It Was Amazing
I'd like to tell you how I discovered the new self-hypnotic technique for attaining emotional comfort.
In Medical School
In medical school, during my psychiatry clerkship, we had a unit on hypnosis; but when the instructor tried to hypnotize me, he wasn't able to. I knew that hypnosis was used for many purposes, such as to stop smoking and to try to lose weight. But despite knowing all this, because I seemed unable to be hypnotized, I decided that hypnosis wasn't for real, and I took no further interest in it.
Learning Hypnosis
Many years later, in my private practice of psychiatry, I got my first case of multiple personality disorder. (We now call it Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID.) In researching how best to treat this patient, I learned about the use of hypnosis, and decided that I would try to learn more about it. I attended a conference given by the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis, an organization of doctors, dentists, and others who use hypnosis for a variety of reasons, and at lunchtime I asked one of the instructors whether he would help me with it. Bless him. He did. He succeeded in hypnotizing me! I realized later that the instructor at medical school hadn't been able to hypnotize me because I wasn't completely comfortable with him.
Learning Self-Hypnosis
I also learned at the conference that you could hypnotize yourself; they called it self-hypnosis. Looking over their literature, I found a book that described many different ways of entering a self-hypnotic state (we call it a trance state). I chose the simplest method, which works well, and that's the one I describe in the Emotional Comfort® Tool that many of you have acquired.
I also found something very exciting; a manual for self-hypnosis that, after describing many different uses for self-hypnosis, introduced the "Inner Advisor" technique. The author pointed out that our unconscious minds have a great deal of wisdom, and that there is a way we can tap into that. He gave an example.
The Council of Advisors Technique
Many years ago, a successful business man, Napoleon Hill, used what he called auto-suggestion, which was actually self-hypnosis. He decided to imagine that he had a Council of Advisors that was composed of famous men throughout history whom he admired. He would enter the trance state and ask them for advice, and he found this very helpful. The manual suggested following his practice.
The Inner Advisor Technique
The manual further suggested that you enter the trance state and imagine yourself in a lovely place. The first living being that you see will become your Inner Advisor. It will have access to your entire memory bank and you can ask it for help with problems.
To me, this seemed too good to be true. But, how wonderful! Could I actually acquire an Inner Advisor? I followed the directions, and what I found changed my life. Next time I'll describe what happened.
