The structure and composition of the language that you use, and the way you craft and phrase your hypnotic suggestions at every part of the hypnotic process, is hugely important. Depending on how ‘hypnotic’ the language we use is, we can build agreement, shift the focus of attention, induce trance, embed suggestions, create binds or positive linguistic traps, and so much more, just with our choice of words.
The key influence in the hypnosis world’s understanding and use of hypnotic language – the words we use and the way we use them during trance sessions – was Milton Erickson, who developed his language skills and ability of being ‘artfully vague’ to such an extent that he would often hypnotize and fully cure clients in a seemingly normal conversation, with the aid of hypnotic stories and metaphors.
When you learn hypnotic language and integrate it into every part of the hypnotic process, you will find the effectiveness of the hypnosis you do will increase 100 fold, as clients just naturally and automatically accept all the suggestions they receive.
In hypnotherapy, we try to help our clients generate a solution they agree with by the use of suggestions. Just like in traditional therapy, our goal is to move our clients to a point where they have 193
that ‘ah-ha’ experience, and are able to immediately resolve their problems. Hypnotic language allows us to focus the resources of the mind in a specific way, whilst being ‘artfully vague’ enough for our clients to come up with their own solutions and resolutions that fit in perfectly with who they really are and what they really need.
We are going to overview several different language patterns that you will want to become familiar with. We could probably put together a three-hour lecture on each of these but in this text we will devote only a few paragraphs per pattern, and it will be up to you to do more research. A wealth of knowledge is available on the Internet and through instructional videos, books and training classes, and someone could probably develop an entire graduate school cur- riculum just on the hypnotic language patterns of Milton Erickson, many of which were identified, defined, broken down and studied by Bandler and Grinder when they created NLP, neuro-linguistic pro- gramming.
Language patterns help us to disassociate our clients from certain things, while focusing their attention on others. We want to be artfully vague, because we want to avoid disagreements with our client and allow them to come up with their own solution. After all, when it comes down to it, no one knows what a client really needs more than the client themselves. We are merely using the process of hypnosis to give them access to that knowledge.
Incidentally, hypnotic language is typically ascribed to indirect styles of hypnosis. We want our clients to build consensus with us. If a politician wants to succeed in debates or get his message across, then they would be well served by being artfully vague, using hypnotic language patterns and concepts of NLP. The more you learn about hypnosis and NLP, when you watch politicians speaking on television you will discover that most of the folks writing the speeches must have pretty strong backgrounds in both. The words will often be oxymoronic and specifically vague, because the politician's goal is to build consensus, rather than create divisions. He wants to avoid the use of anything that would bring out an objection.
Salespeople also find NLP useful. For example, instead of saying to a client, “Buy this red car,” one might say, “And you know, as you come to consider which of the cars you will buy today, you may find yourself thinking about some cars that really catch your eye, and just how they will look sitting proudly in your own garage.” As
you learn the language patterns detailed below, think back to this brief example, and see if you can identify just why it was so hypnotic.
Another thing to bear in mind is that these patterns are also used by all of us, unwittingly.
In fact, you may notice your clients using some of these patterns themselves as they describe their problem to you, so you should keep an eye out for them and if you deem it necessary, stop your client and ask them to clarify; they may have used hypnotic language to hypnotize themselves into having their problem in the first place.
NLP has created a wonderful system called the 'Meta Model,' which describes how to deal with these accidental hypnotic patterns. Since this is not an NLP course we will not focus on these things here in great detail, however the Meta Model is certainly something that will be extremely useful for you to research.
Nominalization
Many successful motivational ‘guru’s are masters of nominal- ization. People who use NLP say any noun that cannot be put in a wheelbarrow is a nominalization. You can take a toaster and put it in a wheelbarrow, but you can’t take learnings and put it/them in a wheelbarrow.
Learnings? Is that a word? Yes, it's a nominalization. You can make a nominalization out of any experience by turning it into a noun. In hypnotic language, you might say something like, “The learnings that you are experiencing...” Well, learnings is now a noun. It’s a meaningless noun; it can’t be put in a wheelbarrow. But using the word learnings forces our client to abstract what learnings are, and how they experience the sight, the sound, the touch of this new concept. The experience of learning will be up to the individual client. It’s going to draw upon all of their sensory experiences. Nominal- izations force our clients to draw on their wealth of experiences and resources and use these to really ascribe powerful and personal meaning to the words you use.
Three language patterns related to nominalizations are unspecified nouns, unspecified referential indices, and unspecified verbs.