Organizing Your Self with Self-Hypnosis

by Eric Greenleaf PhD

“It’s hard to make arrangements with yourself.” –Neil Young song

I’m old enough now to have survived several surgeries, two bouts of cancer and a couple of serious accidents. I’ll leave out for the moment instances of bruised feelings, broken hearts, betrayals and losses. These latter, in the human realm of the interpersonal, have remedies that differ from those effected between a person and his body.

Many things just don’t work well when facing fearful medical or emergency circumstances in life. Here it is the body that is at risk, and reassuring words are not always weighty enough for the task. And, we know that, whatever is to happen, we’re the ones who must “go through with it,” whether it refers to surgery, cancer treatment, or the various hideous procedures the body and psyche have to endure in order to receive treatment.

During the forty years in which I’ve practiced Erickson-influenced hypnotherapy, I’ve learned to pay a sort of soft attention to the person before me; without defining or diagnosing them. Instead, I’ve had my eyes and ears open to see and hear what they do un-selfconsciously well in life. These unconscious resources, as Dr Erickson described them, turn out to have enormous leverage against human problems. 

Rather than the idea that we can know the origins of human troubles so precisely that that knowledge itself will cure us, we look for that within the person which has muscle, endurance, creativity, inventiveness, determination and the like. You can look at your own resources this way. As I like to say, “The more person, the fewer symptoms,” which means that the more we act in accord with what we do well, the less we suffer symptoms like anxiety and depression.

This soft attentiveness has helped me deal with myself when a patient. I know that I listen carefully and that I know what I think people mean by what they say. I read and write well. And, I like people, and enjoy talking with them. So, in tough, painful or frightening circumstances, I find myself relating to everyone with a clear, friendly intensity. I listen to the medical information, no matter how thorough it is or how uncertain the medical outcome, and I ask the Drs to tell me “How you think about my situation?”

In effect, I am in a sort of mindfulness trance during the entire medical difficulty. Everything is clear around me and about me, yet I am peaceful, often happy for the most part inside myself. As Dr Erickson said, “No one knows the future,” so I take things slowly, as though the future is opening up in front of me, whatever it is to be. Before surgery, I set myself the goal of being “cooperative while unconscious,” because the body can resist when it is cut and sewn.

“Thinking like a hypnotist,” I encourage a rich, dreamy unconscious activity that aims at helping to realize my goals “in the right way; at the right time,” as Dr Erickson said. Sleep not only “knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,” but it reorganizes memory and allows dreaming – the mind’s way to safely experiment in life while in a healing sleep. You can see that this approach stands most helpful advice upside down, in order to help the change fall out. Not “More conscious,” but “More softly, widely aware.” Not, “Batten down the hatches,” but, “Enjoy paying attention to other people.” Not “Prioritize and promote,” but, “Dream and heal;.”