The tricky thing about power

[Shademaster2]

I have been hypnotized hundreds of times over the past 5 years or so, both directly by hypnotherapy professionals, by recordings of all sorts and through self hypnosis. Something I have noticed time and time again, is no matter how deeply I go into trance, I seem to have a strong resistance to certain words or phrases.

One word that in the past has been guaranteed to pull me right out of trance, cause muscle twitches and often weakening the effectiveness of an entire session is "Power". For some reason, I abreact (highly emotional response during hypnosis) whenever someone mentions that word to me while I am in trance. Not only have I noticed it, but at least two hypnotherapists working with me have noticed it as well.

Phrases like "You have the power to succeed." or "Your power to improve your life is increasing", etc...tend to actually impede my progress instead of helping me.

In some intense hypnosis work over the last few weeks, I realized that one of my key beliefs from since I was very young is based around that old saying "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Now imagine applying this deep seated belief to a new concept like "You have the power to succeed."

Can you imagine how those two ideas could cause havok in a persons life. Either you use the power to succeed and thus become corrupted, or you don't and therefore you never succeed.

In working on removing my blocks against the idea of power, and getting rid of that internal link between power and morality I have been working on some files to help myself out.

One of the things that I have been doing is using some of the modelling concepts used in NLP to examine concepts of power...man did I open a can of worms. There are at least 44 DIFFERENT meanings of the word power...its can be used as a noun, an adjective, a verb or an adverb...talk about a word that invites ambiguity.

Since the subconscious mind is literal not logical, I have come to the conclusion that the word "power" probably causes a lot of people problems because its invites the sub-conscious to misinterpret every thing that is said in conjunction with it. Can you imagine how a person who has a strong disbelief in Psychic "Power" could have trouble with other types of power if the subconscious mind lumps them all together under the word "Power"

Any way, I wanted to get some opinions about whether a set of files focusing on Personal Empowerment by Refining and Redefining Power would be of interest to the group, and also just start up a thread of potential interest in the process.

One thing if anything else you should hopefully get out of this thread is that you should be careful in how and in what context you use the word "Power" in hypnosis because it is a symantical nightmare that has a lot of potential for misinterpretation.

Rob

[redmollie]

I was wondering which other people here had NLP backgrounds.

But, y'know, I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, if you're asking anything...

[Blink]

I was wondering which other people here had NLP backgrounds.

I've never gotten any of the certifications, but I've read quite a bit of what's in print, and I've listened to quite a few tapes. I was on the USENET discussion group before it went totally to shit. It got worse than the hypnosis groups, and they'd been freak magnets forever.

There was a lot of garbage floating around, but there were a few neat tricks to be learned. There was one thing that I picked up that was really neat. It was a trick for synchronizing breathing with someone through text.

A sentence fragment can really....

That's it.

And deeply, too.

That was very nice, wasn't it? Thanks.

-- Blink
(Which is the name of the title character in Richard Bandler's children's book.)

[Jack]

There are no questions in the OP. It's simply a collection of statements on the subject of the semantic implications of the word "power" which has yet to hit upon the semantic mess of the word "corruption", or the referential index of whom power is corrupting in what way.

[Shademaster2]

The real point is that words like "Power" that have so many different meanings can really have some unexpected results when communicated to the subconscious mind in hypnosis or by other methods.

And yes, I did leave out a few details.

I guess a good question is, has anyone else ran into any of these special words and phrases that tend to snap them out of trance or prevent results when using hypnosis?

Rob

[MFLong]

There are no magic words or phrases.

What a word or phrase means to you is different than it is for anyone else. This is because we are all unique - we all have difference experiences - we all form different associations with the same word based on our experiences. For example, the twenty images that I get in my head when I hear the word "chair" are not the same twenty that you get. Maybe you get more images - maybe fewer. Maybe the word chair makes me nauseous. Maybe it makes you happy.

When using one file for perhaps hundreds or thousands of people, a hypnotist cannot account for the great variety of associations that are possible. This is just like a teacher cannot teach to the abilities and skill levels of each of their students.

Someone ends up getting screwed in these situations.

Sorry it was you.

[redmollie]

I find that when someone tells me I'll do 'anything' it brings me right up. I come into this from an SM background and my reaction to someone telling me, "Ohhhhh, please let me be your slave, I'll do anything" was "Oh, good, time to do that castration scene I've been wanting to do." I'm not going to do something against my personal moral or ethical code, I'm not going to do something to put myself or my daughter in danger, or something that seriously affects my life, and if someone doesn't acknowledge this limit ahead of time, then when they say "anything" it puts my guard up.

[redmollie]

and yes, blink, there's a lot of neat NLP tricks out there. I hadn't run into that particular one but it's pretty easy to imagine.

I hadn't heard the newsgroup had gone to crap. The Ross Jeffries stuff, I imagine?