Post-hypnotism

From another thread:

jimmyh wrote:ask not to be hypnotized for known goals,

You might have linked to this thread a whole lot earlier, you know; woulda saved some brain juice! At least on my part - and maybe on yours, too.

And the person never took you up on it??

"And the person never took you up on it??"

What does this refer to, exactly?

jimmyh wrote:What does this refer to, exactly?

From that thread:

Magnap wrote:If anyone is interested in either the roleplay or the real life scenario I am up for it.

jimmyh wrote:However, I'd *love* to do that role play. I know I do not embody the art as far as I can see it, so training will do me good. Heck, it gives the best of both drilling and trial by fire. It'll expose the holes in my game while also giving me time to find the solution and install it so that it comes naturally next time. If that's what you want to do, I'd really appreciate it. Just give me a context.

Seemed like you were about to do what we did in the previous thread, but then the thread ran dead.

The euphoria of handing in your paper at the end of a 5-day exam… now, where were we?

jimmyh wrote:Well, congratulations. That sounds like that must be both exciting and a relief.

It’s pretty cool, yeah. Thanks for the help. It’s not stable all the time and less so when I get stressed out (which I’ve been), but it’s different. After all the discussion and explanation though, I can’t say I actually figured out how it happened. It didn’t involve doing anything, just seeing that it could be possible and really wanting it. It doesn’t make sense to me how it worked. I hope you’re not thinking, “but I just *explained* it to you!”… sorry.

jimmyh wrote:

moonlightress wrote:I’m still getting the usual 2-3 night-time ones, that wake me up [...] (How do I tackle them when I’m asleep?)

It seems like what’s going on in cases like this is that you’re operating on something that ends up getting dropped for sleep, and then without that layer of regulation going on, you revert to the old process and therefore the old results. […]
Another interesting thing is to notice which things wake us up and why. […]
It’s just that my brain is discriminating between “this isn’t worth waking up for” and “this is”. […]
This can be changed through conscious intention. […]
Instead of “forgetting about it” at night, I’d just try going to bed with the reminder that you’re probably going to get heat fluctuations at night too, and that it’s still likely to be okay enough to not bother waking up for or sweating about (literally and otherwise).

I never had the language for “setting a conscious intention” before, nor any understanding of how it worked, but yes, I’ve been doing this for years: deciding what to wake up for and not to wake up for, as far as sounds are concerned.

Where I lived before, my neighbours had watch dogs who barked at so much as a leaf blowing in the wind. Since my bedroom was right next to their entrance way, where the dogs hung out, the barking was very loud and frequent and would make it both difficult to fall asleep and wake me up. I was on good terms with the neighbours and didn’t really know how I was going to tackle talking to them about doing something about their dogs, since the whole point of them being there was to bark as a deterrent. I realised it was simpler to just put up with it and so I made the decision they weren’t going to be a sound I woke up for. Took a week or so, but after that I stopped noticing them bark; it was a background thing I didn’t need to pay attention to. I woke up once to go to the bathroom and they were barking furiously at something and I only noticed it once awake.

We have a communal kitchen here in the dorm and I wanted my own fridge in my room. The thing is alive, I swear. You think fridges just hum, right? This one has a whole range of sounds – it creaks, groans, rumbles, even squeaks. The first night with this cacophony, I thought “well, this is going to be fun trying to sleep with; I’m just going to have to background it”, and then just did. It never wakes me up. I don’t consider myself a “heavy sleeper” either, but maybe that’s just a name for people who tune out stuff they don’t have to wake up for? Is this what you’re talking about? But doesn’t everyone do this? Isn’t that why we have the expression “tuning it out”? (Same way we have the expression “zoning out” for trance, because everyone does it?) Yet clearly it *does* involve setting an intention. You’re saying I could do that with temperature too? Just set that intention not to wake up for those sensations, either? I’ll try it out.

What makes you think there aren’t sensations for these other things that you haven’t noticed yet? […] Haven’t you had the experience where your stomach feels a bit off and you have to try to figure out whether these feelings mean “hungry” or “do not* eat” or something else?

I guess I have, yeah. Sometimes it isn’t hunger, it’s boredom. Or sadness. Hence “comfort food/ comfort eating” Or metaphorical hunger; like a kind of soul hunger or sense that there is an empty hole in your life, that manifests (or is interpreted?) as body/stomach hunger – that what you mean? But I don’t catch where you were going with this.

Oh, well that is worthy of eye rolling. You’re definitely being a little silly playing with those training wheels of yours, since it’s part of you, not some imaginary friend inside your head.

I’m never going to live those training wheels down, am I?

[…] But you understand how “feeling hot” will change the physical things like “I’m wearing a jacket”, right? You just take the jacket off when you no longer feel like it’d be a good thing to keep wearing. It’s not weird that your brain would coordinate with your body to use its biomechanical actuators to remove excess clothing to help with regulating to its desired setpoint.

Nope, not weird so far. I’m with you.

It’s only weird because we’re not used to the idea that we can “consciously” control the other actuators we have to influence physical things. It’s harder to watch ourselves constricting and expanding blood vessels, sweat pores, and the like, so it’s harder to associate the inputs with the outputs and be able to reflect on when our behavior isn’t making sense (“doing things consciously”).

However, that does not mean we lack the actuators or that they are not being controlled by a regulating system. It just means we’re not used to being in touch with that control panel. (my bolding).

Yeah, I do have that belief of being unable to access the control panel, although that belief is getting shakier, the longer we talk. But it’s still a mental hurdle.

We can anthropomorphize simple control systems like a bimetallic strip thermostat

(There’s this inferential gap thing you have, that makes you hard to follow sometimes, where you assume everyone’s an engineer (and a rationalist, for that matter) and knows what a bimetallic strip thermostat is and how it works, but ok, I looked it up and now I do. Mutter, mutter --- clever mechanism, though. )

However, there *is* a process looking at the temperature and actively correcting that to keep the temperature in a certain spot. […]
In this sense, the curvature of the bimetallic strip or that sense that the ball is “out of place” can function like “beliefs”. Not as a “thing we tell ourself we believe”, but as a model of the outside world and its difference from what we’d like it to be.

Biologically speaking, homeostasis. (We are talking a degree of biological engineering, after all?) Ok. I can see it as the body’s ‘belief’ that it needs to keep things like pH, via (among other mechanisms) keeping blood levels of O2 and CO2, within a narrow range for the machine to function optimally. Some divers are able to stay underwater for longer than average periods of time by hyperventilating and modifying their blood O2 and CO2 levels - getting in touch with that control panel. That’s at the “feel hot, activate muscles to remove jacket” level. Breathing normally happens by itself without any conscious control via involuntary muscles, yet you can override this by using voluntary muscles to take deliberate deep breaths. But vasoconstriction and -dilation is a level up; what is the physical mechanism that needs to be activated here, on a practical level?

As you start to introspect and reverse engineer yourself, often things which start out seeming like “just sensations” end up looking more like embodied parts of our beliefs, and become modifiable as we do. Instead of “that hurts, and I don’t like the pain”, it’s “wow, my leg is damaged, and I don’t like that my leg is damaged” […]
It’s not that the physical sensation itself feels any different, it’s just that when it has a different meaning you respond to it differently and that same sensation of pain can now exist free of aversion. Instead of “this sensation that’s bad and I don’t like” it’s just part of your brain and body’s beliefs about the state of your leg, and nothing to fret over (beyond just fretting about the state of your leg *itself*, maybe). Just like how it feels like something to have the thought “I think my leg is broken”, it feels like something to have your nerves firing, and for that to be interpreted as actual damage, and so on and so forth.

I follow; I do. Theoretically. (Aversion to pain is really deep-seated and I think it’d be a really cool thing to experience modifying that.) But I think I might have bitten off more than I can chew even with the temperature thing. My degree of confidence that I can modify my interpretation of the sensation of being “too hot” isn’t there.

I agree, but how do you just not sweat?

By not feeling too hot.

Arrgghhh how do I just ‘not feel too hot’? You can explain till the cows come home that it’s a belief, and I *get* that it’s a belief, but I don’t know how to change that belief. When I look at “am I too hot?” the answer is “yes, dammit”.

It sounds like you’re getting to the point of losing credibility and pushing for things which are currently beyond the trust you have to invest. If you have someone encouraging you with “you’re fine ” it’ll help at first, but at some point if they don’t seem to notice you struggle and show no sign of ever saying anything *else*, it starts to become hard to believe them. “When wouldn’t you say that!?”. If you get into that situation, no matter how much or how strongly you reassure “you’re fine” it won’t help because the issue is no longer “they don’t realize you think they’re fine” it’s “they do not trust your judgement of what ‘fine’ is”. In those cases, you stop telling people what’s fine and what’s not. Instead, help give them some room to relax and not tolerate the questionably tolerable and inquire with curiosity into the fineness or lack thereof. If it’s not fine, why not? In what way are things not fine, and how do we know that?

If you do that, one of two things will happen. 1) you will learn how things actually aren’t fine, and therefore know not to keep pushing things, or 2) you will help them realize that things are *still* fine, and that you were right once again. Either way is a win. Additionally, either way the person will start to trust you a lot more, since now they can see that you care and are open to their perspective.

Can you clarify, in these last 2 paragraphs who is saying what to whom? You mention ‘you’ and ‘them’ and ‘people’ but it isn’t clear who ‘you’ or ‘they’ are, at times.

Cocky, obnoxious, and… right? Transcendent? Hopefully I’m living up to my new nickname

You forgot “Arbiter of Truth”. I’m feeling rather left out on the nickname front. Though I suspect mine would not be as complimentary, so maybe that’s a good thing.

Seemed like you were about to do what we did in the previous thread, but then the thread ran dead.

Huh, don’t remember that at all. No, they never did.

I can’t say I actually figured out how it happened. It didn’t involve doing anything, just seeing that it could be possible and really wanting it. It doesn’t make sense to me how it worked.

Hehe, that’s often enough. One of the coolest thing “hypnosis” does is give people an excuse to let themselves want things and open their mind to the idea that it’s possible.

I don’t consider myself a “heavy sleeper” either, but maybe that’s just a name for people who tune out stuff they don’t have to wake up for? Is this what you’re talking about? But doesn’t everyone do this? Isn’t that why we have the expression “tuning it out”? (Same way we have the expression “zoning out” for trance, because everyone does it?) Yet clearly it *does* involve setting an intention. You’re saying I could do that with temperature too? Just set that intention not to wake up for those sensations, either? I’ll try it out.

That’s the idea. If you can do it when you’re awake, and when you’re awake you can set intentions for things that happen when you aren’t, then why not here too?

I guess I have, yeah. Sometimes it isn’t hunger, it’s boredom. Or sadness. Hence “comfort food/ comfort eating” Or metaphorical hunger; like a kind of soul hunger or sense that there is an empty hole in your life, that manifests (or is interpreted?) as body/stomach hunger – that what you mean? But I don’t catch where you were going with this.

I wasn’t thinking those in particular, but those sound similar.

You were saying “I don't get your "am I hungry" example. You can tell if you’re hungry or thirsty, you get bodily sensations that tell you so.” . My point was that hunger wasn’t simply one signal that tells you “I’m hungry” when it’s there, and the absence means “I’m not hungry”. The things you’re thinking of as “bodily sensations” have non-trivial meanings, and the things where you see only the meanings have sensations.

It’s possible to be so busy doing stuff that the sensations of hunger never arise, despite a large caloric deficit. It’s possible to have multiple distinct sensations (which each represent different things) get bundled together and interpreted as simply “hunger”. When you look closer, you can start to discriminate between “this sensation means I need more protein” and “this sensations means my blood sugar is low”, and it starts to feel less like “there is a sensation for hunger” and more like “there are many sensations for hungers”.

The point is that it’s not necessarily any simpler than anything else you’d “ask your SC” and wait to see on ideomotor signals. In both cases you can pay attention to the sensation itself or the meaning attributed to it, and in both cases these can be more nuanced than they may seem.

Yeah, I do have that belief of being unable to access the control panel, although that belief is getting shakier, the longer we talk. But it’s still a mental hurdle.

Well, it’s not trivial, of course. The person in the control room generally doesn’t like listening to clueless idiots, so you do have to learn to get a clue before you get any results, and that comes out feeling like “I don’t have access to the control panel” because as it is, you really don’t. But it’s still there, and if you get good at empathizing with these kinds of things and using “futile protestations” as a signal to change tactics, it’ll start feeling more and more doable.

(There’s this inferential gap thing you have, that makes you hard to follow sometimes, where you assume everyone’s an engineer (and a rationalist, for that matter) and knows what a bimetallic strip thermostat is and how it works, but ok, I looked it up and now I do. Mutter, mutter --- clever mechanism, though. )

Nah, I just assume you can google if need be

I was also a little unsure if older people were just familiar with seeing them around before everything became electronic. As a kid, the Del Taco we’d go to all the time had their thermostat completely exposed so you could see the inner workings. Though I guess they’re probably usually covered up.

Biologically speaking, homeostasis. (We are talking a degree of biological engineering, after all?) Ok. I can see it as the body’s ‘belief’ that it needs to keep things like pH, via (among other mechanisms) keeping blood levels of O2 and CO2, within a narrow range for the machine to function optimally. Some divers are able to stay underwater for longer than average periods of time by hyperventilating and modifying their blood O2 and CO2 levels - getting in touch with that control panel. That’s at the “feel hot, activate muscles to remove jacket” level. Breathing normally happens by itself without any conscious control via involuntary muscles, yet you can override this by using voluntary muscles to take deliberate deep breaths. But vasoconstriction and -dilation is a level up; what is the physical mechanism that needs to be activated here, on a practical level?

It’s funny how uncomfortable the suggestion of hyperventilating to hold your breath longer makes me. That’s bad news, and real freedivers do a very controlled breathe up with very little (if any) hyperventilation. It’s dangerous because it’s the opposite of “learning what these sensations mean and where my safe regions are”. It’s saying “I don’t like the feeling of having a bunch of CO2 in my system, so instead of stepping up and teaching myself when it’s OK and when it’s not, I’m going to blow a bunch of it out in an uncontrolled fashion so that my lizard brain falsely believes that I’m further than blacking out than I really am”. Trying to strip control of your basic safety from the part of your brain that is evolved for and practiced with that task is an arrogant and foolish thing to do. Not only are you not as reliable at that sort of thing based on guesses like “I can stay down for one minute” which don’t account for all of the variables or have any real feedback, the CO2 is more than just a signal. It’s physiologically important too, as it helps get the oxygen out of your blood when you need it. You’ll pass out due to hypoxia with more oxygen in your blood if you hyperventilate.

The right way to do it is to get more familiar with the sensations you get when you hold your breath, so you can become more calibrated and realize what your true limits are. The standard way of doing this is “CO2 tables” which is basically repeated breath holding without enough time to expel CO2 so that you spend a lot of time with elevated CO2. I expect that you can get better results if you’re more deliberate with what you’re paying attention to while you’re doing it.
I’ve done some freediving training, and it can be interesting. I got a pulse oximeter and a balloon of oxygen out once to see what it’d feel like if I *knew* 100% sure that my body had plenty of oxygen as CO2 levels went from “high” to “way over what is normally possible before losing consciousness due to hypoxia”. I suspect there’s something physiological going on too because of how long it took for the CO2 contractions to start and how weak they were, but it was surprisingly easy. I didn’t resume breathing for 7 minutes, and even then it was only because all that CO2 was having a narcotic effect and I figured I should play it cautious until I was more familiar with the new effects CO2 was having on my body. And of course, the pulse ox on my finger was still maxed out at 99%.

Losing O2, on the other hand, feels much worse and much more panic inducing. Interestingly though, I don’t get that discomfort or panic by simply pinching off my carotid arteries, so I’m not sure where the O2 sensing is going on.

Anyway, the point is that it’s much more than “deliberately hyperventilate, and then deliberately don’t breathe”. It’s also about being comfortable with higher CO2 levels so that you don’t get that “OMG I NEED TO BREATHE” urge when it’s not true. Even if you manually override that, your heart will be racing enough to screw up your breath hold time. Holding your breath for a long time is every bit as difficult as “don’t feel like you’re too hot” because it’s “don’t feel like you need to breathe”.

As to the other part, I’m not a biologist, but my understanding is that our blood vessels have a layer of smooth muscle over them that constricts when you need vasoconstriction.

Arrgghhh how do I just ‘not feel too hot’? You can explain till the cows come home that it’s a belief, and I *get* that it’s a belief, but I don’t know how to change that belief. When I look at “am I too hot?” the answer is “yes, dammit”.

Well, if you’re really too hot, why would you want to change it?

I’m aware that this sounds like a troll question, but it’s not. If you really are too hot, why would you want to change that.

The way to being more persuasive, whether it’s to your smooth muscle or teenage daughter, is to first convince them that you understand their side and aren’t trying to under value it. Once you can assure them of that, they no longer have to hold onto their objection, and if you still see your original answer as the right one, you’ll have their trust to enact it. The thing is, in order to convince them of that, you need to listen. You ask yourself “am I too hot?” and get the answer of “yes, dammit!”. You’re not happy with this answer and think “sh**, that didn’t work!”, but have you considered that maybe this is because you’re too hot? It sounds like “I’m not too hot” is just a foregone conclusion in your mind, and that lack of openness is precisely what shuts down this communication and gets you locked out of the control room.

It doesn’t mean you have to let go of all the reasons to *doubt* that you’re too hot, but it does mean you have to be able to associate into all of that “too hot” and still be able to believe “and it’s okay” because of what else you know.

It’s not always “easy”. That signal can easily get “loud” enough that it’s hard to make enough space to have all of that *and* the knowledge that it’s okay. Breath holding is a good way to demonstrate that too, since the perceived need to breathe can be very very strong, it only takes a minute or two to bring about, and you can always do it. However, the basic path remains unchanged. Go into that feeling, as slowly as you have to/as quickly as you can manage, and keep in mind why you think it’s okay and see if it can remain convincing when you approach things suitably slowly.

Basically, you’re being too pushy, and so your body says “I don’t trust you, crazy lady”

It sounds like MCM getting to the point of losing credibility and pushing for things which are currently beyond the trust MCM have to invest. If S is encouraging L with “L fine ” it’ll help at first, but at some point if S don’t seem to notice L struggle and show no sign of ever saying anything *else*, it starts to become hard to believe S. “When wouldn’t S say that!?”. If S get into that situation, no matter how much or how strongly S reassure “L fine” it won’t help because the issue is no longer “L don’t realize S think L’re fine” it’s “L do not trust S’s judgement of what ‘fine’ is”. In those cases, S stop telling people what’s fine and what’s not. Instead, help give L some room to relax and not tolerate the questionably tolerable and inquire with curiosity into the fineness or lack thereof. If it’s not fine, why not? In what way are things not fine, and how do S know that?

If S does that, one of two things will happen. 1) S will learn how things actually aren’t fine, and therefore know not to keep pushing things, or 2) S will help L realize that things are *still* fine, and that S were right once again. Either way is a win. Additionally, either way L will start to trust S a lot more, since now they can see that S care and are open to L’s perspective.

Can you clarify, in these last 2 paragraphs who is saying what to whom? You mention ‘you’ and ‘them’ and ‘people’ but it isn’t clear who ‘you’ or ‘they’ are, at times.

Okay, I went through and replaced them with either “S” for “speaker” or “L” for “listener”, or "MCM" for "moonlightress's conscious mind". It’s mostly so that you can see how to S better, but it applies in all cases, regardless of whether L is “your SC” or somebody else, or whether you find yourself relating more to L in some other situation.

That makes lots of sense; I'll mull it over.

And yeah, of course I google but my conceptual repertoire has had to expand considerably to interpret what you're trying to convey, and looking everything up is hard work, so 'bimetallic strip thermostat' was just like, "what, physics too?"

Real life can really get in the way of a good discussion! Packing and unpacking after a move, does too. But at least the studying (and exam anxiety) is behind me now. Plus, I confess, I have gotten involved in 2 other hypnosis discussions elsewhere, both related to trance states (which, after all, are still my big interest).

But of course this is also a discussion I’m still very interested in having. I’ve quoted quite big portions so we don’t have to go back and rehash all the way back, to remember where we left off. I hope it hasn't gotten too disjointed.

moonlightress wrote:I don’t consider myself a “heavy sleeper” either, but maybe that’s just a name for people who tune out stuff they don’t have to wake up for? Is this what you’re talking about? But doesn’t everyone do this? Isn’t that why we have the expression “tuning it out”?
Yet clearly it *does* involve setting an intention. You’re saying I could do that with temperature too? Just set that intention not to wake up for those sensations, either? I’ll try it out.

jimmyh wrote:That’s the idea. If you can do it when you’re awake, and when you’re awake you can set intentions for things that happen when you aren’t, then why not here too?

I tried that out. But I can’t say that was all that successful in itself, or maybe it was, in combination with what I elaborate on further down, in response to something else you wrote.

jimmyh wrote:You were saying “I don't get your "am I hungry" example. You can tell if you’re hungry or thirsty, you get bodily sensations that tell you so.” . My point was that hunger wasn’t simply one signal that tells you “I’m hungry” when it’s there, and the absence means “I’m not hungry”. The things you’re thinking of as “bodily sensations” have non-trivial meanings, and the things where you see only the meanings have sensations.

It’s possible to be so busy doing stuff that the sensations of hunger never arise, despite a large caloric deficit. It’s possible to have multiple distinct sensations (which each represent different things) get bundled together and interpreted as simply “hunger”. When you look closer, you can start to discriminate between “this sensation means I need more protein” and “this sensations means my blood sugar is low”, and it starts to feel less like “there is a sensation for hunger” and more like “there are many sensations for hungers”.

The point is that it’s not necessarily any simpler than anything else you’d “ask your SC” and wait to see on ideomotor signals. In both cases you can pay attention to the sensation itself or the meaning attributed to it, and in both cases these can be more nuanced than they may seem.

I think I am only now seeing that clearly I’m simply not listening enough to the different sensations. And I’m only really starting to catch on to how much listening and noticing is required. I can definitely get so busy doing stuff that I can override and ignore hunger for quite a long time. I love my sleep, but as for food, if I could just take a pill and not have to eat, I’d happily do that. After a while the hunger will get a bit more insistent, “like c’mon now, I want food now” and I’ll realize I’m actually ravenous and go off to look in the fridge. I buy a lot of cucumber because that’s often what my body will look for. I suspect that has to with thirst as well, since cukes are very juicy. Yoghurt and cheese are also things my body will tell me it wants – must be to handle the protein, etc. And so on. Basically I look in the fridge for what my body is asking for. So now I understand what you mean by that example, that there are several sensations for hunger.

jimmyh wrote: The person in the control room generally doesn’t like listening to clueless idiots, so you do have to learn to get a clue before you get any results, and that comes out feeling like “I don’t have access to the control panel” because as it is, you really don’t. But it’s still there, and if you get good at empathizing with these kinds of things and using “futile protestations” as a signal to change tactics, it’ll start feeling more and more doable.

moonlightress wrote:Arrgghhh how do I just ‘not feel too hot’? You can explain till the cows come home that it’s a belief, and I *get* that it’s a belief, but I don’t know how to change that belief. When I look at “am I too hot?” the answer is “yes, dammit”.

jimmyh wrote: Well, if you’re really too hot, why would you want to change it?

I’m aware that this sounds like a troll question, but it’s not. If you really are too hot, why would you want to change that.

The way to being more persuasive, whether it’s to your smooth muscle or teenage daughter, is to first convince them that you understand their side and aren’t trying to under value it. Once you can assure them of that, they no longer have to hold onto their objection, and if you still see your original answer as the right one, you’ll have their trust to enact it. The thing is, in order to convince them of that, you need to listen. You ask yourself “am I too hot?” and get the answer of “yes, dammit!”. You’re not happy with this answer and think “sh**, that didn’t work!”, but have you considered that maybe this is because you’re too hot? It sounds like “I’m not too hot” is just a foregone conclusion in your mind, and that lack of openness is precisely what shuts down this communication and gets you locked out of the control room.

Basically, you’re being too pushy, and so your body says “I don’t trust you, crazy lady”

THIS. This was *totally* what was happening and no wonder I got locked out of the control room. Because in these cases I really WAS too hot. I was trying to say "no you're not too hot; don't be too hot" when I clearly *was* too hot. No wonder the crazy lady wasn't trustworthy.

jimmyh wrote:Go into that feeling, as slowly as you have to/as quickly as you can manage, and keep in mind why you think it’s okay and see if it can remain convincing when you approach things suitably slowly.

So I started listening and feeling and thinking "yeah, you're perfectly right, you really *are* too hot. Throw off the duvet and cool down, it’s absolutely fine to do that.” Because the following is the explanation that made it clear (once you’d clarified who was who).

moonlightress wrote:Can you clarify, in these (next) 3 paragraphs who is saying what to whom? You mention ‘you’ and ‘them’ and ‘people’ but it isn’t clear who ‘you’ or ‘they’ are, at times.

jimmyh wrote:Okay, I went through and replaced them with either “S” for “speaker” or “L” for “listener”, or "MCM" for "moonlightress's conscious mind". It’s mostly so that you can see how to S better, but it applies in all cases, regardless of whether L is “your SC” or somebody else, or whether you find yourself relating more to L in some other situation.

It sounds like MCM getting to the point of losing credibility and pushing for things which are currently beyond the trust MCM have to invest. If S is encouraging L with “L fine ” it’ll help at first, but at some point if S don’t seem to notice L struggle and show no sign of ever saying anything *else*, it starts to become hard to believe S. “When wouldn’t S say that!?”. If S get into that situation, no matter how much or how strongly S reassure “L fine” it won’t help because the issue is no longer “L don’t realize S think L’re fine” it’s “L do not trust S’s judgement of what ‘fine’ is”. In those cases, S stop telling people what’s fine and what’s not. Instead, help give L some room to relax and not tolerate the questionably tolerable and inquire with curiosity into the fineness or lack thereof. If it’s not fine, why not? In what way are things not fine, and how do S know that?

If S does that, one of two things will happen. 1) S will learn how things actually aren’t fine, and therefore know not to keep pushing things, or 2) S will help L realize that things are *still* fine, and that S were right once again. Either way is a win. Additionally, either way L will start to trust S a lot more, since now they can see that S care and are open to L’s perspective.

That really makes sense now. So after I actually started listening and realized “yes, I really *am* too hot and it’s not helping in the slightest to deny that and no wonder the control room is locked”, I started getting some response. Not a total change, but then it needs to stay within the realm of what is actually doable, doesn't it?

Some nights I still wake up twice, throw off the duvet and break a major sweat all over and *need* to cool off. Then I’m awake until I’ve cooled and *try* not to pull in any thoughts while I wait, or it’s tickets for getting back to sleep. Sometimes I’m able to just go back to sleep after. But some nights it only happens once, and on the odd night not at all. I can’t tell if it’s still happening just as frequently and just not waking me as much, or maybe waking me but I'm getting back to sleep so quickly I can’t actually remember having wakened - but my experience of it has definitely changed. I haven’t yet been given a key to the control room, but at least they occasionally open the door long enough to ask “yeah, what do you want now?”

Really cool, thanks for clarifying.

Still not quite sure what you mean here, though:

moonlightress wrote: But vasoconstriction and -dilation is a level up; what is the physical mechanism that needs to be activated here, on a practical level?

jimmyh wrote:As to the other part, I’m not a biologist, but my understanding is that our blood vessels have a layer of smooth muscle over them that constricts when you need vasoconstriction.

The smooth muscle is the involuntary muscle - that you're saying can get under voluntary control if you're nice (and respectfully listening) to the person in the control room, right?

Is that the same as the above mechanism you’ve explained? If you’re too hot, you’re too hot and you *need* the physiological sweating response and shouldn’t be tampering with that. But there are nuances and sometimes you actually aren’t *too* hot and it’s ok not to sweat? Am I understanding that correctly?

Hello, Sorry to interfere.
However what you are saying here Jimmyh is very good wholesome and true. Thank you. I agree with the majority. Is it possible that you could help someone whom seems to be struggling with Post hypnotism or Stage hypnosis phenomena. As I am not allowed to mention peoples names I'll just point you to his post. which is Called "Freaked out"

I did attempt to explain the basics however he/she replied with a long detailed explaination which I would love to address. What you said in your initial post seems it would be very helpful. if you could help them that would be great.

Thanks again.
CB.

And yeah, of course I google but my conceptual repertoire has had to expand considerably to interpret what you're trying to convey, and looking everything up is hard work, so 'bimetallic strip thermostat' was just like, "what, physics too?"

This one is pretty tame. All that you really need for that example is that there’s some “thing” called a “bimetallic strip” and it does something mechanical when exposed to different temperatures, which somehow is used to close or open a switch.

But yeah, in general learning is work. Oh no
(I wrote this response not long after you left that original comment, and only just now realized that I had forgotten to post it)

I think I am only now seeing that clearly I’m simply not listening enough to the different sensations. And I’m only really starting to catch on to how much listening and noticing is required.

Hah, yes.

Basically, you’re being too pushy, and so your body says “I don’t trust you, crazy lady”

THIS. This was *totally* what was happening and no wonder I got locked out of the control room. Because in these cases I really WAS too hot. I was trying to say "no you're not too hot; don't be too hot" when I clearly *was* too hot. No wonder the crazy lady wasn't trustworthy.

How do you know you really were too hot? What might have happened if you had not cooled off, and how do you know it would have happened?

After all, it’s still odd to go so quickly from “totally fine” to “WAY TOO HOT”, no?

It’s worth noting that just because you weren’t listening well and were discounting the strength of the other side’s evidence doesn’t mean you’re wrong. You can get blown off for good reason even when you’re right, and listening better does not *necessarily* mean you have to change your mind. It just means that you listen until they say “okay, you get it, I trust you”. At that point, if you still don’t agree…

The interesting thing is that a lot of the time the answer is “I don’t know”. It’s not always clear what the right answer is.

Not a total change, but then it needs to stay within the realm of what is actually doable, doesn't it?

That is an unfortunate limitation, yes. However, I caution you not to conclude that something is “not doable” just because the first approach fails. Maybe it’s not doable, maybe it is. You won’t know until you find out.

Some nights I still wake up twice, throw off the duvet and break a major sweat all over and *need* to cool off. Then I’m awake until I’ve cooled and *try* not to pull in any thoughts while I wait, or it’s tickets for getting back to sleep. Sometimes I’m able to just go back to sleep after. But some nights it only happens once, and on the odd night not at all. I can’t tell if it’s still happening just as frequently and just not waking me as much, or maybe waking me but I'm getting back to sleep so quickly I can’t actually remember having wakened - but my experience of it has definitely changed.

Okay, so something has changed, but you don’t yet have the full 100% solution. How much is this “sleep” related? It seems like even once you’re awake you’re agreeing with the “I NEED to cool down” thing, so it’s not a failure to remember “I’m okay” it’s a failure to agree (which isn’t a bad thing if you’re actually too hot).

Perhaps your heat regulation isn’t as on point when sleeping, and your body temp drifts up higher before you end up bothered enough to take the blankets off? I know that’s true with me. That would suggest a different approach. Again, a temperature measurement would be interesting and useful here.

The smooth muscle is the involuntary muscle - that you're saying can get under voluntary control if you're nice (and respectfully listening) to the person in the control room, right?

Yes, to some extent at least. Our hearts aren’t under direct voluntary control either, but one can learn to affect that as well. I can usually get it down 5-7bpm or so, and then my finger pulse oximeter shows dropping oxygen saturation and my heart rate won’t drop any further (and might even come back up a bit).

Is that the same as the above mechanism you’ve explained? If you’re too hot, you’re too hot and you *need* the physiological sweating response and shouldn’t be tampering with that. But there are nuances and sometimes you actually aren’t *too* hot and it’s ok not to sweat? Am I understanding that correctly?

Sounds right.

Hi Cath, and welcome to the forum.

I posted a response there. Let me know if you have any questions about it, or if there's anything else you'd like me to touch on.

Thank you.
You Guys are Awesome.
I have really learnt a lot from your threads/posts. Which surprised me.
Jimmyh thanks for replying it was good I checked it out as suggested. I think you covered the basis. There is nothing else you need touch on. I am sure the person will get back to you if they have questions. Thanks for helping out. + I added a few things too. Again You guys are So good. "I want to be like you when I grow up "

jimmyh wrote:This one is pretty tame. All that you really need for that example is that there’s some “thing” called a “bimetallic strip” and it does something mechanical when exposed to different temperatures, which somehow is used to close or open a switch.

Surely you know by now that "a thing that does something mechanical which somehow is used to do X" isn't going to work for me? It was actually really interesting to read about, and a clever mechanism. I'm not daughter of, and sister to, engineers for nothing. Also, having lived in a third-world country for so long, low-tech solutions are often just fine and more stable, and it sounds like that kind of thermostat would be; there may be some of those still floating around.

How do you know you really were too hot? What might have happened if you had not cooled off, and how do you know it would have happened?
After all, it’s still odd to go so quickly from “totally fine” to “WAY TOO HOT”, no?

The thing is though, that strong hot flushes do go very rapidly from "totally fine" to "OMG, I'm on fire" and I am asleep when this transition happens, so it makes sense to me that I only wake up when, and because, it's WAY TOO HOT. That’s not odd. There's a range in the strengths and the lower-grade ones can come and go without any reaction needed and I’m assuming that with those I stay asleep and just cool off much slower. The duvet is right for keeping my normal and a mildly-risen temp within reasonable limits. But when the flush is a strong one, it over-insulates.

It's difficult to have any sense of it when I'm asleep and I don’t have an answer to your question of “what might have happened if you’d not cooled off”. (Can't I pull the "I couldn't help what happened, I was hypnotised/asleep card? )

I must say, at this point, I’m in agreement that waking me up to throw off the duvet is a sensible thing for my body to do, if it's really needed. I'm inclined to trust the control room guy’s judgment call on those strong ones. The theory says that the rise in temp is a small one, but that rise must also vary according to the strength of the flush and over-insulating a strong one, thus prolonging it, might not be so clever physiologically? I don't know.

It’s worth noting that just because you weren’t listening well and were discounting the strength of the other side’s evidence doesn’t mean you’re wrong. You can get blown off for good reason even when you’re right, and listening better does not *necessarily* mean you have to change your mind. It just means that you listen until they say “okay, you get it, I trust you”. At that point, if you still don’t agree…

... then what?

I think the fact that I wake less often, is an indication that the control room guy is thinking, "well okay, she's letting me make the judgment call on when to wake her up for the motor response of "throw off the duvet", so I’m okay with waiting until it really is necessary and letting the milder ones rise and fall by themselves without needing a response". So maybe I'm giving up too easily on seeing how much further I can influence this? I'm pretty chuffed with what has happened already. I don't keep a log, so I couldn't tell you the exact frequency. My attention is sufficiently off it now, that it's just something that happens without me particularly taking notice of the fact that I might be lying in a sweat, cooling off after having thrown off the duvet. I'll generally wake from it if it's close to waking time and I've slept almost enough anyway. But occasionally, if I'm having a nice dream, I can sometimes stay in the dream, if I keep my eyes closed and stay focused on the imagery, even though I'm vaguely aware that I've woken up enough to kick it off. A lot like when you're in a hypnotic trance; aware but very focused. Like you also can, when you're in that half-awake state in the morning but you don't want to leave a really cool dream, so you keep your eyes closed and slip back in it.

(Complete non sequitur: do you lucid dream? I've never mastered it; I bought 3 books and tried and tried, but couldn't.)

Not a total change, but then it needs to stay within the realm of what is actually doable, doesn't it?

That is an unfortunate limitation, yes. However, I caution you not to conclude that something is “not doable” just because the first approach fails. Maybe it’s not doable, maybe it is. You won’t know until you find out.
[…]
Perhaps your heat regulation isn’t as on point when sleeping, and your body temp drifts up higher before you end up bothered enough to take the blankets off? I know that’s true with me. That would suggest a different approach. Again, a temperature measurement would be interesting and useful here.

I don’t understand. Is this different from the above? Yeah, I did go and look at thermometers, but they are too damn sophisticated and expensive now. What happened to the old oral thermometers with (was it mercury?) in them, that you could pick up for a few bucks? If I find something a bit cheaper, I'll buy it.
What would that different approach be, then?

Our hearts aren’t under direct voluntary control either, but one can learn to affect that as well. I can usually get it down 5-7bpm or so, and then my finger pulse oximeter shows dropping oxygen saturation and my heart rate won’t drop any further (and might even come back up a bit).

5-7 bpm doesn't sound all that healthy; hope that isn't your normal state of affairs. What is your normal pulse rate? If you’re a fit guy, it can be much lower than normal, sure, but 5-7 sounds alarming to me, as a nurse. Then again, you do some other unusual stuff, so maybe...

---
Oh, and hi CathB.

Hi Moonlightress,
Wow! long post. Remember to Breathe hun. it's all in the Breath.
I like your signature "Intention and Expectation" from that Are you more of the "Dave Elman" thinking approach or do you lean towards Ericksonian? From you posts I'd say you're old school am I right?

Sincerely Yours
CB

cathB wrote:Wow! long post. Remember to Breathe hun. it's all in the Breath.[...]

Oh, that's not an unusually long post at all, with the exchanges Jimmy and I have been having. I don't know about him, but I don't write these in one sitting, I think, write, edit, think, delete, rewrite. I have to read up on stuff as well to understand what he's talking about sometimes, which is what that little "grumble" was about up there ^^ but I do get to learn interesting stuff in that process. That is the point of this thread.

I like your signature "Intention and Expectation" from that Are you more of the "Dave Elman" thinking approach or do you lean towards Ericksonian? From you posts I'd say you're old school am I right?

I'm really just a self-hypnosis subject and trance junkie, with a lot of curiosity. I came to hypnosis from some Simpson Protocol sessions with Ines Simpson (who uses an Elman induction) and my interest grew from there. I'm not a hypnotist and have no training, formal or informal, at all.

Although, I did actually get to text-hypnotise someone last week, my very first time, because he had acquired a text trigger and wanted someone to test it on him. He's a hypnotist, too, so he coached me a bit beforehand. An experienced and conditioned subject, he really hypnotised himself, but he said the text trigger did work. Cool experience, could definitely get used to that. I wrote my first script after that, and it meandered all over the place, and is probably a clueless and dreadful example that should never see the light of day, but I enjoyed writing a twisty confusion induction (getting quite fuzzy myself, in the process) and then an ambling visualization story, before deepening and fractionating, so who knows, maybe I'll like Erickson when I get to studying him. I really don't know a lot; I just do self-hypno every day in one form or another, for various purposes. I spend time in trance as a hobby. I'm also interested in Jimmy's approach, even though it lacks the best ingredient, imho.

The power of Intention is something I learned from both Ines and Jimmy, and "expectation" is taken from Elman's "want it to happen - expect it to happen - watch it happen".

I'm really just a self-hypnosis subject and trance junkie, with a lot of curiosity. I came to hypnosis from some Simpson Protocol sessions with Ines Simpson (who uses an Elman induction) and my interest grew from there. I'm not a hypnotist and have no training, formal or informal, at all.

Hi Moonlightress,
Yes, Me too. I started out as a "Trance Junkie" in fact one of my user/alias's was "trancemanick" lol. I have never heard of Simpson protocol? I also learnt how to hypnotise via text when starting out it was a hypnotist whom was shy... and I helped him rediscover his love for the Art/craft of hypnosis.

Although, I did actually get to text-hypnotise someone last week, my very first time, because he had acquired a text trigger and wanted someone to test it on him. He's a hypnotist, too, so he coached me a bit beforehand. An experienced and conditioned subject, he really hypnotised himself, but he said the text trigger did work. Cool experience, could definitely get used to that.

Yes, When I first started out I found that Text trance was actually effective it has the components of expectation as you don't know what the person will say next or type. I found it difficult to convey gestures or tonality but it did teach me a lot about how to Build and Maintain rapport. Congrats to you for doing your first aided text trance. Well We are here to aid and help you in your learning endeavours so Skype me anytime.

Sincerely Yours
CB.