Using failure to achieve success

Anyone who's ever done hypnosis knows their fair share of failures. There's the subject who hits a plateau, and can't go deeper into trance. There's the trigger that never seems to work. There's the hallucination that is never seen. There's the instruction that seems to be ignored, or worse, works in an unexpected way My best example, I gave a woman a simple relax trigger every time she heard the word relax. All of my triggers before this one had been specific to me saying it, but in this case, I wanted it to work with anyone saying relax, so I took out the part locking the trigger to my voice. However, I didn't explicitly say that it could be anyone saying the word relax. So what happened? When I said relax, she relaxed. When someone else said relax, she got very anxious, because she didn't know for sure if she should relax or not.

But I digress. I've been having some success lately with a new method that I call "planned resistance". I use this method in two cases. I originally used it when the subject's conscious mind tends to resist any trigger or instruction. I also found that it works well when the trigger or instruction is more difficult, causing the subject to expect to fail.

Triggers and instructions work basically the same way, so I'll use the example of a trigger. The idea is to build some failure, in decreasing amounts, into the first few times the trigger is used. When I create a trigger, I also script out exactly how the subject will react the first few times that the trigger is used. Initially, the trigger is partially effective, and I instruct the subject that they will think their own resistance prevented the trigger from completely succeeding. The next two times, the trigger works progressively more, giving the impression that the trigger is becoming stronger than their resistance. On the fourth time, it works completely.

This creates some good trance and mental patterns. It emphasizes that triggers grow stronger over time and with each use. It builds failure into the model, allowing them to accept a failure and continue to strengthen and obey the trigger the next time. Even if the trigger doesn't work completely the fourth time, as long as it gets stronger, the pattern will eventually lead to it working. It creates a pathway for other triggers and instructions that they will eventually overcome resistance. Finally, like a woman who decides she wants to pick up a guy at a bar and has a few drinks first to either get up the courage or have an excuse, it allows the subject to both resist and later give up her resistance.