The Trance

In many ways most attempts to help people change their lives have one aim. I think that psychotherapy, for example, really boils down to one thing. A variety of methods designed to help someone develop a more effective trance than the one their life experiences put them in. The next several posts will be about breaking these self-limiting bonds. If all you do is to learn to manage your trance better that’s quite an accomplishment. Your life will go much better. As for actually breaking the trance all together, that can be saved as a subject for later postings.

Over the next several posts, together, we will explore how the trance develops. We will also take a look at how each person, with help from our family, friends and society, maintains our trance and resists changing it. Even when the results of the trance are painful, it is my experience that people will fight to justify and keep their limitations.

After we have explored how the trance develops, we will explore more effective ways of managing the trance. We will see how it is possible to unlearn self-defeating patterns and create more joyful and successful lives. It is very important to learn better ways of managing our lives, so don’t rush through those pages. You will find information there that will allow you to improve your life circumstances. This applies even if you are already happy in your current status. I already began part of this process in the two earlier postings, ‘Passion the most Important Attitude’ and ‘Passion Part 2.’ If you have not yet read those, you can read them now and return to this page, or follow-up with them at another time. However, don’t neglect them, they have important information that will interest you and also prove valuable to you.

After we have reviewed how the trance develops, explored how we often fight so hard to maintain the trance, and have learned more effective ways to manage the trance, we will explore the possibility of breaking the trance altogether. The first series of postings (learning how our trance developed, and learning how to manage the trance) are grounded in my more than twenty years of formal schooling, and more than twenty five years of working as a therapist, as a teacher, a consultant to businesses, and as a professional speaker. In the later articles, we will consider how a perspective that includes an acknowledgement of humans as spiritual beings offers the possibility of creating more honest, joyful, healthy, energetic and fulfilling lives. Those ideas evolved over a twelve-year exploration in religious psychology in which the mysteries of the science of mind have been explored. These studies complement my work as a therapist very well. I developed a compelling interest in learning how life works at all levels. I wanted to understand the hidden as well as the obvious principles that operate in our life. As I have learned more I have included the new perspectives in my work with people and in my understanding of how life works. A hint: life works best when we are in harmony with universal principles.

The overall perspective evolved over the course of my adult life beginning in college, although of course, there were seminal moments earlier in my life. During my undergraduate days, I had a curiosity about hypnosis. I bought a book on self-hypnosis, and tried to learn how to do it. The results were mixed, and I was only able to create some minor, temporary phenomena. For example, at that time, Coca Cola was a favorite drink. As an experiment, I tried to find out if I could make it taste bad to me. Following the instructions in the book, I gave myself post-hypnotic suggestions. Once or twice, for a brief moment, the experiment seemed to work. However, the whole thing was taking up too much of my time and I stopped.

At about the same time, I was fortunate enough to take some classes that explored Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis, and Group Therapy processes. Those classes combined actual experiences of the procedures, as well as formal, academic instruction. From those experiences, I learned first hand three important truths: 1) Most people have very little awareness of how they are experienced by others; 2) Most people have only a limited understanding of their deepest beliefs about themselves, other people and life; 3) At any time, it is possible for someone to experience real personal change.

Eight years later, during a difficult time, I took an actual class in self-hypnosis and began to make significant changes in my circumstances. With the benefit of my current knowledge, I can see that the instructor had some misconceptions about hypnosis and the class was very simple. Even so, the results were powerful.

Later, that same year, I participated in a multi-day seminar that was part of the Human Potential movement in the late 1970’s. I recognized that the variety of techniques used was a blending of different types of group processes, including Gestalt Therapy exercises and psychodrama. In addition, some of the exercises were similar to those I had learned in the earlier self-hypnosis class. For me, the results were beneficial. I experienced positive changes in my career, income and personal relationships. Some of my colleagues at work noticed a difference and commented favorably, although I did not reveal I had taken a seminar.

When I began graduate school, the next year, I was introduced to ideas that were developed by therapists who had studied with Milton Erickson, M.D., the famed psychiatrist who developed his own unique methods and approach to therapeutic uses of hypnosis. After completing the necessary years of schooling and internships, and successfully completing written and oral examinations, by the State of California, I was licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist. Soon after, I acquired advance training in the clinical use of hypnosis.

While developing my private practice, I also began a career in vocational rehabilitation. My clients were people who had suffered industrial accidents. Some were so injured they could not participate in any attempts to return to work. The medical treatment available to them dealt mainly with acute injuries. There were very little services offered to help with chronic pain conditions. The system operated so that if someone was both too injured to return to work and too injured to participate in attempts to return to work their benefits were reduced or eliminated. Unless their doctor could develop a program to improve their condition, their disability payments shrunk to only $130. per week. This was an especially big problem for anyone with children to support. Many clients lost their homes and marriages.

This sparked my interest in researching ways to help these people who were falling through the cracks. I studied with some of the leading experts in chronic pain in the U.S. who were located in Southern California, and began teaching my clients how to use self-hypnotic techniques to both increase pain tolerance and to reduce the actual perception of pain. I combined this with family therapy. Sometimes the most dramatic improvements came as a result of changes in how the injured person viewed herself or himself, combined with changes in how their family viewed them. These are abbreviated explanations of what is actually a complex process, however, the point is that the changes were often dramatic and for the better. At the same time I was having these experiences, there was a growing interest in the medical world in what was being called the “Body Mind Connection.”

During the same period, to help one of my therapy clients, I found it necessary to become more acquainted with the literature on what was then called multiple personality disorder. I found it intriguing that the most effective treatments involved the use of hypnosis. Coincidently, one of my teachers in the management of chronic pain was also an authority on that disorder. I was invited to participate in a study group held at the University of California, Irvine, Medical Center, devoted to the study of MPD.


To my interest and amazement, I came across accounts of a patient who was allergic to something in one of his personalities but not in others. There was also a patient who was diabetic in one personality but not in others. These were startling physical changes that took place in seconds.

Out of these experiences I began to view all of us as operating in a trance of self-imposed limitations. I am not, of course, the first person to suggest this. Emerson, for example, described his contemporaries living ‘as if in a trance’ more than one hundred and fifty years ago.

I also want to acknowledge that the field of psychology is in a state of development similar to that of European mapmakers in the 1500’s and 1600’s. If you have seen those old maps, you know what I mean. Florida looks larger than the rest of North America, there are lots of unknown spaces, part of the outline of South America and Africa are recognizable, and the proportions are questionable. It was nothing compared to the global positioning satellites available for navigation today. The maps were, however, much better than having nothing at all. Despite the limitations, the European sailors were able to use those flawed maps to circumnavigate the globe. That’s kind of how we are today in understanding people. There are numerous theories about why people are the way we are. Some complement each other, and some are mutually exclusive. There are large areas in which we know little. Like the early maps of the world, they are much better than having nothing to go by. The idea is to learn to understand what works and with whom and when one map stops working, use a different one that helps you get to the next destination.

Psychological theories are opinions that can change as understanding increases. Opinions are created. Truths, on the other hand, cannot be created, they can only be perceived. I am not claiming to present the Truth with a capital ‘T’. While there may be some Truths contained in some of the ideas I present here, I know there are other ways to explain why we humans do what we do. Let’s agree that what people actually do are the facts, and our explanations for why we do them are fictions that help us understand. Here are some of the fictions that I have found most useful in my own life and in helping others.


In my next post we will begin our look at how the trance develops. As always, I invite your comments and any suggestions for future topics.