I used to cry during hypnosis

Hi Mark,

At first, when I started listening to hypnosis from your site, I used to cry. After several times of using recordings, I developed a huge amount of resistance. I get stuck in the middle of the session and totally confused in terms of how to get through the recording. Please, enlighten me regarding this issue.

This question was submitted by 'Svetlana'

Mark says...

Hello Svetlana and thank you for writing in.

Certainly all our hypnosis downloads are positively orientated and solution-focussed. It's rare for anyone to cry or feel resistance to them, because they tend to feel overwhelmingly good for the majority of people. So, why might you have had that reaction?

(Please forgive me if I'm way off with any of this, but there might be something here that resonates with you.)

You don't mention which downloads you have been using. It might be that you are not ready to address the issue in question. Perhaps you need to wait a little longer and try again.

It might be that you have had the kind of therapy in the past that is predicated on focussing mainly on bad feelings and looking exclusively to the painful past, with the ideology that therapy has to be painful and hard. When people have had that kind of therapy, they sometimes become trained in feeling that that represents the therapeutic experience or 'should' represent it. My article, 'The Mad, Mad World of Psychotherapy', explains this a bit more; it's written more with practitioners in mind, but I hope you'll see what I mean when you read it.

It could be that you are used to being in control or wanting to feel that way all the time. Now, it's a myth that people have to lose control during hypnosis because, of course, the whole point of therapeutic hypnosis is to give people much more control in life. But sometimes it can take a little while for a person to relax conscious focus enough to let the unconscious responsiveness do its thing (although, of course, we all do this when we go to sleep at night).

Then again, sometimes people cry when they relax. If you have been really tense for a long time, then at first, until you get used to it, a release of tension can feel a little weird. Crying can sometimes signify a release in tension and soon stops once relaxation starts to feel normal once more.

I hope you can get what you need.

All best wishes,

Mark