The Hypnosis Model of the mind
Hello readers,
Today I wanted to talk about the hypnosis model of the mind and dispel some common misperceptions. The brain is a very complicated organic computer that we are still learning about everyday. What we now know about the mind is very impressive and provides us a lot of opportunity to take control of your life because we are gaining insight into the way that subconscious behaviors are learned.
The first thing that is important to understand is the concept of the conscious mind and the sub-conscious mind. This is mearly a model, there aren’t really two seperate parts of the brain or anything along those lines. The only difference between the conscious and the sub-conscious mind is that the information in the conscious is what you are aware of, and the rest of the information, everything that you know that you are not thinking about at this given moment is considered to be the sub-conscious mind. This means that the majority of who you are is the sub-conscious. Everything that you have ever experienced is neatly tucked away in the sub-conscious and can be readily accessed with the proper techniques.
The sub-conscious mind is the foundation for your understanding of the world. Every second of every day since you were born, your mind is taking in and storing information. This stored information is called impressions, they are like library archives stored in the form of symbols, patterns and emotions. Your mind transforms your temporary memory into permanant memory while you are dreaming in REM sleep. When you take the sum of all of this information, you have your entire belief system.
Now, in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) they cover a lot of information about your beliefs system alters your perceptions through deletion, distortion and generalization. Your belief system is the foundation for what you believe to be reality. We see the our lives, the world, other people; everything through the filter of our belief system. If throughout our entire lives we have seen nothing but scarcity, then chances are, we will believe that the world is scarce and therefore live our lives that way. If we have lived our entire lives seeing how men do nothing but cause pain, then it is easy for us to believe that men = pain. Once we take on a certain belief, we either delete, distort or generalize all experiences to the contrary because we want to remain consistent with our beliefs. So everything that enters into our subconscious mind creates our belief system.
Now, here is the rub. It is not so easy for information to get into the sub-conscious mind because we have a part of the mind called the critical factor. The critical factor has a very important and very simple job. The critical factor of the mind, simply takes information and makes a determination: Does this match my beliefs, or not? The critical factor acts as a gate keeper to the sub-conscious mind. If the information it has compared matches your belief system, then it is allowed into the sub-conscious mind. If the new information being presented does not match the beliefs of the individual, then the critical factor applies the delete, distort or generalize until it does match the beliefs, and then it allows it to enter.
So this explains why it is so hard to change a person’s beliefs doesn’t it. Once those beliefs are embedded into the reality of your mind, then the only information that will allowed to get in there is information that supports and strenghtens the belief system in place. Any information to the contrary gets either changed or disregarded. So how do the original beliefs get in there in the first place?
Well, this is a good question. You didn’t always have a critical factor. In fact, most people don’t develop a critical factor until the age of 4-5. Up until then your mind is completely open absorbing all the information with the intention of developing a belief system foundation. This is why little kids are able to learn so fast, because they are completely open to all information. At the same time, this means that children are in a very dangerous position because ALL information goes in and stays there until without any filtering becasue there is not critical factor. This is dangerous because if a grown up around the child has a belief system that is un-useful, then chances are that belief system will be taught to the child. If the parent is a drunk, and while little johnny is down on the floor playing and dad says, “I am a drunk, and all my kid is ever going to be is a drunk too.” then that will be accepted as an impression into the sub-conscious mind of the child and be used as a basis for who they are all the rest of their lives.
Starting to see the picture more clearly?
Now, as hypnotists, what we do is use different hypnotic techniques in order to suspend the activity of the critical factor in order to access the sub-conscious mind and make the appropriate changes. This is something that is very powerful and has pervasive changes for a person on many levels. To learn more about how hypnosis and the mind work, feel free to check out my website.
Best regards,
Virgil Anderson C.H.
