It’s fairly likely that you find one of these two people attractive: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.  Did you ever stop to think why? Well, psychologists have found that there is a close correlation between physical attractiveness and symmetry. The more symmetrical the face, the more likely it is that the face’s owner will be judged as being attractive. Pitt and Jolie just happen to have rather symmetrical faces. Now, before you go rushing off to the mirror, be assured that there are a million other factors which count when meeting a person face to face. 

Still, the point I’m trying to make is that we make a judgement about a person’s physical attractiveness within seconds of seeing the face. The judgement is made before the conscious mind can catch up. 

I was talking, recently, with a man who had done some phd research into artificial intelligence. The human mind, he explained, was still far too fast for the quickest computer to match. The example he gave was very mundane. If you went into a supermarket you could see a bottle of liquid which had recently been released onto the market. You hadn’t ever seen it before. Still, without even seeing the  writing on the label you’d instantly know that it was a bottle of orange juice. No computer could hope to match the speed with which you made that decision.

If I showed you a photo of a street scene, just for a split second, you’d be able to identify the nature of the shop in the picture. You’d have a good stab at the historical era in which it was set and could reasonably accurately guess its location. If I asked you to explain why you’d made that judgement, you’d quite possibly be at a loss for words. Your conscious mind wouldn’t have had time to absorb the information.

What other judgements do you make without even thinking about them? You can’t do this? You shouldn’t do that? That’s good? They’re all bad? If you take a phobia, for example, there are all kinds of reasons why one might develop a phobia of spiders but you don’t analyse reasons to be afraid when screaming out of the room, because a big one just ran out from under the sofa. You react in an instant. We make judgements and react in an instant. Could some of these processes be at the root of your problems? A skilled hypnotherapist can help you find out.

Your mind is far more complicated than you think and only a fraction of it is exposed to conscious awareness. Hypnotherapy can help to access the rest. Hypnotherapy, combined with other psychotherapeutic techniques, can help you to make the changes you want to make. Contact me, here, to find out how.

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Paul 4.3.12

Resolved! Hypnotherapy offers hypnotherapy and hypno-psychotherapy in Reading, Oxford, Didcot, Wallingford, Pangbourne, Henley, Thame, Wokingham and in all surrounding areas of Berkshire and Oxfordshire. A skilled hypnotherapist can help you to make real and lasting changes to your life. Home visits are available on request.

“I have familiarised myself with the factual data of a theoretical or practical problem; I do not think about it again, yet often a few days later the answer to the problem will come into my mind entirely of it’s own accord; the operation which has produced it, however, remains as much a mystery to me as that of the adding machine: what has occurred is, again, unconscious rumination. – One might almost venture the physiological hypothesis that conscious thinking takes place on the surface of the brain, unconscious thinking inside it.”

(Schopenhauer – “Essay and Aphorisms” )

This is a perfect example of how the conscious and unconscious mind are related, I use this example all the time when explaining the concept to potential clients. Everybody can relate to the story of an idea which just “appeared out of nowhere.” Perhaps, instead, you were trying to remember somebody’s name and gave up, only to have the name flash into your mind hours later.  A part of your mind remained working on the problem despite your having consciously abandoned the search.

Another interesting story is that of German chemist Friedrich Kekulé von Stradonitz. He was struggling to understand the structure of Benzene. One night he dreamed of snakes eating their own tails and woke up to realise that carbon molecules in a circle formed a benzene ring. Now, I don’t use dreams a great deal in therapy (they may have a function in the unconscious but interpreting this, more often than not, is mere guesswork. What can be useful is looking at a person’s emotional reaction to a dream – how it resonated with the conscious mind) but it is another example of how the mind works on different levels of consciousness.

Hypnosis works by accessing the thought patterns held within the unconscious mind. Our beliefs and attitudes are deeply held and can take quite some shifting if we rely simply on rationalising the issue away. Hypno-psychotherapy can be a very powerful tool in moving a person towards their goal. It enlists the help of the unconscious mind when, by ourselves, we often attempt to merely overrule or fight it. This is why hypno-psychotherapy can achieve results faster than many other talking therapies.

Imagine, for example, the mind of a smoker. When you first began to smoke your body rebelled. You felt dizzy, perhaps sick, and coughed out the poison. Yet you persisted. Your unconscious mind was eventually convinced that you actually needed nicotine. Why would you smoke it if it wasn’t necessary? So, when you try to give up, your unconscious mind helps you out by reminding you that you haven’t had a cigarette for a while, that you are badly in need. Ever hear those little voices telling you that just one wouldn’t hurt? That you could give up tomorrow instead? That’s your unconscious mind talking to you. To give up smoking you’ll need to retrain that part of your mind. You can do it the hard way, with all the cravings and risks of failure, or you could actually enlist the help of the unconscious mind – eliminating cravings into the bargain.

The unconscious mind is involved in all of those problems which we find hard to eradicate. Hypno-psychotherapy can help you to resolve them, through having every part of your mind  working together.

If you’d like to find out more, contact me here for your free consultation.

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Paul 16.2.12

Resolved! Hypnotherapy offers hypnotherapy and hypno-psychotherapy in Reading, Oxford, Didcot, Wallingford, Pangbourne, Henley, Thame, Wokingham and in all surrounding areas of Berkshire and Oxfordshire. Home visits are available on request.