difficult person to hypnotize

Hi Kanza

Have you found anything that works well yet? If you have, could you pass that along to me as well? I am having the same problem as your husband (both sleep and hypnosis).

I'd be very appreciative of any advice you can offer.

Oh, and good luck with your situation as well.

I'm late to this (as usual) but you might look into an induction along the lines of this one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hypnosis/comme ... ction_for/

Kanza,

Have you ruled out all physiological problems first (apnea comes to mind). I was just recently diagnosed, and a CPAP machine is clearing up a lot of my problems. I would look into that before trying hypnosis or cognitive therapies.

It's ok, Moonlight, we've all had so much going on lately. Reply as you are able and so inclined. I'm just happy you have given of your time and attention to help me work through this. Thank you for that.

Yes, I am familiar with that induction. I believe I've read a few articles about it. I have to admit I laughed out loud when I read the part about how easy it is. What really caught my eye though was the part at the end about how some individuals experience anxiety when trying this approach. That is exactly what I have felt with it, especially in regard to the focus on breathing.

Oh well...as I said before, thank you for your help.

I think the psychology is sound, but you need to adapt the induction to the person. A breathing component is not going to work for someone who gets anxious about it. The hypnotist needs to select the items to keep in short term memory to suit the person and be extra reassuring if there is any anxiety.

The other thing is, that as the subject one needs to approach it with the knowledge and attitude that the whole point is to fail to keep your attention on everything - and ideally with a sense of humour at the whole house of cards being toppled. Try, even half-heartedly, and find it funny when you fail. Notice and experience the moment of "Oh, I give up" and be amused. (And this is the point at which the hypnotist needs to be nimble.)

I have succeeded in hypnotising a very high-IQ guy with it, in text. I want to try it with an adult volunteer who tells me he has ADHD, and see if utilizing the ADHD might work, with a similar keeping-the-cognitive-faculty-occupied approach. I don't know if I understand the mental processes of ADHD well enough (probably not), but it's worth a try.

If you're still around, kanza, maybe you could try and let us know how it goes?

Well, I definitely do have ADHD,.and I would definitely be willing to give it a try.

I'm not a psychologist, but what I can tell you about attention deficit is that the normal filters most people have to screen out non-essential information (do I REALLY need to be aware of the car passing by outside my house right now, or the pressure of the chair against my back?) are either non-existent or non functional for the person with the deficit. It's not that nothing gets through for these people, it's that EVERYTHING gets through. In school, I was labeled as distracted and inattentive. They were half right. I was severely distracted, but I was very acutely attentive to every sensory stimulus, which made focusing on any one of them virtually impossible. The result was that I could process information as other people did, but it was much slower for me, because I had so much more information to sift through. There is a book on the subject called "You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?" by Kate Kelly that addresses this. I did come off to most people as lazy, slow, stupid or just plain nuts, when in fact I was simply overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data my brain was trying to process.

That's the AD component, The HD is that some (not all) people with attention deficits are also hyperactive. They fidget, can't sit still and act out when they get frustrated. That was me. When I was in the 2nd grade, I was so behavioral that they put me in the 3rd grade room, because the 3rd grade teacher was built like a football player and could physically restrain me when necessary.

I hope that helps explain the ADHD process. Over the years, I have learned coping skills, so I work around the disorder (it never goes away - it's how the brain is wired). And for some reason, it affects males far more frequently than females.

So if you want an ADHD guy to experiment on, I'm more than qualified.