Notes from the underground

Much that goes on in the human mind goes by unnoticed but it still exerts an influence. Some turn to hypnosis to try to understand the meaning of those hidden influences. Evelyn Yu reports.

Dave thinks he saw a UFO, back in Canada in 2005. It lasted just a few seconds, but now, at 26, he’s a UFO freak. He went online to watch about others who claim to have seen UFOs. Some had turned to hypnotists, in the hope of making sense of fragmentary images that kept flashing through their thoughts about alien encounters. Many emerged with clear memories of having been transported aboard spaceships, and the aliens had their memories deleted.

Dave needed to find out. He called Duncan Chow, a hypnotherapist with over 15 years’ experience.

“You are moving down slowly 20 floors in a lift, as you pass each floor you are going deeper… deeper… and deeper… until the lift stops and the door opens, to the land of your subconscious,” said Chow. Slowly, Dave’s head titled to one side and he heaved a deep sigh. Once Dave slipped into “rapid eye movement” sleep, Chow asked Dave what he could see. “It was at night… I was sitting at a table studying for an exam… A ray of strong light was concentrated on my face. I walked to the window and there was a black, round object, that descended behind some trees.” He thought it was an extraordinar y flying machine, 8 to 10 meters in diameter, showing two tiers of lights. There was nothing more.

Chow dismissed Dave’s assumption of his alien encounter, as what he saw was an unidentified flying object, no evidences of any aliens. Chow also denied the possibility that he might be kidnapped and had his memories forcefully deleted. The memories after he had seen the UFO is pretty intact. In the trance Dave even recounted the cover of the book he was studying.

Psychological tool

The unconsciousness processes events, records how we handle them and stores them as experiences. Most are forgotten. Some that are painful are deeply buried, but all the stratagems and emotional triggers remain, playing a more important role in influencing us than most of us believe.

The subconscious mind is the mechanism that can delve into the unconscious roots of anxiety, compulsive behaviors and addiction and bring them into the conscious. The passive state, where subjects are ready to accept the guidance of the hypnotist to go searching in the unconsciousness is called “suggestibility”.

“Those people, for example, who can be so captivated even watching a movie that they can’t hear people talking to them, are highly suggestible,” s a i d Ma g g i e Poon Wai-ling, a veteran clinical psychologist who also practices hypnotherapy.

Stage hypnotists can get people clucking like chickens or behaving like gorillas. Most hypnotic subjects know they can always say no, but most often, they don’t. In hypnotherapy, the therapist makes positive suggestions which it is hoped the subject will take to their heart and make the changes necessary to overcome whatever is bothering them.

People, including hypnotists, however, have biases that will affect the questions he’s prone to ask and the way he asks them. That in turn can influence the subject making him or her susceptible to false memories, or in some cases unethical manipulation and chicanery by the hypnotist. Hypnosis can, after all be harmful, possibly dangerous. Poon cautions, like when the hypnotherapist asks “have you ever been sexually abused when you were young?” as a means of rooting out the cause of mental upsets. Just asking the question may cause the clients to invent, embellish and reinforce false memories of childhood abuse.

One fertile plot for spawning false memories that hypnotists often use is “past life regression”, Chow added. Going into “past life” assumes there was such a past life. The hypnotized subject will incline to play along, inventing a past life narrative that is entirely spurious. By asking hypnotist’s questions such as “what shoes are you wearing?”, clients may emerge from such imaginary inventions believing they have been shown a life they had lived in the distant past. Chow took his certification from the Gene r a l Hy p n o - therapy Standards Council and General Hypnotherapy Register, UK’s largest organizations in the field. Poon has obtained a Diploma of Clinical Hypnosis from the Australian Society of Hypnosis in 2007. The training took years for both of them.

In Hong Kong, however, there is no registry of hypnotherapists, nor is there a professional association that authenticates or authorizes practitioners, so it’s pretty much the Wild West. There are lots of schools that purport to train hypnotherapists for certification under the American Board of Hypnotherapy or the National Guild of Hypnotists. Trainees can be certified and fashion themselves as hypnotherapists after around 100 hours of training. Mental health experts however dismiss these schools as non-professional “vocational” institutions.

It can be lucrative. Chow gets HK$1,200 an hour and boasts that he owns four real estate properties in Hong Kong and a hotel on the mainland. Like Chow, most hypnotherapists work with clinics and weight loss centers, depending heavily on referrals.

Poon reiterated, however, hypnosis is only one “technique”. Hyp- notherapists, she says, should have certification in psychology from an accredited university before practicing hypnotherapy. Poon stabilizes her clients experiencing complex trauma with an abundance of precautionary measures. She guides them under hypnosis, to create a “tranquil place” where they can feel safe, like a beach scene where they may take comfort whenever they feel anxious. She focuses on suggestions to make them feel relaxed and to enhance their sense of selfreliance. In some cases it takes Poon 22 sessions before the clients are ready to work on their personal traumas.

Underlying effect

“You might not remember what you ate for supper the day before yesterday, because it isn’t important. You might also have forgotten some painful experience during childhood. The mind has a self-defense mechanism that buries things that are too painful, but all the memories stay. They can have an outlier effect on your present circumstances, without you knowing it,” says Chow.

Many of Chow’s clients come to him to be treated for sexual dysfunction and are referred by their partners. One man in his 30s couldn’t get past memories of the way his exwife belittled his incompetence but the man had a hang up, thinking his overbearing ex-wife was watching him all the time, whenever he tried to have sex with his new girlfriend.

Chow instructed the man, “there is a road ahead, and you will see on that road your inner guide, you can speak to him.” Under hypnosis, the man is instructed to speak to his “inner guide”. The guide, usually a wiser thinking mind of oneself, started to speak to the client independent of Chow. The guide comforted him, and gave him a happy tree. “Whenever you are anxious or fearful, hold this happy tree,” said the “inner guide”.

Chow said hypnotherapists in such cases can provide the “context” for therapy but not the “content”. Clients need to get in touch with themselves. While the man with sexual dysfunction was awarded a happy tree, a woman, under hypnosis, gave herself a protective vest to ward off the blows of backstabbers.

A female client who weighed over 240 pounds wanted a cure for compulsive eating. Under hypnosis, she had a vision from around the age of 2 or 3. Her mother laid dying and the little girl was crying but her father, as she remembered under the trance, stood there, smiling . Her father later remarried and struck her when she refused to attend the wedding. The dreamscape shifted to a scene of her standing in front of a refrigerator. Her father was going away, but he had prepared 21 identical meals for her. The anger that she needed to eat the same meal for 21 days seized her.

Now a financial manager in her 30s, she pampers herself with whatever she wants to eat.

“Deep in her subconscious, the anger towards food and the resentment towards her dad connected, she wished to punish her dad by being fat, sick and ultimately to be a burden to him,” Chow noted. The woman said she hoped to go to heaven in this way and see her mother again in hypnosis.

It wasn’ t one of Chow’s more successful cases. At first everything seemed to go well. The woman’s weight crashed. She lost over 20 pounds in around two weeks, but she came back complaining that food made her nauseous. When she saw food, she developed a vision of her mother standing aside.

Since then her situation has stabilized through follow up therapy. She has a new boyfriend who gives her reassurance and allows her to feel secure within herself. Clear message of caring and loving in conscious mind might better solve problems, Chow thinks.

Dave has learned all he thinks he needs from hypnosis. For him the issue is settled. He still believes there is “life out there” but we will meet them “only when we are ready to meet them.” It’s a conviction shared by many scientists.

You might not remember what you ate for supper the day before yesterday, because it isn’t important. You might also have forgotten some painful experience during childhood. The mind has a self-defense mechanism that buries things that are too painful. But all the memories stay.”

Contact the writer at evelyn@chinadailyhk. com