The human mind is extremely suggestible and is being bombarded constantly with suggestive stimuli from the outside, and suggestive thoughts and ideas from the inside. A good deal of suffering is the consequence of “negative” thoughts and impulses invading one ‘s mind from subconscious recesses. Unfortunately, past experiences , guilt feelings, and impulses and desires are constantly pushing themselves into awareness, directly or in disguised forms, sabotaging one’s happiness, health and efficiency. By the time one has reached adulthood, he has built up “negative” modes of thinking, feeling and acting which persist like bad habits. And like any habits they are hard to break. In hypnosis, we attempt to replace these “negative” attitudes with “positive” ones. But it takes time to disintegrate old habit patterns: so do not be discouraged if there is no immediate effect. If you continue to practice the principles taught by your therapist, you will eventually notice change. Even though there may be no apparent alterations on the surface, a restructuring is going on underneath. An analogy may make this clear. If you hold a batch of white blotters above the level of your eyes so that you see the bottom blotter, and if you dribble drops of ink onto the top blotter, you will observe nothing different for a while until sufficient ink has been poured to soak through the entire thickness. Eventually the ink will come down. During this period while nothing seemingly was happening, penetrations were occurring. Had the process been stopped before enough ink had been poured, we would be tempted to consider the process a failure. Suggestions in hypnosis are like ink poured on layers of resistance; one must keep repeating them before they come through to influence old, destructive patterns.
