Suggestibility

On June 15, 2021, I received a direct message (DM) from Billy Wehring. Last year, Billy graduated from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He earned a Bachelor's in Physics focused on quantum information theory—he is now teaching. Billy's DM read...

"Hello, and thank you for the follow! Your follow means a lot to me because you are one of my favorite entertainers and have my favorite newsletter. I'm not sure if you remember me, but about five years ago, we emailed back and forth a few times regarding learning body language and covert hypnosis skills. You sent me your book, but I couldn't afford your DVD lectures because I was starting college at the time. Either way, I wanted to thank you for the support of Robert's and my account with the follow!"

I sent Billy my DVD series on hypnosis as a gift (the series he couldn't afford as a college student)—I'm a sucker for flattery. We have had an ongoing email conversation about influence, persuasion, and body language since.

While talking about trance and how it's used to influence and persuade humans, Billy asked me, "What property of a trance state leads to suggestibility?"

Suggestibility is a phenomenon humans must understand to achieve their goals and get what they want without being taken advantage of along the way. We're all suggestible. We purchase brands based on recommendations from friends, plan vacations around ratings on TripAdvisor, and choose where we're going to eat by looking at Yelp reviews.

Suggestibility isn't "good" or "bad"—it just is. For example, it's great when your dad is influenced by a suggestion from his physician to exercise and eat better. It's not so great when your grandma is persuaded to give her life savings to a psychic.

In this article, I talk about trance. You may want to familiarize yourself with what trance is by reading Trance-form Your Communication... https://hypnosisforhumans.com/articles/trance-form-your-communication

Here's my email exchange with Billy on suggestibility...

Question From Billy: What property of a trance state leads to suggestibility?

Great question!

Let's begin with defining suggestibility so we're all on the same page. Wikipedia defines it well...

Suggestibility is the quality of being inclined to accept and act on the suggestions of others. A person experiencing intense emotions tends to be more receptive to ideas and, therefore, more suggestible.

Now, let's learn how trance leads to suggestibility.

Imagine there's a gateway that separates your conscious and unconscious minds—this gateway is called the critical faculty.

The critical faculty judges experiences received from your senses before they travel to your unconscious. For example, someone tells you that the sky is usually green. Your critical faculty labels that statement as "false" and passes it onto your unconscious. Or maybe someone tells you that physicists are sexy—you judge their belief as "accurate" and let it pass to your unconscious.

It's like the boundary between the United States of America and Canada. When you drive to Canada, you get stopped at the border to show your passport and answer a few questions. When trance is developed, it's like the border guards went on break, and you can just drive on through to Canada—the critical faculty diminishes, allowing statements to go directly to your unconscious without judgment. That is how suggestibility is developed.

Question From Billy: So during a trance, the critical faculty is not there, resulting in your suggestions going unobstructed to the unconscious. Is this because your critical faculty is busy with assigning meaning to information?

The critical faculty doesn't assign meaning—it judges. For example...

• Yes/No

• True/False

• Good/Bad

• Right/Wrong

The critical faculty can't be "busy" because it doesn't exist. It's a metaphor to help humans understand a mental process—an abstract idea.

"Bypassing the critical faculty" means that information circumvents the judgy part of your mind and travels directly into your unconscious. One way to slip information directly into the unconscious is to build rapport with the human(s) you're speaking with—they trust and like you. When you have a strong connection with someone, they tend to drop their critical thinking. This is why humans overlook the flaws of a new love interest and then begin to notice annoying habits when the infatuation starts to wear off—they allow the positive aspects of their new relationship to fill their minds while blocking the negative.

Here's a real-life example... I help humans learn to become confident when giving talks in front of large crowds. If I were to suggest to clients that they are no longer afraid to talk to a room of 1,000 humans, their critical faculty would likely judge my statement as "false" and reinforce their fear. However, if I bypass their critical faculty, I could place the suggestion into their unconscious without it first being judged. Their unconscious would likely carry out the suggestion the next time they needed to talk to a group.

There are endless ways to bypass the critical faculty—fear, excitement, surprise, confusion, relaxation, comfort, et cetera. Notice that the key to bypassing the critical faculty is changing a human's emotional state, AKA creating trance. It has nothing to do with the critical faculty being busy.

Question From Billy: How exactly do you "turn on" someone's critical faculty? What I mean is, if you have them in a trance, it'll probably be person dependent; what would cause someone to move out of a trance once they are in one?

You don't turn off or on someone's critical faculty—you bypass it.

Humans don't move in and out of trance—they move from one trance to another. Every emotion that you feel is a different trance. In the process of changing emotional states, your critical faculty diminishes. Different trances will have different effects on different humans. With each change of trance, humans have a moment of suggestibility—in other words, the critical faculty is bypassed.

How to Avoid Being Taken Advantage Of

To avoid being taken advantage of, commit to not making snap decisions. Instead, take some time to think. Suggestibility is state-dependent. When you extricate yourself from the situation, you avoid further attempts from other humans to persuade you. Give yourself time to analyze the situation and make better decisions.

For example, when you enter the showroom of a car dealership, the environment is designed to change your emotional state (AKA creating trance)—making you suggestible. The dealership wants to keep you there until you buy a vehicle because they know your suggestibility diminishes the moment you leave—along with their chance of making a sale. So go home, research the vehicle you're thinking of buying, and make an informed decision based on the facts and your wants and needs. I promise you that the dealership will still sell you the car the next time you visit, but you'll have the upper hand.