Understanding Hypervigilance

Hypnosis is, more or less, an intentional usage of the simple properties of our perception, as creatures designed to learn, adapt, and survive in a large, unknown, and often dangerous world. Our minds will prioritize survival above all else, so we become conditioned over time to be aware of and avoid certain dangers, either physical or, importantly, psychological

What we call trauma is most often survival adaptations. That trauma, depending on its nature, could have been useful in the past (or present) during a situation that required it. However, once we are out of that situation, those instincts do not quickly leave us.

Hypervigilance is one of the most common struggles that hypnotic subjects are forced to contend with in their search for comfort and susceptibility. 

One of the most important aspects of hypnosis is not just the focus towards one point, but the release of focus from the things we normally keep it on. If someone is hypervigilant of a parent bursting into their room, as an example, they will not be able to subconsciously forget about the world around them. If we view focus as percentages, each percentage you’re able to get closer to 100% on the hypnotist, the exponentially more immersive and effective it will feel.

As such, for those who deal with hypervigilance in one form or another, to improve at hypnosis is to find ways to release that mental muscle. 

As for the means of reducing hypervigilance, it is highly dependent on context, but in general, seeking therapy is the most wide-spanning solution. Improved susceptibility is often synonymous with emotional progress and trauma healing, a highly convenient incentive that pushes us to better ourselves. Since the way we process suggestions is highly dependent on our traumas, pushing to feel a greater balance in them will make it much easier to put your trust in and be affected by another, as well as release your focus on any unwanted areas.

However, more immediate and situational changes can significantly improve hypervigilance in the short term, if only to make specific sessions better before months to years of emotional progress.

Identifying Hypervigilance

In order to adjust yourself and your environment, you need to know what the nature of your hypervigilance is. There aren’t any commonly used scientific classifications of hypervigilance types, but for the sake of convenience today, we can split it into two loose groups. For the sake of hypnosis, it’s easy to conceptualize stimuli as external and internal, so let’s apply it to hypervigilance.

A. External (Environmental) Hypervigilance

Fixation on your environment and others can take many different forms. If you keep one ear of your headphones off, have a keen ear for footsteps, were not allowed to lock your door, or otherwise were able to suddenly lose your right to privacy, then one of your major struggles in hypnosis will likely be releasing focus on your outside environment. You might find any odd sound either in or outside of the session or file to break your focus. However, this is largely due to one part of your focus always being dedicated to being prepared to put yourself on guard.

As an additional example, external hypervigilance can also be placed on people. If you grew up around unpredictable, antagonistic, unstable, or aggressive people consistently, then trusting intentions and safety can be incredibly difficult. As with most things mentioned here, this is a useful skill to have in life, but it makes trusting those who deserve trust harder in life, and that extends to the level required to have someone mess with the fabric of your mind. 

However, the often more subtle and difficult to understand forms come with the other category.

B. Internal (Emotional/Psychological) Hypervigilance

Internal hypervigilance takes many different nuanced forms, and comes with the trouble of it often being interwoven with your sense of “you”. This most obviously presents in the physical: overfixation on bodily sensations. Most commonly due to health anxiety, someone can be overly fixated on how their body is feeling at all times, or more specifically during hypnotic sessions where the body is meant to be numbed or “changed” in one way or another.

The rest are leaning more toward the psychological. While there are many, the primary three that I have recognized in my time diagnosing these hypervigilances are a lack of assumed correctness, fear that the hypnosis isn’t working, and a general fear of loss of control. “Lack of assumed correctness” is a wordy way to put, more or less, underconfidence. Those who have had their knowledge, intelligence, analysis, or general feelings regularly undermined in life tend to overthink whatever was undermined, if not almost everything.

However, this specific sort of an underconfidence happens by far the most often to neurodivergent subjects. Those who have had an average experience in socialization often operate under the assumption that however they interpret something is the correct way, because they are “normal”, so they must have the normal and appropriate thoughts. This mindset is incredibly helpful for hypnosis, as while hypnotists can’t predict exactly how the subject will take suggestions, neither can the subject without pulling themselves out of the moment. Overfixating on if something is being done right is a nagging worry that only serves to get in the way of actually accepting suggestions.

Related is a fixation on if the hypnosis is working. This is an especially devious form of hypervigilance, since it very often happens to subjects who have had trouble with hypnosis for a long time and are highly interested in becoming more susceptible. It operates most similarly to anxiety about getting anxious; the worry creates the problem. However, this can also occur due to a wider problem: fear of loss of control.

This is likely the single most prevalent hypervigilance that holds subjects back. To an extent, this is mentally healthy to have to some extent. Many of the most susceptible subjects are also people highly affected by trauma, but in ways that make them people pleasers, overly trusting, and to lack a strong sense of self. That being said, our self-preservation instinct can and often is far too active for our own mental good. 

At its most extreme, this can come in the form of panic attacks for a subject at even the idea that they are truly losing control of themselves. Sessions with such subjects need to be handled with a special amount of care and skill, emphasizing their agency and focusing on lighter ideas such as relaxation. For some, this extreme reaction is only from the concept of losing control, but some subjects can truly be so susceptible in life that they have developed a strong fear response to prevent it from happening. 

Oftentimes, this presents in lesser forms of struggles. If there were ever what seems to be an invisible block that never lets you go fully, this would most often be the case. It is, for many reasons in our world, extremely difficult to let go completely. As a gentle reminder before we go into possible solutions, hypnosis enjoyment is not measured by susceptibility, and some of these things we have, we have for a reason. The fantasy of being entirely out of control is one thing, but the reality can make one ripe for unwanted changes and abuse, even by complete accident from the behalf of a hypnotist out of their depth or unaware of yours. Self-destructive behaviors and self-preserving behaviors often grow in the same mind in response to each other, but one is always preferable to the other when it comes to safety. Now, let’s move on.

Dealing with Hypervigilance

Ultimately, as said before, the best way to improve hypervigilance for hypnosis is to improve it via general mental health work. Therapy is one of the best ways to identify these things and develop tools to process things healthily, however, a strong support system can help a great deal as well. In the moment, though, there are ways to make yourself as able to let go as possible before engaging in hypnosis.

While I would not necessarily be one to encourage it, I would be remiss not to mention recreational drugs as a method. Everyone reacts differently to drugs for many, many reasons, but in the pursuit of lessened hypervigilance, a low to moderate dose of CBD or Marijuana can have a relaxing effect (and in the case of the added THC of Marijuana, an added amplifying sensory effect). 

This can help reduce the top end of your hypervigilance. However, as tempting as it may be to take more, there is a point around the moderate to high doses of Marijuana where its effects on focus make it far too impairing to be effective for trance. I do not have the willingness nor confidence to advise any other drugs to use for this purpose besides alcohol, but keep it to a very low dose if you do wish to go this route with any you try. 

As for sober solutions, external hypervigilance can have rather direct and simple ways to deal with them. As for your immediate environment, make sure that you are not just alone in your room, but guaranteed to not be bothered by anyone. If that requires asking people directly not to interrupt outside of an emergency, then you may want to consider doing so. If such a thing is not possible at your home (be it for nosy parents or otherwise), you may consider going to someone else’s house who is willing to leave you alone unbothered. Ultimately though, for some, external hypervigilance will only go down once you’ve lived with your privacy respected for a long enough time to adjust to it.

As for distrust of others, while some can have it so extreme as to not be immediately solvable in the short term, trust goes as long of a way as it can. Hypnosis is an intimate act, and intimacy requires a scary amount of vulnerability. In that way, those you feel vulnerable around will be significantly better at putting you under than any random stranger. That being said, if you don’t have someone who is both that close to you and is skilled at/interested in hypnosis, then there are ways for files to feel safer.

You can (and probably should) read scripts ahead of time, and engage with files and artists who have been vetted by the wider hypnosis community. A safe name generally means a safe file, or at least a file that has any non-safe aspects be warned and tagged in the description and title well ahead of ever listening.

As for internal hypervigilance, the biggest block, fear of loss of control, is not something I can give you any clean or satisfying short-term solution for. If it’s sourced from external hypervigilance, as in distrust of others, then following the steps above may help, but otherwise, the causes are often multifaceted and not able to simply be quelled on the spot. This is something that comes with long-term emotional growth. That being said, the two others, underconfidence and overfixation of if the trance is working, can have some things to assist them.

In a way, both of these behaviors are a feedback loop. Uncertainty in thought creates uncertainty in outcomes, often affirming to someone that their intuition is shaky and they shouldn’t trust themselves. Similarly, worrying if a trance is working causes it to lose a large amount of effectiveness, thus confirming one’s fears. What works most effectively for both is finding methods of cutting off the feedback loop and reframing one’s thoughts. 

For a file listener, while finding files that specifically affirm that what you’re doing is good and normal consistently may prove restrictive, it may be possible to create something of your own. Simply playing a file on top of the one you’re listening to that reminds you to either remember to just accept or to just engage in the trance and that stray thoughts are normal can be an effective way of interrupting said cycles. If you’re not adept with technology enough to quite make your own file, using a mantra can be a highly effective method. 

Not only do mantras remind a subject of a suggestion repeatedly, but they can also take up the hypervigilant part of the mind’s attention, as it has something to pour itself into actively rather than just taking a passive listening role. Lastly, if doing sessions with a hypnotist directly, any sort of hypervigilance you experience should be communicated before a session begins. If they know how to adjust, including gentle suggestions or framing a trance around the landscape of your mind, it will be far more effective than it would be otherwise.

This does not cover all of the potential forms of hypervigilance nor all forms of possible solutions, but this should give you a palette to build understanding from. Ultimately, while we all share mental patterns, we are all our own beings, and that comes with highly specific negatives as well as positives. You are more capable of knowing your struggles than anyone else, and as such, experimenting with what might alleviate them is a good practice, for hypnosis or otherwise. 

Discussing your specific hypnosis struggles with others can also be a great way to gain more perspectives, more ideas, and help in reframing how you view hypnosis into a better, trance-ier light. 

Good luck, and happy hypnotizing.