All Types of Utilization

All Types of Utilization by sleepingirl

Language evolves within hobbies and subcultures, and especially with something like hypnosis that spans varying demographics. The word “utilization” gets thrown around us a lot, and can refer to several totally distinct ideas. It has its origins in Ericksonian hypnosis, but even Erickson used it to mean a couple different things when we look at it with a careful eye -- and in modern colloquial usage in our community, it generally refers to something else entirely.

Utilization is at the core of hypnosis -- it’s arguably the most important concept and technique to understand. So understanding all of its differing definitions can paint a more holistic picture of how we want to hypnotize people.

Ericksonian Utilization (“True” Utilization)

Erickson is credited with changing the landscape of hypnosis and hypnotherapy. He introduced new techniques like storytelling and other indirect language, but perhaps most importantly he came into every session with the philosophy that the best way to hypnotize someone was dictated by who the client was. In other words, each person was individual, and hypnosis required knowledge of that individuality.

The word “utilization” comes from him, and means this -- both more broadly and more specifically. In Erickson’s (and his student Rossi’s) words, from his book Hypnotic Realities:

Trance is a special state that intensifies the therapeutic relationship and focuses the patients attention on a few inner realities; trance does not insure the acceptance of suggestions. Erickson depends upon certain communication devices . . . to evoke, mobilize and move a patient's associative processes and mental skills in certain directions to sometimes achieve certain therapeutic goals. He believes that hypnotic suggestion is actually this process of evoking and utilizing a patient's own mental processes in ways that are outside his usual range of intentional or voluntary control.

The effective hypnotherapist learns to use words, intonations, gestures, and other things that evoke the patient's own mental mechanisms and behavioral processes. Hypnotic suggestion is not a kind of verbal magic that can be imposed on patients to make them do anything. Hypnotic suggestions are effective only to the degree that they can activate, block, or alter the functioning of natural mental mechanisms and associations already existing within the patient. Erickson likes to emphasize that hypnotic suggestion can evoke and utilize potentials that already exist within patients, but it cannot impose something totally alien.

We have to remember that Erickson is saying this partially as a reaction to the hypnosis that came before him: hypnotist-as-operator, someone who exerts will and commands over a person, who controls the trance with a stiff grip, and who introduces therapy based on the perceived shortcomings of the client. Erickson’s view of therapy was very much that each person had everything they needed to solve their own problem, that hypnosis was the key to unlocking it, and that he as the hypnotist was a guide. Whether that’s an accurate view of therapy is certainly debatable, but this pendulum-swing (so to speak) away from authoritative hypnosis led Erickson to “utilization” in the first place.

There is actually a lot contained in these two small paragraphs, and some confusing terminology that we know from context is interpreted in a number of ways. Erickson/Rossi repeat several times that utilization is based on “existing mental processes” as well as “behaviors,” “associations,” and “potentials.” This seems very broad, and difficult to understand if we don’t specifically try to define what those mean. This -- along with what we know about Erickson’s hypnosis directly -- shows us various ways that “utilization” can be applied.

• Utilizing parts of humans in general

The first type of utilization we might separate out is hinted to us in that first term -- “existing mental processes.” In this context, we can understand this to mean “all the ways in which a person’s mind functions.” Of course, when we say this, we often want to highlight each person’s individuality -- which we will talk about in the next section. But ALL human brains operate with some roughly similar “processes.”

All humans:

• Remember things

• Imagine things

• Associate concepts and learn things

• Daydream

• Have conscious thoughts

• Believe things

• Have unconscious biases

• Experience confusion or curiosity

• Dissociate

• Etc

The list goes on. Erickson is basically saying that hypnosis is not a magical external force -- it only operates on the functions that the human mind has. And of course the more you understand about the human mind, the better you can hypnotize someone, since you are really just “evoking, mobilizing, and moving” these mental processes. You don’t have to know exact psychological terms and concepts -- if you just think about all the ways you experience human cognition, you can get a good sense of it.

This is crucial to understanding “what hypnosis is,” and can fit easily within most models of hypnosis. If you are more of a “non-state” theorist and don’t believe that trance is a distinct phenomenon, hypnosis by this definition is just the evocation of existing mental faculties in a fairly unique way. If you do believe trance exists as a part of hypnosis, then we could say this evocation produces trance, and that trance is another “given” mental process that all humans have.

So if hypnosis operates just on the parts of a person, what does that mean for practically hypnotizing someone? Here, we see overlaps with cold reading. One method that Erickson uses is what he calls “truisms”: basically, he will make suggestions that are just true statements about the way that a person processes in order to facilitate various effects.

For example, we might say something like:

• “To recall a memory, you have to go inside yourself and produce it, imagine it happening again in the way that you remember…”

And then:

• “So when you think about the last time I hypnotized you, you can feel yourself almost slipping back into it again.”

These are two halves of the same suggestion -- the “truth” about the process, and then the “suggestion” to do something with it. You may recognize this as a kind of pacing and leading, where we are “pacing” by saying something true about the subject’s experience, and then “leading” by saying something we WANT to be true. You are UTILIZING the person’s general process of recalling memories to evoke trance.

While these statements support each other, they can work individually. You could choose to talk for a while about the process of a person’s memory, and likely cause them to go internally and recall abstract, ambiguous things, or ponder on their own meta-experience of recalling things -- which in and of itself is hypnotic (evoking the experience of memory without a direct memory). Or, as many do, you could do your standard “remember the last time you were hypnotized” induction without that “pacing” leadup -- which can offer a different experience depending on how you do it and the person you are working with. (In general, pacing SETS UP the leads, so it can make it easier for the subject if you include the first statement.)

• Utilizing parts of an individual person

Of course, we spent time talking about how Erickson was highly aware of each client’s individuality, and would use what he learned about them to hypnotize them. Individuality can mean “the way that a person uniquely responds to hypnosis,” which we will talk about in the next section, but it can also mean “who a person uniquely is, inside and out.”

For example, an individual’s specific:

• Personal history

• Life experience and place in life

• Memories

• Beliefs and attitudes

• Likes and dislikes

• Other associations

• Skills

• Etc

Perhaps Erickson’s most famous story was an example of him engaging in this kind of utilization: A client came in complaining of chronic pain, and Erickson talked to him about his life. He revealed that he was a gardener, and Erickson launched into a hypnotic story about tomato plants growing slowly but steadily. He used what he knew about his client to make the storytelling understandable and interesting in a personal way.

Using details that you know about a person shows that you are listening and that you care about them -- which is incredibly important as we engage in an intimate setting. It builds trust and rapport. But in addition to this, your partner has a lifetime full of experiences, and a full personality, which are so much richer for them than something you choose randomly.

This isn’t just about fancy Ericksonian storytelling. You can utilize these aspects of a person in the same kind of pacing and leading method as before. Think of these qualities as things that provide good set-up for your suggestions.

For example, you could start with or take as implicit something like:

• “I know how badly you want to drop so deep, deeper than you’ve ever been…”

And lead into something like:

• “And that desire is so deep and unconscious, it can consume your mind from the inside out, trapping you in my spell…”

We use suggestions like this all the time without necessarily thinking about why. But we can get more out of them when we think about them in this framework -- as qualities that support the hypnosis we’re doing. Desires are an easy target in our kink, as are beliefs about hypnosis. But knowing a person is skilled at playing an instrument for example means they have a trained ear and probably can hallucinate sound well too -- perhaps you suggest to them that they can hear the subtleties in your hypnotic voice more than the average person.

You can see overlap with the last example we used as well -- when we were asking someone to remember the last time they were hypnotized, that’s a part of their individual history too. Though we can separate out distinct definitions, utilization is all interconnected broadly -- the generalities of the human process lead to our specific differences through our lifetimes of different experiences.

Erickson would tend to be sneaky about including that first “pacing” set-up, or even not include it at all in this case. And this is a good example of somewhere where you don’t need to be too explicit -- there’s no need to repeat “I know you want to be hypnotized” if you are giving a suggestion like “Your desire to be hypnotized makes you more suggestible.” However, there’s a lot of intimate (or even D/s) value in this kind of “mind reading”: You are telling someone the things you know about them while they are in a more trusting, often vulnerable-feeling position.

• Utilizing responses

We’ve been going from “most general” to “most specific” in this category, and we now arrive at utilization that is about taking advantage of a person’s specific responses in hypnosis. When you give a suggestion, your subject is going to respond in a way that is individual to them and to the moment and way that you are giving it. Every response you get is “usable,” with the exception of those that are actively harmful or unwanted.

We could say that there are a few ways in which someone responds:

• Bodily response (slumping over, relaxing, stiffening up, arousal, pain)

• Behavioral response (moaning/sighing, twitching or moving, following through a action-suggestion)

• Internal response (their subjective thoughts, inner experience, emotions)

NLP’s pacing and leading is classically talking about this category. There is some sort of external response that you observe and remark upon, and use that as a way to get to a suggestion: “Your eyes are starting to soften, which means that your body is ready to fall for me.”

Generally, this is done with external responses, but we’ve made note before that you can and should do this with internal responses too. There is a lot we can know about our partner’s inner experience, even if we are being overly general or guessing a little bit. For example, when we give a suggestion about feeling pleasure, we can look for tiny cues in a person’s external experience and mind read a little bit with cold reading, and say something like: “Yeah, I know you can feel that, can’t you?” and use that to lead into something like, “And that feeling gets stronger, increasing its grip on you…”

But one of the most important things to emphasize about this type of utilization is that it is the ultimate “yes, and” -- that every response your partner gives is their authentic response and you can and should allow it to direct the trance. The quintessential example is the subject who nervously giggles at the start of the induction -- although in kink, maybe we say that giggling is something that makes them feel more airheaded and silly. But this applies to any individual quirks in behavior: Perhaps when you transform your partner into a sex robot, you notice that they go limp instead of stiff. So that might be an opportunity to talk about a fantasy scene where their “creator” is doing repairs, and stiffens them up part-by-part.

“That’s right” and other phrases like it are the catch-all tool for this utilization -- they are the first part of the hypnotist’s “yes, and.” We want to affirm the response that the person is having in the moment, and then use it to support our next suggestion. You don’t have to guess specifics or say outright what you think your partner is experiencing, you can just say, “I see and I accept and desire your authentic response.”

“Utilizing the External”

The original meaning of utilization from Erickson is all about the subject -- their internal experience, beliefs, behaviors, associations, processes. In amateur colloquial usage, however, “utilization” has come to mean something more broadly external. You may hear that utilization is when you do something like include distracting sounds as part of your induction, or that you can use any concept or object to hypnotize someone. This isn’t a correct usage of the term, but it is worth talking about these techniques. This is also a chance to highlight a difference between intimate play and all other forms of hypnosis.

• Utilizing the environment

In a broad definition, we could say that both “utilizing distractions” and “utilizing random objects/concepts” are actually in the same category. It is using something outside the subject that is a part of the environment. They are only different from each other in how they fall on a gradient of “inherently hypnotic” or “inherently anti-hypnotic”. These are completely contextual, subjective matters of perception, but just meant to be broad labels. For example:

• A loud TV may be anti-hypnotic

• A random object like a pencil may be neutrally hypnotic

• A traditionally hypnotic prop like a pocket watch may be more hypnotic

Any of these things can be used to hypnotize someone or bring them deeper into trance. It’s a form of fixation -- bringing your partner’s attention to it -- but especially it’s about developing the creativity to see connections between unrelated concepts.

We’ve explored this more in depth in other essays (especially in https://www.patreon.com/posts/learning-deep-95126224), but this is something we do all the time in hypnosis without thinking about it. We tell someone to fixate on a spot on the wall, and then maybe we talk about how blank the wall looks, or maybe instead we trap someone’s attention by having them fixate on all the details they can see. Essentially, we think about why it would be beneficial to turn someone’s focus to something -- what story can we tell about it? Is it enthralling or trapping? Does it have associations with hypnosis? Can it be used in a sexual metaphor?

For example, a pencil is a writing instrument, and we may talk about writing directly on someone’s mind, or flipping it over and using the eraser, or fixating on the tiny point of the tip so that their focus narrows down tiny, or how a pencil is totally stiff and meant to be held and used, or even how ridiculous it is that they will be hypnotized by a pencil of all things.

It’s important to note that something we think of as being in the “distracting” category is not necessarily more difficult to transform into something hypnosis. On the contrary, something that’s distracting is something that’s capturing a person’s attention. Just like in some martial arts, you utilize the powerful force that’s coming at you and redirect it. A TV may be an audio-visual stimulation, but we all know the experience of totally zoning out in front of a show and not even really watching it -- or the hum of it in the background lulling us into relaxing.

• Utilizing yourself

The final piece in all of this is something that separates what we do from therapy, stage shows, and other non-intimate settings of hypnosis. In all other hypnotic disciplines, hypnotists are implicitly or explicitly discouraged from bringing themselves to the table. Therapists for example are generally supposed to be neutral guides, focused completely on the subject and their experience. But this model doesn’t work for us in kink. As hypnotists, we matter in the relationship -- our feelings, our desires, our personal histories and identity.

Hypnotizing someone else is a way of connecting with them. Some people want hypnosis to be a relatively impersonal experience, but if you want intimacy and if you want to be more than a trance dispenser, you have to be a little bit vulnerable yourself.

Do trances based on concepts and ideas that you feel passionately about (“write what you know”). Talk about things that excite you. Relate to your partner and see where both of you can meet in the middle. Even Erickson, as part of his storytelling, would tell his clients anecdotes about his life -- he begins the tomato plant story by talking about his experience living on a farm and gardening. 

We often feel like we’re not supposed to talk about ourselves while we are hypnotizing someone else. But in a relationship, we’re interested in each other -- your intimate partner is interested in you, turned on by you, and wants you to be enjoying yourself and sharing yourself. Even in the most disconnected of pick-up play scenarios, most subjects appreciate hearing your enthusiasm. When you include yourself in your hypnotic patter, you give your partner a chance to fixate on you as a hypnotic person.

At this year’s Charmed, Khatsha taught a wonderfully smart class about how hypnosis doesn’t actually rely on some clinically projected confidence -- vulnerability is hypnotic, especially in kink. One of my biggest takeaways from the class was putting a name and framework to something I was doing unconsciously -- a kind of self-pacing.

In traditional pacing and leading, we say things we observe about the other person -- but you can apply this kind of observational scan to yourself: “I’m watching you fall deep for me.” “I’m getting really turned on by what I’m doing to you.” “I’m thinking about this fantasy I have where I turn someone into a doll.”

You probably shouldn’t center yourself 100% of the time, but you can give yourself permission to be aware of what you are experiencing, and talk about it. Both your immediate experience as well as the things that make up your identity as a person -- “use” yourself as part of your inductions and suggestions.