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question: "I'm having difficulties being hypnotized. Will your hypnosis still be effective, as in changing subconscious programming?"

Marisa's answer: See, a lot of people get very caught up with, "I don't feel hypnotized. I'm not asleep. I'm not deep enough." I want you to forget all about that. It's really not important. Depth of trance is not linked to results at all. I hypnotize tiny children, always wriggling and moving around, in the lightest of all trances. And yet, they still get outstanding results. And other people go really, really deep, but it doesn't mean the results are any better. So don't worry about the depth of trance. Just know that it is effective. It's a repetition that's really, really going to help you because what your mind is doing is saying, "Oh yeah. I remember this. This is what I listen to every day." Your mind learns by repetition so playing that recording every single day will make it work. And don't get all caught up with, "Am I deep enough?" Just tell yourself, "This is working." And it will absolutely work.

question: "During the session, I wasn't able to lose control to let go, so I had no new memories coming back to me, but I worked on other situations. How can I go deeper into hypnosis? How can I make sure your sessions worked?"

Marisa's answer: You see, when you're dealing with the subconscious mind, here's the thing, the greater the conscious effort, the less the subconscious response. So when you're consciously trying to remember something, your subconscious doesn't take over. When you're consciously trying to relax, or trying to sleep, doesn't really work. You must let your subconscious come to the fore, by stopping all conscious effort. So next time, just say, "I'm letting this work. I'm letting it work. I'm letting it work." Don't try to come up with scenes because the more you're trying with your conscious mind, the less you're working with your subconscious mind. However, if you're thinking, "Well, actually nothing has come up," it's absolutely fine to go, "Well, I'm just going to choose a memory. I remember in my childhood, a day at school when I was really unhappy," or, "When I loved my grandparents, and they left." And you can look at old scenes, or you can look at issues you have and think, "I'm going to work on those anyway." Even if you think you're faking it with connecting with the younger child and changing them, the weird thing about faking it is that faking it is still a desire to go along with the therapist. And science has shown that, that desire to go along with the therapist actually means you get great results. So don't try. Don't worry. Just go with it. When I trained to be a hypnotherapist, I always say the same thing, "Deal with what emerges." That's the advice I give to my students all the time. Just deal with what emerges. If there's no scene, put one in there, or just focus. But you'll find that you will come up with scenes. Even if your scene is a photograph from your childhood, it's still a message. They're all messages from your subconscious. And also just give yourself time to get used to it. I promise you it will work. Maybe you are afraid of discovering something from your past, and you fear the pain that this particular event could evoke in you.

question: "How can I be fully present with the experience without reacting to the experience?"

Marisa's answer: Well, I'm imagining that you're talking about remembering a scene. So someone will say, in the hypnosis I'm remembering a scene where my mom hit me or my teacher was really mean to me. I was doing a session recent with someone who is remembering being in his crib while his mother actually really hit him hard. The thing is you've been in that experience. It's already happened. When you go back in hypnosis, you don't relive it. You review it. It's completely different. Reviewing a situation is not reliving it. If someone slapped you and you remember that you don't feel like you're being slapped. You can remember what that was like, but you're not going to relive it. You're simply reviewing it. So when you are present with an experience, remind yourself, I'm reviewing this experience. So I'm looking at it objectively to understand what it did to me, and to see how I can now change the interpretation. Because here's the thing. Experiences don't affect us. Events amazingly don't affect us, but the meaning we attach to that event, that is what affects us, the way we interpret an event. My mom didn't love me. She hit me. I deserved a better mom. That was horrible because my mom did hit me, and that I didn't deserve that, but she was really stressed, and she had a horrible childhood herself. And even though she hit me, I was the most amazing kid and I still am, and I didn't deserve that. So you look at scenes. You review them, you don't relive them. And then you understand of, and then you change the meaning. You change the interpretation. You don't go, "Well, let's pretend it never happened." You change your interpretation of what happened and that will change your whole life.

question: "How is it possible to overcome resistance? I've experienced no improvements from meditation, hypnosis, NLP, firewalks, seminars, subliminal tapes, nothing seems to work."

Marisa's answer: I occasionally have clients that are very proud of the fact that nothing works. I've done everything and nothing works because they have an underlying belief, nothing works. And you know how that your mind and your body will mirror what's going on in your mind. If you say that firewalk won't work. The NLP won't work. Meditation doesn't work. You are setting yourself up to make it not work. And that isn't your fault. It's very likely you've had a parent who said the same thing, "Oh, nothing works. All of these pills don't work. I can't get any pain relief because nothing works for me." And so, you need to go back and start saying this works, this works. We know that placebo works, a drug will work to the effect that you believe it's going to work. The effectiveness of a drug on a person has more to do with what they think of that drug than what the drug is, which is why some people can get high on nothing. Some people can take sleeping pills, think they're amphetamines and stay up all night, and vice versa. Because everything comes back to what you're thinking. So if nothing works for you, please start saying it works, it works. I'm making it work. It will work. I believe in this. I will make it work. Keep saying it. Keep saying it and it will work.But here's another thing, we change in three ways. Some people change like that. They have hypnosis, they go, I'm a different person. I just changed so much. A second type of change is that it creeps up on you. It's what we called cumulative. You don't even know you're changing. It's a bit like having a headache and thinking, "Oh, it's gone," but we don't really notice it going. And the third change is retroactive. You look back and think, "Oh wow, I didn't do that anymore. I didn't feel like that anymore." And other people want the first change, and they think this isn't working, I can't see a change. There is something called lag time. Like putting on your heating, your house may not warm up for 40 minutes, but it's getting warmer. And you may not notice these changes but I promise you they are taking place. Don't compare your change to anyone else's. Believe you are changing bit by bit. You have lag time. Tell yourself it's working and it will work, and don't compare it to other people because we all change differently. Remember this, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to get to the top of a mountain. It's when you get to the top your view is the same as the people who've got there before you. It's all the same.

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