What Effect Does Being A Dissociater Have On Being Hypnotizable?
Dissociaters
I have hypnotized many people who had fit the “fantasizer” description, people who are highly hypnotizable. But then I saw many who did not fit this prototype. Some of the people I had hypnotized could not remember ever having experienced vivid imagery.
When I assessed highly hypnotizable people who would not go into trance instantly, I found a completely different subsection, comprising a smaller group of my clients. Instead of remembering hypnosis for its vivid imagery, these individuals seemed to have amnesia or to experience separate states of consciousness during hypnosis. These individuals, “dissociaters,” have these characteristics in common:
* Many of these people informed me of a history of child abuse. Although some recalled this directly, others had been informed by others that they had been battered. One had questioned multiple childhood injuries of an unknown nature and had considered these events may have been related to this. Some dissociaters agonized through childhood traumas such as lengthy, medical treatments or before their teen years experienced the loss of one or both of their parents. Some dissociaters noted they established a skill to “not think about” unpleasant events, an ability that they utilized more and more frequently and placed into their subconscious. They seem to develop a capacity for managing to ease the discomfort and difficulty of their early lives.
* While the “fantasizers” have an exceptional recall for daydreams, movies and stories that have entered into their imagination, the dissociaters are generally unable to remember them. They are repeatedly startled when called on without warning by a teacher or a manager; they will usually state that their mind had been “somewhere else,” however they cannot designate where that place is. They become deeply immersed in books and films, losing track of time, but their remembrance of the events related to these are unclear soon afterwards.
* To some degree similar to “fantasizers” , the dissociaters describe images in their daily lives creating physical sensations. Many of these sensations, though, are negative. One client developed a fever after being told by his physician that a flu vaccine had a virus in it even though it was a dead virus. Some dissociaters do not watch or listen to news broadcasts because seeing or hearing of others wounded, battered or bruised is agonizing for them.
* Dissociaters do not remember being hypnotized as clearly as “fantasizers”. For example, when a dissociater who was in my office was questioned about being hypnotized, the answered was “maybe.” There was one moment while my client was in trance that I described someone swinging a watch and telling my client to watch that watch with eyes closed and “go into a deeper sleep.” The dissociate did not remember this event until 10 minutes after being hypnotized when I spoke of another client being hypnotized by the swinging of a watch.
* Dissociaters do not have the same variety of sexual imagery that their “fantasizer” counterparts describe. Actually, they are often bothered by even a mild sexual fantasy.
If you recognize yourself as a “fantasizer” , realize fantasizers are just about twice as common in the general population as dissociaters. But, dissociaters are more common in the clinical population, since they appear more likely than fantasizers to have psychological difficulties. That’s good news for those who share a dissociater profile, since not only are you more likely to go into a trance, but also more likely to be assisted by it, also.
Even if neither group appears similar to your own personality, realize, approximately 95% of all people are susceptible to hypnosis, to varying degrees. If you use it to relieve stress, stop a headache or eradicate a bad habit, hypnosis is a tool for better health that virtually everyone can utilize for a dramatic effect. How well it will work depends on you.