Brian Dean: Dispelling the Myth, Mystery, and Misconception of Hypnosis
Brian Dean is a certified hypnotherapist, who for twenty years was a voice-over actor. He did numerous television commercials, broadcast commercials, movie trailers, and industrial training films. Thirteen years ago while in Seattle working in a recording studio, Brian was approached by a hypnotist in the booth next to his and who had just happened to hear his voice. He commented that Brian would make a terrific hypnotist.
I looked at him like he was crazy. I had never given that a thought in my life.
About a year and a half later, Brian enrolled in a hypnotherapy-training institute here in Los Angeles, one of the best in the world. He received his first level of certification and later his bachelor’s in clinical hypnotherapy.
Brian insists that there is nothing about the voice or its tonality that makes a good hypnotist. It’s just an extra bonus since hypnosis is so clearly based in communication. Coming from a voice-over background is his explanation as to why people enjoy his voice so much. Even now, people recognize his voice from his years as a voice-over actor. Brian jokes and says his mother always said he had a good face for radio.
When you start telling your friends and your family that you’re going to be a hypnotherapist, they can’t grasp what that means. And the first thing that people think of is you mean the guy that makes people cluck like a chicken and bark like a dog? This is a myth that was created back in the 20s. And as it relates to hypnotherapy, nothing could be further from the truth, or represent the industry worse than that kind of comment.
Most people’s introduction to hypnosis is usually in an entertainment setting—not a clinical setting. When Brian is doing hypnosis for entertainment, he’s not working on a positive behavioral change. He’s just doing a demonstration of how the subconscious mind can interpret a particular suggestion and act it out in that person’s reality. However, in a clinical setting, Brian is actually there to do work—invoke a positive behavioral change of some sort, whether to stop smoking, lose weight, or manage stress.
Understanding hypnotherapy and how it works is just a very involved process. The subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between what is real or vividly imagined. If your subconscious mind accepts a particular suggestion, it has no choice but to act it out as your reality.
Daydreaming, reading a book, and watching a movie are all forms of intense focused concentration, creating images and pictures within your mind. So a hypnotic state is around us all the time, and is very natural. However, is everyone willing to allow a practitioner to guide him/her into a hypnotic state? One of the myths and misconceptions about hypnosis is that there is some sort of control that the hypnotist has over the subject’s mind. But, everything that occurs within hypnosis is within full control of the subject. So there is no mind control.
I can give you a suggestion to turn left, and you can say, “Yes, I’ll turn left.” But then I say let’s turn right, and you say, “No, I don’t want to turn right. I’m going to stay in park.” This small analogy demonstrates that in hypnosis you are in full control. You’re in more control in a state of hypnosis than you are in an alert, awake state because your attention is at an increased and focused level.
So, can anybody be hypnotized?
Yes, we all hypnotize ourselves. Will all people allow a practitioner to guide them into a hypnotic state? No. You have to be completely willing. It’s your decision, and you have to be in control of what happens.
There are different types of inductions, which are merely different processes of guiding somebody into a state of hypnosis—an altered state of consciousness in which the subject is never unconscious at any time—even though to the person watching, it may appear that the subject is unconscious. The eyes are certainly closed, but the subject can hear what the practitioner is saying at all times.
How do you hypnotize someone?
I use a progressive guided relaxation induction, which is wonderful for the physical benefits because it allows people to guide their body into a very relaxed state; and once the body is relaxed, the mind follows, making the mind very subjective to the powerful suggestions that I would offer. They would either choose to accept or reject them. However, there are other people that do require different inductions because their mind processes information differently.
One of the things that I do with people initially, working one on one, is called an intake. I address what positive outcome they’d like to have. Then, I do a trance assessment on them, guiding them into a state of hypnosis by immersing them or bringing them up at the end and being able to talk about the level of trance I was able to observe. Hopefully, that type of induction will work for them; if not, we’ll have to try another type of induction.
Brian specializes in helping people to stop smoking, to reduce stress, and to manage weight. Stress reduction cuts across every demographic in every life situation. All three of these areas are very popular.
I saw Brian on a cruise ship last March, and even though I had seen hypnotists in an entertainment setting as far back as high school, I was impressed at how the volunteers actually believed they were the outrageous personalities Brian had assigned to them. One man was turned into an uptight no-nonsense cop who was supposed to monitor all laughter. He became irate whenever the audience laughed. He threatened to arrest us all if we didn’t stop laughing. A young woman morphed so deeply into her new personality she mooned the audience. A grown man reverted to a child who got a boo boo on his finger and could have won an Oscar for his convincing portrayal as a 5-year-old. When they came out of their trance, they immediately reverted to their original personalities, each ignorant of their recent actions.
Once they accept that suggestion into their subconscious mind and they do believe it, their physical being has to act it out as if it is true because it can’t tell the difference.
Those of you who know me might find it hard to believe that I have a fear of public speaking. But to overcome my fear, I get my subconscious mind to accept and believe that I do not. Thus, I act out of my physical being as if I do not have that fear. That’s how I overcome my own phobias.
How do you tap into your subconscious mind?
Hypnosis allows us to bypass what’s called the critical factor of our conscious mind. We’re all working in our critical factor now–we’re analyzing, judging, sorting details and information. Our critical factor also sorts through and usually discards positive suggestions of change. Here’s the interesting thing about our mind. The negative suggestions have an open and free pathway right into our subconscious mind. Anything we hear that’s negative we immediately accept as true. However, the positive aspects of our lives we tend to question. So hypnosis allows us to bypass that critical factor, allowing an open and free pathway into the subconscious mind. Your mind then adopts four attitudes about any suggestion that I would give a client:
• I’m uncomfortable with that suggestion.
• I’m neutral.
• I like that suggestion; I’ll give it a try, and I hope it works.
• I like that suggestion; I know it will work.
Number 4 is the only attitude where power of suggestion of change will actually stay in your subconscious mind. Why our subconscious mind? Because that’s where all of our behavior is located.
If I tell somebody he/she is the world’s greatest piano player, and that person is playing incredibly—like he/she has been playing for 50 years—it’s because that suggestion has gone to that person’s subconscious mind. The person adopted the attitude “I like that suggestion; I know it will work.” The person has to act out in the physical being that it’s real. He/she cannot tell the difference. The same can be applied to smoking, overeating, and stress.
What advice do you give people who want to see a hypnotist, and more specifically, to lose weight?
One of the problems we’re faced with as Americans is that we’re always barraged with advertisements of magic little pills that will melt the pounds away while you sleep. This is just a con on the consumer. And we all want immediate results for taking no other change. We want to be able to pay $40, $50 for a bottle of magic pills where the weight will just fall off instantly. That’s not going to happen. Before you can actually lose weight or manage your weight, you need to understand the reason you’re overweight in the first place. Hypnosis is not appropriate in weight management for people whose weight issues are because of physiology, or changes in their metabolic rate. But if you’re simply an overweight overeater, and you know what puts weight on you, then you are a candidate. We can address that behavior to be able to change that.
My biggest clientele are people that have had gastric bypass surgery. Their physical but not their mental being has changed. Their behavior didn’t change prior to the surgery. I am working with those people to be able to change their outlook on how they view food. Typically, in 30-50 weeks, clients will be able to see some really long-term change. This is not a quick fix. People tend to see me last, because they have tried and failed at everything else. So when they come into my office, they say, “I sure hope this works. I’ll give it a try.” Their subconscious mind is interpreting it as failure.
The first thing Brian has to do is re-frame their thinking and belief system to invoke a behavioral change which will be something they will be able to carry with them throughout their life. It will not allow them to lose 20 pounds by the end of the month. There is no simple way out–this applies to smoking and stress management, too. Hypnosis is the tool that reinforces that change.
What are some of the taboos about hypnotists?
I think it goes back to people misunderstanding. I am thrilled to be answering this because I travel all over the world lecturing. And the first and foremost thing that I am out there to do is to get rid of myth, mystery, and misconception. The biggest misconception that people have about hypnosis is that I have a mysterious power and I am controlling people’s minds. Not true. When people fully understand that hypnosis is a natural state that we all go into naturally every single day of our lives, and as a practitioner, all I am doing with your willingness is allowing you to guide you into something that you do naturally. But most people go back to what television and the movies have portrayed hypnotists to be—that it is evil mind control. That’s the biggest stereotype that I have to overcome. All this does is breed fear and discredits our profession. Things that we don’t understand, we dismiss as fakery or evil—and it’s neither. My goal is to educate people and dispel that myth, mystery, and misconception.
How did you become so successful?
Belief. I live in a world of infinite possibilities. I have a belief system that is not boxed in. And the difference between people that fail, struggle, and completely give up, is completely based in their belief system. I’m very fortunate. I was raised from a child where my parents said I could do anything in the world I wanted to do. I took that as a belief when I was a little kid. The problem with most people is they either have such limiting beliefs or no beliefs in themselves at all. So until you have a strong empowering belief, you can’t ever accomplish goals.
Brian wants to get people that are 19-21 years old, that are coming into the world with very limiting belief systems, and be able to change that, reframe the way they’re thinking, and the way they view the world and themselves. He wants to show them that everything is a possibility.
Every major successful entrepreneur became that because they saw themselves as that before it even happened. One of my favorite stories was when Walt Disney wrote Open in Orlando, back in 1971—Walt died in 1965. His brother Roy was on hand to do the grand opening. A reporter said to Roy that it was too bad that Walt wasn’t there to see this. And Roy turned to him and said, “He did see this—that’s why it’s here.” That’s just a great example of being able to have a belief system that allows you to see something, and then make it a reality. I love that story!
To learn more about Brian Dean, visit www.doctortrance.com
Interview by Kaylene Peoples
