Milton Erickson: He hypnotized himself and found life
Erickson:
People are OK;
Everyone will make the best choice at the moment;
There is a positive motivation behind every action;
People already have all the resources to be successful and happy;
Change is not only possible, it is inevitable.
In 1919, on a farm in the United States, a ferocious case of polio (commonly known as poliomyelitis) attacked a 17-year-old boy, leaving him paralyzed and unable to do anything except speak and move his eyes. matter.
The boy's mother invited three doctors, and they all told her that there was no hope, your son would not survive tomorrow.
They told his mother that this was too cruel. The boy said to himself that he must not let the doctors' assertions come true.
So when the doctors arrived the next day, he was not only alive, but in better spirits. They were surprised by this, but then they made a cruel assertion to the boy's mother: Even if your son survives, he will never stand up again. He will be paralyzed for life.
Again, the boy was determined not to let the doctors' dire claims come true, and he succeeded again. A few years later, he not only stood up, but also took a swim on the Mississippi River one summer with a canoe, simple food and camping equipment, and a little money.
This boy’s name is Milton Erickson. He later became a master of hypnotherapy. He can be said to be the undisputed No. 1 in this mysterious field and is also considered to be the master of short-range strategic psychology. The originator of therapy.
The subconscious gave him the answer
Erickson’s recovery process that began at the age of 17 is a miracle of life. How was this miracle realized?
First of all, for the first time, he deeply understood what suggestion was.
Suggestion is an important term in hypnosis. Generally speaking, the hypnotist will use suggestions to influence the patient to accept his own induction.
What is a hint? In a typical hint, Erikson recalled, three doctors declared that he would not live to see tomorrow. If Erikson accepted this suggestion and truly believed that he would not survive tomorrow, then it can be said that three doctors successfully hypnotized him.
Although he was not a master of hypnosis at the time, Erikson clearly knew that these three doctors inadvertently wanted to impose their will on him. He was determined to challenge this suggestion, and he succeeded. . Then the doctors gave a second hint - you'll never stand up again - and he was just as determined to challenge this hint. He succeeded again, and this one was more difficult and the details more fascinating than the first.
Erickson's wife Elizabeth said that after Erickson contracted polio, his mother and a nurse took good care of him, and the nurse also developed a method using a series of The heat, massage, and movement of his paralyzed limbs stimulated Erickson's body.
But more important and exciting is Erickson's solo exploration. Despite a series of blows from fate, Erickson has always maintained complete faith in his inner strength. He deeply believed that he did not know how to recover at the conscious level, but his subconscious mind would know, so he relaxed his mind and body, and said to the deep subconscious mind, I have someone who wants to stand up. goal, please do me a favor and please guide me on what to do.
His subconscious really gave him the answer. In a state of complete relaxation, an image appeared in his mind: an image of apple picking as a child.
This picture is a real picture. He did pick apples like this when he was a child. He was very happy and enjoyed it at that time.
This scene is extremely vivid and meticulous. His hand slowly reaches for the apples on the apple tree. It seems to be broken down into a series of small movements, and he is just completely relaxed and very focused. Experience the movement of your hands and body in every small movement.
This image of picking apples continued to affect his mind, and he continued to experience the feeling of moving his hands and body in every small movement.
After a few weeks, the muscles involved in this scene regained mild mobility and they were able to perform the actions in this scene!
Next, he kept repeating this work. Whenever he wanted to achieve a certain recovery goal, he would give himself to his subconscious and ask his subconscious to do him a favor, and his subconscious would always A variety of answers are reflected. They may be a picture like picking apples, an image, or something else, but they can all guide him to achieve the purpose of recovery, and in the process, he only needs to Actively follow the guidance of your subconscious mind.
Dr. Stephen Gilligan is Erickson’s favorite disciple. Gilligan said that during this recovery process, Erickson deeply understood that there are no answers in consciousness or mind. If he Ask the mind "What should I do?" Then he will not find the answer, but whenever he asks his deeper inner subconscious mind, the subconscious mind can always tell him the answer.
This entire self-healing process is a deep self-hypnosis process. Its power and rich experience later became an inexhaustible resource for Erickson to develop his own hypnotherapy methods. .
The story of Erickson's polio, which began at the age of 17, is a legend. However, for Erickson, legends like this are too many.
He suffers from color blindness, tone deafness, dyslexia...
Erickson is color blind, and his vision can only detect purple. He is also a rare tone-deaf, unable to hear changes in pitch and unable to appreciate what normal people call "music".
He had severe dyslexia, and it was only when he was 16 that he discovered that the dictionary was arranged from A to Z. When he was a child, his classmates nicknamed him "Dictionary" because he often spent hours reading dictionaries. His classmates thought he liked reading dictionaries, but they didn't know that he was just looking for a word. Because he didn't know the order of the dictionary, he would always look for it. They all start from the first page and search word by word.
It seems that compared to normal people, many channels for him to communicate with the world have been closed. However, he never complained about his fate, and instead opened up some channels that normal people did not have.
Since he is only sensitive to purple, he can enjoy the life of a "purpleist" calmly, wearing purple clothes, using purple cups, working in a purple office, and living in a purple home...
When he was 6 years old, he walked through a church where many people were practicing chorus. Because he was tone-deaf, he couldn't hear the music they sang together. He just wondered why this group of people were so happy when they made such strange noises. He looked at it and found an answer, oh, they were breathing together, and their breathing rhythm was consistent, so they were so happy.
So, from the age of 6, when others spoke to him, he would breathe with them. For example, when the teacher is giving a lecture, he does not listen to what the teacher says, but breathes according to the teacher's rhythm. When the teacher looks at him, he nods and makes a "boom boom" sound. This sound is made by stepping on the rhythm of the teacher's breathing. No one else can understand what he is doing, but there is a person whose breathing rhythm is consistent with his own, which creates a strange harmony.
This sense of rhythm became an important basis for Erickson's hypnosis. When we were learning hypnosis, the teacher taught us to breathe in the same rhythm as the patient's breathing. It took a lot of effort for us to do this, but Erikson was able to do it naturally from the age of 6.
Even dyslexia helped Erickson.
In the winter when he was 16 years old, it was a cold day at noon. He stayed in the basement to look up a word in the dictionary. Suddenly, it seemed as if a white light illuminated the entire basement. Erickson understood in an instant that the dictionary was based on letters from A to A. to Z sort. At that moment, he deeply thanked his inner self for keeping this message for so long before he discovered it, because it gave him a deeper understanding of English. He learned more on the way of countless word-for-word inquiries. .
Many channels of communication with the world that normal people have were ruthlessly closed by fate in Erickson, but Erickson opened a unique channel. Normal people also have these channels, but because those common channels work so well, we start to rely on them, so we ignore those unique channels, which are also deeper and more valuable channels - channels to communicate with the subconscious. .
Compared to Erickson, most people have many more gifts from fate. However, maybe we have too many things, but we like to complain, why don’t I have enough? ? Why is fate so unfair to me?
Erickson is just the opposite. He is always grateful for everything he has. He is always enjoying the resources he already has instead of focusing on the lack.
After Erickson turned 70, he could only sit in a wheelchair. One night, Gilligan went to the kitchen to see Mrs. Erickson and saw Erickson also in the kitchen. He was wearing a purple sportswear and cutting dishes for dinner. He was very involved and said to Gilligan: " I'm exercising."
The sequelae of polio followed Erickson throughout his life. He had several severe relapses, and his poor eyesight and hearing continued to deteriorate due to his shrinking muscles. derogation. Although he miraculously stood up, the muscles on the right side of his body had almost completely lost strength, and he could only breathe with a few intercostal muscles and diaphragm. In addition, he suffered from gout and mild emphysema.
When he was in his 70s, mornings were the time when his body hurt the most, and it often took him hours of pain management, and it took a lot of effort to get dressed and shave, but even then , he also remained calmly optimistic. One day in 1974, he said to Sade: "At 4 o'clock in the morning today, I thought I might die. At noon, I was very happy that I was still alive. I have been happy from noon to now."
Erickson passed away in 1980. His wife concluded: "He lived to be 79 years old, much longer than he expected. Until a week before his death, he still lived an active and unremitting life."
He never fights against the symptoms of the case
He also brings this style to other places, such as in treatment, he will not waste time on the shortcomings of the case, but Focus on the resources the case already has.
This style showed up early in his life. When he was a child, on his family's farm, sometimes the horses would run outside, and the workers would have to work hard to pull them back. Because the horses are very strong, it usually took several adults to pull one horse together. But the young Erickson pulled a horse back to the stables all by himself. He found that the horse's "rebellious" mentality was very strong at this time. If people pulled it to go west, it would try to go east. So, why not pull it east, so that it would automatically go west. Sure enough, when little Erickson pulled the horse in the opposite direction of the horse cabinet, the horse tried hard to retreat toward the horse cabinet. At this time, only a small amount of force was needed to make them return to the horse cabinet.
The so-called symptoms of the case can be understood as the horse in this story. Some therapists may teach the horse to go towards the horse closet, but Erickson will follow the horse and even turn it towards Give it a push in the direction it wants to go.
Once, Erickson went to treat a schizophrenic patient who had delusions of persecution. When Erickson entered the ward, he was hammering nails into the window, thinking that this would prevent enemies from attacking him. Erickson hammered nails with him, and was more serious than him. After the nails were driven in, Erickson suggested sewing up the gaps in the floor, so that the enemy would have no chance at all.
Then, Erickson suggested that he work with the hospital's doctors and nurses to strengthen the hospital's prevention efforts and continuously expand his safety range. The patients were accepted one by one. As the work continued to progress, the scope of his defenses, which was also the scope of activities, continued to expand, and he gradually came out of his isolation and loneliness.
This is Erickson's treatment style. He never confronts the patient's symptoms or attacks the patient's logic.
Many people regard some of their "problems" as enemies and try to eliminate them, but Erickson would instead suggest that they accept the "problems" and deal with them in a more elegant way. ***dance. When a smoker wants to quit smoking, he will regard smoking as an ugly enemy, and Erickson will ask him to replay the smoking action at a very slow speed under hypnosis, except that there is no cigarette in his hand, but he must be very elegant. to do this action.
In this regard, Gilligan described that this is the meaning of Chinese calligraphy. You have to express it very powerfully, penetrating the paper, but at the same time not destroying the paper. It's like playing the piano. You can hit the keyboard hard, but when you hit it with grace, what comes out is a piece of music instead of noise.
When a patient learns to express any of his wishes gracefully, the power behind this wish is humanized, and the so-called "problem" is no longer a problem.
Whether it is elegance, trust or induction in the "horse", these are all external forms, and the core of Erickson's hypnotherapy is trust in the subconscious mind.
Subconscious, please teach me
When Gilligan began to learn hypnosis from Erickson, NLP (Chinese name is "Neurolinguistic Programming") was on the rise. The important concept is that "you can imitate anyone", and Gilligan's idol is naturally his legendary teacher. He asked Erickson: "Do you have many scenes when you are working?"
Eh Rickson replied: "No!"
"Do you have a lot of internal dialogue?"
"No!"
"A lot of physical touch "?"
"No!"
This question and answer plunged Gilligan into despair. He recalled that he felt like a navigator who had reached the end of the world. Not knowing what else to do, he continued to ask: "Then what do you have?"
Erickson replied: "I don't know, I don't know how you get into hypnosis, I I don’t know when you entered hypnosis. I only know that I have a subconscious and you have a subconscious. We are in the same room together, so hypnosis is inevitable, but I am very curious about what will happen. What happened, I didn't know anything. It sounded ridiculous, but it worked." Later, Gilligan understood what the teacher meant. We are usually in a state of looking for answers, which results in stress in the muscles, which is called tension. But when we completely trust the subconscious mind and the inner spirituality, our body will relax. At this time, we have passed through the body composed of muscles and entered the "inner body", or "inner spirituality". Space", and the answer will naturally arise from this space, we just need to stay curious about it.
Before and during hypnosis, the hypnotist will say "relax" to the patient. The purpose is to relax the patient's muscles so that he can break away from the "muscular body". Perhaps few people have ever achieved complete relaxation, but Erickson learned this during his horrific battle with polio.
Countless people have been defeated by polio. Perhaps the reason why most people are defeated is because they put their energy into "I don't want...I don't want..." and they resist their own illness. There was a fact about the disease, and although Erickson refused to accept the doctors' dire assertions, he never grappled with the misfortune. In this way, not only can he focus his life energy on what he can do, but he also draws resources from this terrible misfortune - he has traveled through the "muscular body" and deeply understood his own "inner body". body".
What needs to be said is that this "inner body" is not controlled by oneself. When we face it, the important thing is trust, not judgment. The healing scene of picking apples, Erickson did not expect this scene to appear. It appeared naturally and was the result of the natural flow of Erickson's inner spirituality - the inner spirituality that each of us has. .
Gilligan said this was the best thing he learned from his teacher: When you don’t know what to do, just try to relax and say to your subconscious mind, please teach me.
o People are OK;
o Everyone makes the best choice at the moment;
o There is a positive motivation behind every action ;
o People already have all the resources to be successful and happy;
o Change is not only possible, but inevitable.