07 Jul 2021, 21:36
Long time lurker, first time poster.
I can relate to a lot of this - engineer, from a technical family, never really visualized or felt a need for visual mental imagery for most of my life. It took me a long time to be able to "see" much of anything during hypnosis. This is all based on my own firsthand experience, so I'm hopeful but not certain whether this will be helpful for you (or anyone else reading).
About the way you describe seeing visual images as "blueprints" - maybe I'm injecting too much of my own experience, but I think you might be visualizing things that way because it's more efficient. If you're visualizing to solve a problem, or let's say designing a building for example, do you care about what color paint the building has? What kind of clothing the people inside of it will wear, what they'll be talking about and how their voices will sound? What kind of flowers would be in the planters outside and what they smell like? Of course not - those details serve no purpose for your design, so your brain doesn't bother including them as part of your visualization. Visualizing flowers and paint colors takes up mental capacity that you need to use to work out whether the building is structurally sound. You care about things like where the supports are located, what kind of materials are used and their load capacity, etc, so that's what your brain includes in your visualization.
When you're listening to hypnosis, you're trying to use visualization in a completely different way, almost the exact opposite in fact. You're not using it as a tool for technical analysis, but to make you feel immersed in a fantasy. The things that were crucial in your technical visualization are now pretty much irrelevant. The aesthetic details that your brain is accustomed to completely ignoring are now important in making your mental imagery feel vivid and lifelike. It takes time and effort to learn how to visualize immersively this way. If you're used to relying on your technical visualization ability, you can think of that like using your dominant hand. That's what your brain is used to using, and using your dominant hand is instinctual for any new task. Improving your immersive visualization ability is like learning to use your non-dominant hand - difficult and probably frustrating, but possible.
You can practice visualization exercises outside of hypnosis, and it will help your visualization ability during hypnosis. Treat it like building a muscle you haven't really used before. You can't bench press 300 lbs if you've never exercised your upper body. Start simple, don't expect lifelike vividness early on. There's a couple exercises I've tried that have helped:
Take an object, doesn't really matter what, and study it for a few seconds or maybe a minute with your eyes open. Then close your eyes and try to picture it as well as you can. Open your eyes, look at it again, and repeat. Try to gradually increase the level of detail you can see, and how long you can hold the image in your mind. Try mentally moving, rotating, or zooming in/out on the object. Eventually, try multiple objects at once. Try using your entire field of vision.
You can also practice visualization without a physical object, try visualizing something as simple as a shape, or even a line or a point if that's not possible yet. Visualize in black and white if it's easier than imagining in color. Practice holding the image in your mind, as well as adding more detail to it. Maybe try changing its color or adding texture. Work up from there, gradually increasing the complexity of the imagery. And while I've been referring to it as visualizing, you can (and eventually should) add non-visual mental imagery as well - how does the object or scene in your mind sound, smell, feel?
My working theory is that we're following the "four stages of competence" model here (Google if unfamiliar). When you're in hypnosis, your subconscious mind is running the show, so your subconscious mind has to be competent at anything you or your hypnotist wants it to do without conscious input. But conscious practice is how you get there - by practicing visualization out of hypnosis, you will become better and better at it until it's eventually effortless enough for your subconscious mind to do automatically when prompted by the hypnotist's suggestion.
There's another important aspect of hypnosis not specifically related to visualization. Not being able to stay focused on the hypnotist's words is another common problem that can be worked on outside of hypnosis. While meditation and hypnosis aren't exactly the same thing, there is quite a bit of overlap. Learning to manipulate my awareness and attention through meditation has definitely helped my abilities as a hypnotic subject. In meditation, you often use your breath as a focus, and whenever you notice your attention has wandered from your breath, you gently bring it back. In hypnosis, you can use the hypnotist's voice as the focus instead. When you're a little bit more practiced, you can even use the mental scene you're picturing as your focus.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
I can relate to a lot of this - engineer, from a technical family, never really visualized or felt a need for visual mental imagery for most of my life. It took me a long time to be able to "see" much of anything during hypnosis. This is all based on my own firsthand experience, so I'm hopeful but not certain whether this will be helpful for you (or anyone else reading).
About the way you describe seeing visual images as "blueprints" - maybe I'm injecting too much of my own experience, but I think you might be visualizing things that way because it's more efficient. If you're visualizing to solve a problem, or let's say designing a building for example, do you care about what color paint the building has? What kind of clothing the people inside of it will wear, what they'll be talking about and how their voices will sound? What kind of flowers would be in the planters outside and what they smell like? Of course not - those details serve no purpose for your design, so your brain doesn't bother including them as part of your visualization. Visualizing flowers and paint colors takes up mental capacity that you need to use to work out whether the building is structurally sound. You care about things like where the supports are located, what kind of materials are used and their load capacity, etc, so that's what your brain includes in your visualization.
When you're listening to hypnosis, you're trying to use visualization in a completely different way, almost the exact opposite in fact. You're not using it as a tool for technical analysis, but to make you feel immersed in a fantasy. The things that were crucial in your technical visualization are now pretty much irrelevant. The aesthetic details that your brain is accustomed to completely ignoring are now important in making your mental imagery feel vivid and lifelike. It takes time and effort to learn how to visualize immersively this way. If you're used to relying on your technical visualization ability, you can think of that like using your dominant hand. That's what your brain is used to using, and using your dominant hand is instinctual for any new task. Improving your immersive visualization ability is like learning to use your non-dominant hand - difficult and probably frustrating, but possible.
You can practice visualization exercises outside of hypnosis, and it will help your visualization ability during hypnosis. Treat it like building a muscle you haven't really used before. You can't bench press 300 lbs if you've never exercised your upper body. Start simple, don't expect lifelike vividness early on. There's a couple exercises I've tried that have helped:
Take an object, doesn't really matter what, and study it for a few seconds or maybe a minute with your eyes open. Then close your eyes and try to picture it as well as you can. Open your eyes, look at it again, and repeat. Try to gradually increase the level of detail you can see, and how long you can hold the image in your mind. Try mentally moving, rotating, or zooming in/out on the object. Eventually, try multiple objects at once. Try using your entire field of vision.
You can also practice visualization without a physical object, try visualizing something as simple as a shape, or even a line or a point if that's not possible yet. Visualize in black and white if it's easier than imagining in color. Practice holding the image in your mind, as well as adding more detail to it. Maybe try changing its color or adding texture. Work up from there, gradually increasing the complexity of the imagery. And while I've been referring to it as visualizing, you can (and eventually should) add non-visual mental imagery as well - how does the object or scene in your mind sound, smell, feel?
My working theory is that we're following the "four stages of competence" model here (Google if unfamiliar). When you're in hypnosis, your subconscious mind is running the show, so your subconscious mind has to be competent at anything you or your hypnotist wants it to do without conscious input. But conscious practice is how you get there - by practicing visualization out of hypnosis, you will become better and better at it until it's eventually effortless enough for your subconscious mind to do automatically when prompted by the hypnotist's suggestion.
There's another important aspect of hypnosis not specifically related to visualization. Not being able to stay focused on the hypnotist's words is another common problem that can be worked on outside of hypnosis. While meditation and hypnosis aren't exactly the same thing, there is quite a bit of overlap. Learning to manipulate my awareness and attention through meditation has definitely helped my abilities as a hypnotic subject. In meditation, you often use your breath as a focus, and whenever you notice your attention has wandered from your breath, you gently bring it back. In hypnosis, you can use the hypnotist's voice as the focus instead. When you're a little bit more practiced, you can even use the mental scene you're picturing as your focus.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
eady won me praise from the whole district as one of the best ever made. Yet my ability is little more than instinct, I have to go back through my own designs to see why I designed the way I did, for I have no idea why anymore. It is like an odd imposter syndrome where you can do the work but yet you don't understand why, I feel like the monkey who types out Shakespeare on accident but it is repeatable and reliable. 
