyone familiar with pop-psychology knows, the human brain has a difficult time telling the difference between something imagined and something really happening. That's why the basketball team that imagines playing often performs as well as the basketball team that physically practices[9].

With hypnotherapy, pretending to be in a situation where a person is usually anxious and instead feeling relaxed will generally bring that person to feel more relaxed when that situation later occurs in a process known as behavioral generalization. In other words, you don't necessarily have to physically take small, incremental steps towards phobia desensitization, you can simply imagine them. If you were to imagine yourself experiencing turbulence and feeling relaxed in that process, that may just be enough for the Secret Service Agent to understand turbulence is nothing to get excited over.

Now, hypnosis facilitates this process in two ways. First, through guided imagery, a person is generally better able to imagine a particular environment. No one really knows why for certain, but feeling very relaxed, breathing deeply, and feeling connected tends to boost imagery and sensory abilities compared to when we're simply around walking and talking. Second, the transference of calmness and relaxation that is directed towards the phobic response (in this case, turbulence) is made easier the more relaxed and calm the person is. It also means that rather than starting each level of phobic response with heightened anxiety and working towards relaxation, the mind stays rather relaxed and tends to stay that way. This way, you don't have to 'face your fears' from the context of strong anxiety that gradually abates. Each new level of phobia elicits a very manageable feeling of anxiety.

A person with a fear of snakes might start systematic desensitization with a picture of a snake. Seeing a picture in real life would elicit a sense of anxiety, which then slowly dissipates. This level of anxiety is generally manageable, but no one exactly looks forward to it. On the other hand, we can place that person into a deep level of relaxation and then have that person imagine seeing a picture of a snake. In this instance, the person tends to stay relaxed throughout the whole activity and the results are usually the same: a resolution of the phobia.

Before we go into cognitive therapy, let's recap using the model of the Secret Service Agent. In our example with the Queen of England, we're taking the Secret Service Agent to progressively more unfamiliar countries in Africa, showing him that it is indeed safe. Hypnosis in this model would be putting a brown paper bag over his head and simply telling him that we're visiting all these countries and informing him that the Queen is in safe keeping. He assumes what you're saying is true. Plus, with the brown paper bag on, he's not as likely to become excited. Now of course, in real life, no security guard or Secret Service Agent worth his salt would go along with this nonsense, but apparently the pathways of sensory imagery (what you see with your eyes) and perception imagery (what you simply imagine) use the same neurons when interacting with the brain. So it is okay to imagine a airplane flight or a garden snake rather than actually having to sit in a plane or handle a snake. Call it a neurological loophole.

How does cognitive therapy fit into all of this? Again, it's reasoning with the Secret Service Agent. If we could only sit down and reason with this fellow, we could explain how smoking is bad, planes are good, and snakes are generally mellow. Cognitive therapy works by reasoning with the Secret Service Agent. Hypnotherapy seems to enhance this effect. To show why this is so, let's again look back upon the evolution of the agent.

In the anatomy of the brain, we have the basic, primitive functions located at the very bottom of the brain, and the more advanced parts of the brain building on top. If you make a first with your right hand, that is the reptilian part of the brain: it handles the very primitive functions such as breathing, hunger, and fight-or-flight[10]. If you take your left hand and put it over the right fist, that left hand represents the more advanced functions, which evolved in our far off ancestors, when we were all very small mammals. Lastly, as we evolved into smarter and more social primates until we became human, we added yet more layers. If you had a third hand, you'd place this over the fist and left hand. That is the hand where all the thinking and reasoning and planning takes place.

Now, what does this all have to do with cognitive therapy and hypnosis? Well, a lot of the gut instincts that get us into trouble live in that left hand. The majority of the Secret Service Agent program developed sometime in between us being a mouse and a human, so the Secret Service Agent exists somewhere halfway in-between the second hand and the third hand. That's why it deals with primitive concerns (i.e. phobias, control, needing food). Meanwhile, we, the conscious half, are stuck in the third hand. Fortunately, both cognitive and behavioral therapy is able to reach this Secret Service Agent, since he's in both hand levels.

Therapists and researchers have found that when we're in hypnosis, we seem to be better able to reach the secret service agent compared to using cognitive-behavioral therapy alone. Why? When in hypnosis, we're not spending a lot of time in the third hand area. The third hand deals with thinking and planning. By relaxing and using imagery, we use more of the second hand. Imagery and visual sensing evolved before abstract thinking and long-term planning. Remember, we were picking the ripe berries from the rotten ones long before we were planning next year's crops. By relaxing and using imagery (i.e. hypnosis), we're able to leave the domain of the third hand, the conscious functions and drift down to the second hand (we also take this pathway whenever we fall asleep).

As we venture into the more basic levels of our mind, we're better able to access all the programs that exist there. That's why, when you're taking a test and you just know the answer to a question but can't quite remember it, you'll end up thinking of the answer hours later sitting down in your house listening to music. Part of the creativity and memory programs that we have exist in that second hand level. As does much of the Secret Service Agent. Now, do you need to always be relaxed to remember something, be it your short term or long term memory? No, of course not. But it helps. Likewise, you certainly don't need to relax to resolve a phobia or an addiction, but it helps.

While you're in this place of relaxation, the reasoning ability of the self (or the hypnotherapist) can be applied to impress upon the Secret Service Agent some new ideas and some new concepts. "Turbulence is just pot holes in the sky." "There is no evidence that smoking is going to make me look cool, it just makes me smell." "It's not the end of the world that my ex cheated on me; I can trust other people." These messages just seem to 'stick' better when a person is relaxed and in tune with that deeper level of processing.

On to Chapter 5

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