Chronic illness involves forms of mental dysregulation to which we are attached.

“Our client’s problem is that they have lost rapport with their unconscious mind. Our job is to help restore that relationship.”
— Milton Erickson, psychiatrist & hypnotherapist

The biggest mystery of hypnosis is not that it works or what it can do, although ‌learning through induction is mysterious. The biggest mystery is why those people who need these skills resist learning them.

I have found that chronically ill clients do not have the self-regulatory skills that hypnosis employs. They reject the suggestion that they could learn these skills, and they actively and creatively resist the learning opportunities offered to them. For these people whose illness involves a lack of self-regulation, allopathic medicine promises an escape from needing to self regulate. Unfortunately, for certain chronic disabilities, this promise is an illusion.

In the next installment, I’ll examine how clients manifest this refusal to learn, why they do so, and some ‌suggestions to counter this resistance that others have put forward.

The mind-body

Justifying what’s unhealthy

Placebo

Hypnosis

Learning

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