I wrote a paper.
I wrote a paper, even though I kinda feel like I have no right to write a paper. I didn’t go to college at all - I was already working professionally in my special interest field. I volunteered to study psychology or law and I had the grades and the extras to do it (National Honor Society, Georgia Certificate of Merit, Beta Club), but my father gave up music and first tried studying medicine and eventually went into law to please his parents, and he didn’t want that for me.
So maybe I don’t have a right to write any papers.
But the members of the neurodivergent community I’ve been doing hypnosis with - a very small portion of the whole, I readily admit - agree with me that they want this information out there. Somehow. We are all desperate for things that work, for things that provide some relief, for tools we can use. And I make no claims other than observations from tweaks and rewrites based on input from those members of that community who are directly affected by what I’m doing. And the results I’m seeing from those rewrites suggest to me - and to them - that hypnosis is an unusually effective modality for this community - and we are actually kind of excited about this!
Here are some of my/our observations that I documented in the paper, that I will break down further in subsequent posts:
Different processing styles and how that affects our experience
Curiosity about the hypnotic process can keep the mind too engaged in analysis
Surprises can cause guarding and emergence
Consent and feelings of control provide a very important sense of safety in the process
The high rate of traumatic experiences in this community must be taken into consideration
ND clients need to know specifically that movements in trance are allowed
Fears about “doing it wrong” inhibit the process
Offering more options - for inductions, emergence, creativity - is freeing rather than confusing
Group sessions - I do mine online - often feel safer at first (and can offer a “body doubling” effect) leading to better individual sessions
Literal interpretations of movement and sequence can mean that incongruities in metaphors or descriptions can pull focus
Numerical suggestions that seem vague to neurotypicals can cause neurodivergents to try to do the math
Imagining things kinesthetically before the session can help with metaphors during
Extended narrative imagery can increase, rather than decrease, cognitive load
Some metaphors using physical imagery or direction can map onto the body unintentionally, and can create physical sensations that may be off-putting
Some neurodivergent people have issues of either not breathing in trance or feeling like the hypnotist is attempting to control their breathing too much
Many of us are very uncomfortable with the idea of “being perceived” and there are ways to accommodate this
Singular words or concepts may create a block - the word/concept of “relaxation” can be one of these
And there are other things that we have known for a while, such as that the more “authoritative” and “direct” wording traditionally used in many session types often backfires with this group. They respond much better when presented with gentle requests - in other words, when suggestions are more literally phrased as “suggestions”.
Oh! And I have numbers! Over the course of 5 weeks containing 10 hypnotic system-settling group sessions, I asked for completely voluntary simplified SUDS numbers on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being feeling completely regulated and 10 being as dysregulated as they could imagine. They picked one number before and one after and shared both numbers in the chat if they wanted to. The number of attendees per session ranged from 13 to 24. About half of them volunteered numbers, and the average of the reported shifts was 3.76 points toward regulation. And a few people reported spontaneous pain reduction as well!
So, yeah, the hypnotist wrote a paper. She hopes someday some people may read it.
But until then, I’ll post some of the gist here on Substack.