This first real post is difficult to write because I’m trying to explain myself to 2 different audiences: my fellow hypnotists and my fellow neurodivergents.
To my fellow hypnotists, the very idea of “crowd-sourcing” hypnosis probably sounds reckless, at the very least. But we have always gotten ideas about process from our individual clients, both by talking with them and by observing and working with their reactions - I’m just kind of doing this “in bulk”. And I’m not reinventing any hypnotic principles at all - I’m working within those established principles, within the “container”, but making modifications to smooth the experience for a specific group of people.
To my fellow neurodivergents, please feel free to correct me if my metaphors are clumsy - you have all taught me so very much, and I am trying to do right by your experiences.
I seem to do a lot of car and driving metaphors for some reason, so I happen to have one for this as well: we often use road and journey metaphors in hypnosis, so let’s consider the established hypnosis procedures and principles as “the road” - these never change, the road is the road. The client is the passenger (not the driver). And the induction, language and verbal techniques being used are the vehicle. Let’s say that the traditional neurotypical hypnosis journey is a 4-wheel drive vehicle. This vehicle glides pretty effortlessly down our road, takes the client into their trance state, progresses into their deeper states (I like to use Erickson’s term “Resource State”, suggested to me by one of our group who knew the word “trance” could be triggering for some of us), accomplishes what they want to accomplish, then emerges smoothly at the other end. If the road is a little rough in patches, this client barely notices.
Now let’s look at that same road through a differently designed vehicle - one that was created to run speedily down smooth stretches of pavement, has a low profile and stiffer suspension designed for a different type of driving, that may be jarred by even tiny potholes or rough patches, that suspension transmitting those bumps to the passenger, possibly leading to hypervigilance and guarding and less likely to be able to disengage the brain enough to relax into the trance state.
That’s the ride some of us who are neurodivergent have experienced with hypnosis.
So what I did was first was look at my own early reactions to being hypnotized and the difficulties I had. I started by recalling the episode with my father, where my interest in the process caused me to constantly emerge myself (that story goes that my father was using the hand levitation technique. My hand would start to rise and I’d notice it and internally go “WHOA, that is amazing!” and my hand would fall back down. He tried 3 times before giving up), and I thought I might have a pretty easy fix for that.
I created a mini-session I call Trance Practice and made it a free audio download. None of the language is designed specifically for neurodivergents (I started to craft that later), but I make clear that the session is just to “get bored with the process” of going into trance - this helps take care of the analytical, conscious mind-activating interest in the process itself, before the client attends a real session. I make it clear there are zero suggestions except for getting into the trance state becoming easier.
Now we get to the crowd-sourcing. Getting input happens all the time in hypnosis with individual clients - as we work thorough their issues we adjust and move on to whichever of our many possible processes suits the situation that is arising.
The difference here was that I had a bunch of people at the same time, and that instead of looking at the deep work part of the session, we were starting with the Induction. I first tweaked it a bit for my own knowledge of my neurology, but coming from both outside the session as an ND person, and inside the session as a hypnotist, I knew my personal take would be clouded by both perspectives.
I was presenting in an online community of autistic, ADHD, and AuDHD folks who were in the room voluntarily. I began by saying what my intent was - to present a session to relax and settle our systems and that I absolutely wanted feedback because I believed strongly in hypnosis as a modality and wanted to make it work the best it possibly could for our neurotypes. Everyone agreed and was pretty stoked about it, so I did a Stress Relief session, creating a personal Sanctuary Space. Then I opened the mics and the chat.
And thus I began to crowd-source Neurodivergent-Built Hypnosis.