Latest / The Hypnotist / Special Episode: Adam on the Open Loops Podcast

Transcript

Special Episode: Adam on the Open Loops Podcast · The Hypnotist

• 0:00
  Welcome to The Hypnotist, the show that gives you inside
• 0:03
  access to cutting edge hypnosis with real clients facing genuine
• 0:07
  issues. Brought to you by the
• 0:10
  hypnotherapist, demanded by celebrities, CEOs and even
• 0:14
  royalty. Adam Cox.
• 0:16
  These recordings took place live from Adam's clinic in London's
• 0:19
  world famous Harley Street. This podcast features powerful
• 0:23
  hypnosis, so do not listen while driving or operating machinery.
• 0:27
  This recording is not suitable for those with epilepsy or
• 0:30
  severe mental health issues, so get yourself comfortable and
• 0:34
  enjoy today's episode of The Hypnotist.
• 0:40
  Hi, it's Adam here and on this episode of The Hypnotist.
• 0:45
  It's going to be. Something a bit different.
• 0:48
  So I am quite often asked to be a guest on other people's
• 0:53
  podcasts and very rarely are they hypnotherapy specific
• 1:00
  podcasts. But at Hypnothoughts Live last
• 1:03
  summer where I was presenting, I met a podcast host called Greg
• 1:09
  Bornstein. And Greg has a podcast called
• 1:14
  Open Loops, and he talks to hypnotherapists, hypnotists all
• 1:20
  over the world about their specialism, their background.
• 1:25
  And a few weeks ago, I was on the Open Loops podcast and the
• 1:29
  episode came out yesterday. And I thought given some of the
• 1:34
  topics that myself and Greg were talking about, and it also goes
• 1:38
  into a bit more of my background learning psychology, struggling
• 1:44
  with anxiety, and some of the things that I don't normally
• 1:49
  cover in my podcast. Because what I'm sharing is my
• 1:53
  hypnotherapy that I'm doing with other people.
• 1:57
  This which is Greg's podcast that I'm about to share with you
• 2:01
  on, on my podcast, is him asking me questions about what I think
• 2:06
  about styles of therapy, different use of metaphors and,
• 2:13
  and really different elements of how I look at hypnotherapy and
• 2:18
  hypnosis. And I thought it's worth sharing
• 2:21
  this because the Open Loops podcast is mainly listened to by
• 2:25
  other hypnotists. But I think if you're interested
• 2:28
  in hypnosis and hypnotherapy, which you probably are, if you
• 2:32
  listen to my podcast, you might also get a lot of value from me
• 2:37
  being interviewed on his podcast.
• 2:39
  So it's called Open Loops. I'm going to put a link to his
• 2:42
  podcast in the show notes. And all I'm going to do now is
• 2:48
  have his podcast episode that follows.
• 2:51
  You can get to listen to that directly here without having to
• 2:55
  just click the link and go to that.
• 2:56
  But if you want to listen to other episodes on open loops,
• 3:00
  then that link is worth doing. So you can kind of check out
• 3:02
  those ones. Hope you enjoy the show.
• 3:05
  Let me know what you think of this style of episode where
• 3:10
  you're getting to know a bit more about me and my approach
• 3:13
  and my beliefs about therapy. If you like this kind of stuff,
• 3:17
  I'll happily share more of this kind of content.
• 3:20
  Equally, if you want me to just keep sharing my hypnosis
• 3:25
  sessions that I do for other clients, happy to do that as
• 3:28
  well. Feedback's always useful and you
• 3:30
  can put the feedback in the comments section on Spotify.
• 3:33
  There's a comments section, I don't know if there is on Apple,
• 3:36
  but there is on lots of podcast platforms.
• 3:38
  Or you can drop me an e-mail and that is Adam at adamcox.co.uk.
• 3:43
  But for now, this isn't a hypnotherapy session.
• 3:46
  It's me talking about hypnotherapy, which you might
• 3:49
  find useful. So hopefully you enjoy the
• 3:51
  session and let me know what you think.
• 3:56
  Today on Open Loops we have somebody who I am.
• 4:02
  It's a great honor to bring on to my show.
• 4:06
  I met him. He's one of the first people I
• 4:08
  actually spoke with this summer when I went to Hypno Thoughts
• 4:13
  Live in Las Vegas for the first time.
• 4:15
  And how lucky I was to to speak to this man, the host of the
• 4:21
  world renowned podcast The Hypnotist.
• 4:25
  We have Adam Cox here yes, the man at Hartley St. hypnosis in
• 4:30
  in London. I mean this is this is someone
• 4:33
  that really knows his stuff. The podcast for those that
• 4:37
  aren't familiar and we're going to get into it a little bit.
• 4:40
  He he interviews other hypnotist, but but more
• 4:43
  importantly and even more interesting, he shares the
• 4:50
  hypnotist side, his side of sessions.
• 4:54
  He does so you can hear none of the client stuff that's all
• 4:57
  confidential. You don't hear any of that.
• 4:58
  You hear the problems that are brought.
• 5:01
  And then he goes into he, he shares what he actually uses
• 5:06
  metaphors and, and interventions and all the the wonderful stuff
• 5:11
  that facilitates change, as well as something that we may have to
• 5:18
  dive into today with Adam. He loves nested loops and that's
• 5:23
  what this show is all about in a way, or to tribute to my love of
• 5:27
  loops. So I I'm definitely excited to
• 5:30
  get into that with him. Adam Cox, thanks so much for
• 5:33
  coming on the show. Greg, it's an absolute pleasure
• 5:36
  to be on the show. I I think what you do is great
• 5:38
  and you're looking forward to having a chat with.
• 5:40
  You likewise likewise, my friend.
• 5:42
  I, you know, I find it so interesting that you, I mean,
• 5:49
  you might say it's a controversial opinion, but but I
• 5:52
  was thinking to myself, I was like, oh man, am I going to make
• 5:54
  a dark joke about this guy's story?
• 5:56
  Early on? You were going to school for
• 5:58
  psychology, right? Especially.
• 6:01
  And you were at a point where you had some really negative
• 6:07
  experiences like, like, and, and this just makes me think that
• 6:12
  in, in general, why aren't therapists mentally stable
• 6:16
  people? How can you go to school for
• 6:19
  psychotherapy and, you know, not have tools that you need to
• 6:24
  actually function in the world? But you were in, and again, I'm
• 6:27
  not necessarily blaming your school for this, but you came
• 6:30
  from a dark background there or this background where you're
• 6:33
  studying this stuff supposed to better the mind.
• 6:36
  And of course, you land where I've landed as well, which is,
• 6:40
  wow, hypnotherapy, this mind technology stuff for rapid deep
• 6:45
  change was really a driver for you.
• 6:49
  Let's start there. Can you talk a little bit about
• 6:51
  what you found, what you were going through, and what was it
• 6:54
  about hypnosis that got you out of there?
• 6:58
  Yeah, that's a great question. So I started studying psychology
• 7:02
  when I was 18 years old. So I went to university living
• 7:06
  on my own for the first time. And there was just this kind of
• 7:09
  a series of unfortunate events. You know, I, I chipped my tooth
• 7:13
  so I had, I didn't have a dentist where I was living, I
• 7:15
  had a skin rash and all of these things made me very, very
• 7:19
  self-conscious. And what I did is I avoided
• 7:23
  people as a way to kind of mitigate that because I didn't
• 7:28
  really want people judging me when I had like a rash on my
• 7:31
  face and a missing tooth because it's like make first impressions
• 7:34
  count. So I kind of lost that ability
• 7:36
  to make early kind of social connections and then that kind
• 7:41
  of planted a seed of rewarding avoidance.
• 7:45
  So it went on to like a little sequence of ever increasing
• 7:49
  social anxiety until I became a recluse basically.
• 7:53
  So there I am, 1819 years old, don't know anyone in a town, you
• 7:58
  know, far away from my family and, you know, just kind of got
• 8:03
  lost in my own kind of thoughts, which were catastrophization and
• 8:07
  kind of some dark shit, basically.
• 8:11
  And yeah, I, I, you know, the irony didn't escape me that
• 8:14
  there I was doing a psychology degree, but anyone that's done a
• 8:17
  psychology degree knows how academic it is and how not
• 8:23
  practical. It also is like you learn about
• 8:26
  theories, you learn about psychologists and there's some
• 8:29
  interesting things that you learn about, but nothing like
• 8:33
  the closest you get to kind of any kind of therapeutic changes.
• 8:36
  Like a module on counselling, which for therapists, you know
• 8:40
  that counselling is on the the end of the spectrum where it's
• 8:44
  not really about intervention, it's more about listening and
• 8:46
  listening skills. So I was in a place where I had
• 8:50
  panic attacks and very high levels of anxiety, suicidal
• 8:56
  thoughts. But I knew I didn't want to keep
• 8:58
  those feelings, knew that if I went to a doctor and AGP that I
• 9:04
  would be very quickly put on, you know, kind of
• 9:09
  antidepressants or SSRIs and beta blockers.
• 9:12
  So I didn't want to be medicated.
• 9:14
  I just wanted to kind of fix this thing that I was
• 9:17
  experiencing. So I dove into all of the
• 9:21
  different kind of therapeutic modalities and I became a Guinea
• 9:24
  pig and wanted to test this shit on myself.
• 9:27
  And what worked for me was basically certain elements of
• 9:31
  CBT, some of the third wave CBT stuff, but mainly it was
• 9:34
  hypnotherapy and, and certain NLP techniques.
• 9:37
  That's what actually worked. So I'm an advocate for what I do
• 9:41
  because it completely changed my life.
• 9:43
  And I, and I feel like, you know, I'm a big believer in, you
• 9:47
  know, kind of the functional side of therapy.
• 9:51
  Like people don't want to spend money just talking to someone.
• 9:53
  They actually want change. And that's why I feel like
• 9:56
  hypnosis is one of those things that that's what it's designed
• 9:59
  to do. Yeah, well, I, I think it's very
• 10:03
  interesting because I've actually recently come into the
• 10:06
  position where in my life where I'm starting to rethink my path.
• 10:13
  And I, I, I know it's, it's very easy to talk about this with
• 10:18
  people with the hypnotherapy in the coaching space about, well,
• 10:21
  you know, man, I want to go and do this stuff and study this
• 10:25
  stuff and practice with people. And when you translate that to
• 10:28
  the real world that's out. And when I say by real world, I
• 10:31
  mean like the capitalist world out there that sort of looks at
• 10:37
  people like you and, and sometimes and goes like,
• 10:40
  especially in America, and they go like, well, I mean, that's
• 10:42
  not the career that we were teaching you, you should be
• 10:44
  doing. And, and what I mean by that is,
• 10:48
  you know, I can talk to my family and they go, well, Greg,
• 10:50
  you've always been interested in this therapy stuff.
• 10:53
  Go to work for, go to social work school, become a clinical
• 10:58
  psychotherapist. And that way you'll have the
• 11:00
  background. At the very least, you could go
• 11:02
  off and do this NLP and hypnosis stuff later.
• 11:05
  But here's the problem I'm having with this, Adam.
• 11:08
  I'm sitting there going like, yes, I get it, OK, I could get
• 11:11
  another degree. It probably could legitimize
• 11:13
  myself in the same way that hypnotherapist used
• 11:17
  certifications to do that. It doesn't necessarily mean
• 11:20
  they're functional at what they do.
• 11:23
  But I'm sitting here going like even that feels unethical.
• 11:27
  The idea of putting people through week after week of
• 11:33
  session, talking to me and getting paid to do it is just
• 11:40
  something about it feels wrong knowing these interventions,
• 11:45
  knowing the power of of what you can do and sometimes even one
• 11:49
  session. What do you say to that?
• 11:51
  What do you say? I mean, I don't feel like maybe
• 11:55
  this is controversial for you because I feel like you're you
• 11:57
  don't normally you might be above this controversial stuff.
• 12:00
  I feel like you are you function in that realm.
• 12:02
  But, you know, if you want to crap on therapy, do it.
• 12:07
  I guess what I'm asking is, yeah, what do you think about
• 12:09
  that? The idea that there are people
• 12:10
  out there? I mean, is there like almost an
• 12:13
  ethical position as a hypnotherapist that we have to
• 12:16
  take knowing that people are doing this kind of out?
• 12:20
  Gated talk therapy or is there a merit in it that we're missing?
• 12:26
  What do you think? I, I, I would use an, an analogy
• 12:30
  here in the sense that, you know, there's lots of foods that
• 12:33
  I don't like. I wouldn't buy, I wouldn't eat,
• 12:37
  but I wouldn't want a world where those things don't exist
• 12:39
  because someone else might like that food and they might want to
• 12:42
  enjoy that food. So for me, I don't think that
• 12:45
  counselling is that useful. I don't think like
• 12:48
  psychoanalysis is that useful. But for some people, if they've
• 12:52
  got belief systems built around, you know, that if they just talk
• 12:56
  enough, then that's cathartic and it's useful within the
• 12:59
  belief system makes that's a self fulfilling prophecy.
• 13:02
  It makes it work for them that they they say, Oh, I've got my
• 13:05
  therapist like that might be the the support that they need.
• 13:08
  They just need someone to talk to.
• 13:10
  Or it might be that there's some kind of presupposition that if
• 13:14
  you talk about your childhood enough that you're going to have
• 13:16
  some kind of breakthrough. So it's not for me, you know, in
• 13:20
  the same way that, you know, I wouldn't have chocolate ants,
• 13:23
  you know, as a, as a, you know, but equally, I'm not going to,
• 13:27
  you know, have, have a world where things aren't allowed.
• 13:29
  Because I think what's great is that people, people vote with
• 13:32
  their feet and they vote with their wallets.
• 13:34
  And, and if the world needs counsellors and they need
• 13:38
  psychotherapist and they need, you know, even, I mean, there's
• 13:42
  a lot of people that look down on things like homeotherapy and
• 13:44
  Reiki and those kind of things. But I think they're rooted in
• 13:47
  belief systems. Like if you have a strong relief
• 13:49
  system on the power of energy work or the power of essential
• 13:53
  oils, that itself means it can be a very effective modality
• 13:58
  for, for people, for some people who's music, some people it's
• 14:01
  recreational to drugs. You know, I think, I think it's
• 14:04
  great that we live in a world where people get to do what they
• 14:06
  want to do. And and for some people, you
• 14:10
  know, they they might want those kind of things that we might
• 14:13
  look down on as as hypnotherapist and say, yeah,
• 14:15
  but that's very slow. It's not effective.
• 14:17
  OK, fine. But they might figure that out
• 14:19
  later. You know, a lot of people go on
• 14:21
  a journey where they find the right kind of approach for their
• 14:25
  change. And for some people that isn't
• 14:28
  therapist, that's that's kind of certain social groups or it
• 14:31
  might be personal development, or it might be a good book.
• 14:34
  Doesn't have to be hypnotherapy and LPI just think I'm a big
• 14:38
  advocate of it because I've it's helped me and I've helped lots
• 14:42
  of other people. So, you know, I think I think
• 14:45
  it's great, but other people, if their belief systems are that
• 14:48
  it's all woo woo and nonsense and placebo, that it won't work
• 14:52
  for them because their belief systems prevent it from from
• 14:56
  helping them. Yeah, it's a very, that is a
• 14:58
  diplomatic answer, as I expected it might be.
• 15:02
  I mean, but but I also, I mean, I think it's a legitimate
• 15:05
  answer. It does make me I mean it's kind
• 15:09
  of like the whole, you know, I I'm not going to say equate
• 15:15
  hidden that there or or therapy with big pharma, talk therapy
• 15:19
  with big pharma, but it does. There are just times when I'm
• 15:22
  going, does there need to be more of an awareness?
• 15:25
  I mean, I don't know if you, well, let me ask you this in
• 15:28
  terms of the way you operate, you have your podcast, you,
• 15:31
  you're out there doing what you do.
• 15:32
  And I, and I do think that what you're doing is a testament to
• 15:36
  the idea of, OK, well, look, I'm not necessary like if you, I
• 15:41
  have no idea, I haven't listened to enough of your work.
• 15:45
  And I want to, to know if you know, in between certain
• 15:48
  episodes you're going like, and by the way, stop doing
• 15:51
  traditional therapy. And it ended it like if you're
• 15:53
  whispering that to people, I don't think you are.
• 15:57
  It's my intuition here. So if that's the case, then it's
• 16:00
  a great example of here's somebody who is finding
• 16:04
  something that works, but what, what you tend to focus on
• 16:08
  expands. So you, you keep focusing on it
• 16:11
  and doing it and it's magnifying.
• 16:12
  And that's why you have had as as much growth and abundance in
• 16:17
  your space as you have personally speaking at all the
• 16:20
  conferences and what not too. But is there ever a part of you
• 16:27
  that goes, I need to have an activist approach here.
• 16:32
  I I, I feel an imperative to help people that are mentally
• 16:38
  not there no more about this as opposed to these other quote UN
• 16:43
  quote less effective things. Or is that just totally out of
• 16:47
  your world view? Like how did you come to
• 16:48
  reconcile that? If, if, if.
• 16:50
  That is indeed what you're doing.
• 16:53
  So my, my thoughts are, is that it, it can, you can get the law
• 16:58
  of reverse effect. So if I, if I was this guy
• 17:02
  saying, you know, kind of psychoanalytical approaches, you
• 17:07
  know, these, these have been debunked.
• 17:09
  They're useless. Like it's, it's no good.
• 17:12
  Actually, it just makes me look like I have an agenda.
• 17:15
  My agenda is to help people create change.
• 17:17
  So actually, I think most people, they're on their journey
• 17:23
  and, and if someone wants to make a change there, there's
• 17:26
  certain things like if someone's going through bereavement, for
• 17:29
  example, counselling might be very helpful for them just to
• 17:32
  talk, talk through where they're at, you know, and if someone has
• 17:36
  depression, you know, maybe certain, certain kind of, let's
• 17:41
  say tapping therapies and, and things like that, that might be
• 17:44
  really, really useful for them. And I, and I just think if you
• 17:49
  look in any other aspect of life, let's say someone thinks
• 17:53
  that a certain genre of music is the best, actually, they don't
• 17:57
  have to convince everyone else that every other genre of music
• 18:00
  is inferior. All they have to do is be an
• 18:03
  advocate for their genre of music.
• 18:05
  You know, So I'm not going to shit on any other therapy
• 18:08
  because I think that people, in the same way that there'll be
• 18:11
  some music genres that you like and don't like, that's the
• 18:15
  journey that you're on. And when something resonates
• 18:17
  with you, you're going to, you're going to stick with that
• 18:20
  because it, it gives you something that, that you need.
• 18:24
  And by having my podcast and YouTube channel, some people
• 18:27
  that I've actually ended up, you know, being the, the therapist
• 18:31
  and, and them as a client, they've said they've been
• 18:33
  struggling with something for like 10 years, but then they,
• 18:36
  they, you know, my bit resonates with them and it helps to give
• 18:39
  them some kind of a breakthrough.
• 18:41
  That's great. And I think, you know, as
• 18:44
  hypnotherapist, we need to put more of our stuff out there
• 18:46
  because it, there's too, there's still too many misconceptions,
• 18:49
  there's still too much ignorance, There's still not a
• 18:53
  dominant modality. People would look at
• 18:55
  psychotherapy, which basically means CBT and, and, and certain
• 19:00
  kind of more traditional psychotherapeutic, probably
• 19:03
  parts of counselling in that as well.
• 19:05
  Hypnotherapy is kind of like, in my experience, rarely the first
• 19:10
  thing that people will use to deal with an issue.
• 19:14
  They'll have tried everything else and then they're like, oh,
• 19:17
  I've got nothing to lose now I'll try this thing.
• 19:20
  You know that that is changing. I've I've seen that change.
• 19:22
  But still, for a lot of people, it's either, you know, they're
• 19:26
  desperate and they've tried other things and then they give
• 19:28
  this a go, or it is because they know someone that's had a good
• 19:32
  experience and then they have that, that kind of referral or
• 19:36
  kind of introduction to it because the social proof is
• 19:38
  already there at that point. And what, what's happening there
• 19:41
  is that they're coming in with a level of belief or conviction.
• 19:45
  And, and I think as therapists, we've, we need to use every,
• 19:49
  every kind of element that we can.
• 19:52
  Prestige, placebo convinces, social proof, reputation,
• 19:58
  everything. Because all of that, you throw
• 20:02
  it into the mix and it can, it can add to the efficacy of
• 20:06
  change. And if we can help people
• 20:08
  change, then they become advocates for us.
• 20:10
  I've had so many clients because my previous clients have
• 20:13
  recommended me to new people. Well, that that creates a ripple
• 20:17
  effect. You know, a good therapist
• 20:19
  doesn't have to look for clients because your clients become your
• 20:22
  marketing. You know, it's, I think it's a
• 20:24
  wonderful thing. So we don't need to knock the
• 20:26
  other stuff. We just have to really be
• 20:28
  passionate about doing our thing, yeah.
• 20:31
  Do you wear a suit when you do your sessions?
• 20:33
  I used to. I used to because I, I felt that
• 20:37
  in the early days, certain certain beliefs would be
• 20:44
  attributed to unconscious things like the quality of my suit, you
• 20:49
  know, the, the brand on the tie. You know how expensive my watch
• 20:52
  was. The fact that I was in Harley
• 20:54
  Street, a very prestigious location for me, I, I just put
• 20:57
  that into the, the, the category of prestige.
• 21:00
  And it meant that when I was a very inexperienced therapist,
• 21:05
  the prestige got me so far down the journey.
• 21:10
  So that that trust was already there.
• 21:13
  That credibility was already there.
• 21:15
  These days I, I don't wear suits in all honesty, even at
• 21:19
  conferences, I really, I might wear a blazer, but I don't
• 21:21
  really wear suits because I feel like it was almost kind of like
• 21:26
  a post hypnotic suggestion for myself.
• 21:28
  It was like Dumbo's feather that if I wear the suit, that's my,
• 21:31
  that's my suit of armour to put me in that particular state.
• 21:35
  I honestly don't feel like I need that, that suit now.
• 21:37
  So therefore it would just be just be for for show or status
• 21:42
  and I I don't feel like like I need that.
• 21:45
  It's so interesting. I, I was going to say the one
• 21:47
  time I've had a, a, a mental health session in England,
• 21:55
  someone that I knew was studying abroad there, I went to visit
• 21:57
  them and they're like, Hey, you know, my therapist told them
• 22:01
  you're dealing with OCD stuff, which I was deeply in my 20s.
• 22:06
  Not that I'm over it now, but, but it was very severe then.
• 22:10
  And they said, like, look, my therapist will meet you free.
• 22:14
  They'll, they'll, they'll, they, this guy just wants to meet you.
• 22:16
  And I went into this building up the stairs.
• 22:20
  This guy was in a full suit. I'd never, I've never seen a
• 22:24
  therapist in New York City wearing this nice suit with a
• 22:28
  tie. And I have to tell you, I I
• 22:31
  mean, in addition to just being, you know, I think in general,
• 22:37
  interestingly enough with with all the kind of stereotypes of
• 22:41
  like in the UK, yeah, no one lets out their emotions.
• 22:45
  Yeah, OK. But you seem to the, the being
• 22:49
  top of hypnosis and and LP like definitely ahead of the US in
• 22:55
  terms of accepting these things. So interest interesting twist
• 22:59
  there. And and it proved again, this
• 23:02
  guy was just like very effective, a very effective CBT
• 23:05
  based therapist that helped me. But I do think the suit made a
• 23:10
  difference. It was like a little bit of
• 23:13
  something that I'm like, oh man, Adam works at Harley Street.
• 23:17
  Like if he's not wearing a suit I'd be shocked.
• 23:20
  I actually am a little surprised that like yet you, you don't do
• 23:23
  it still. But but I guess that kind of
• 23:26
  dovetails into this question, which is what do you think you
• 23:31
  are consciously? Maybe you're not consciously at
• 23:36
  this point. What, what do you think you are
• 23:37
  bringing to the table in terms of the kind of hypnotherapist
• 23:43
  you are these days? Are you someone that is very
• 23:46
  chameleon like, like if you have someone that's more Catholic,
• 23:50
  are you going to start kind of adjusting your approach to use
• 23:53
  some of that lingo to, to model them one of those like do
• 23:57
  whatever it takes type of therapist that changes
• 24:00
  everything to reflect the beliefs?
• 24:02
  Or do you have some kind of, you know, do you find yourself
• 24:05
  floating a little more Ericssonian?
• 24:07
  I know you mentioned nested loops like.
• 24:09
  What do you what do you find yourself bringing to the table
• 24:12
  if you had to put a description on it?
• 24:15
  Yeah, No, I think, I think it's a great question.
• 24:17
  And just on the suit, you know, I've got, I've got a rack of
• 24:20
  very expensive suits that it almost seems a tragedy that I'm
• 24:23
  not putting them to you. So maybe I'll do some more video
• 24:25
  content so I can kind of, yeah, get some more mileage out of
• 24:29
  those suits. But, but I think in, in terms of
• 24:31
  the, the style, I would just say calibration and sensory acuity
• 24:38
  are just two very vital ingredients into a good
• 24:42
  therapist. And I don't think you have to
• 24:45
  necessarily mimic the, the, you know, the accent or the tone,
• 24:49
  but there's certain things that just kind of help to build
• 24:52
  rapport generally. And I think that in terms of
• 24:57
  labels, I think quite often labels of kind of Ericssonian or
• 25:03
  authoritative or traditional or whatever it might be, I feel
• 25:09
  like why would you create limitations on your ability to
• 25:14
  work with clients? Like why, why, Why give yourself
• 25:18
  a box that you don't need to have?
• 25:20
  Yes. And, and clients don't care
• 25:22
  about this stuff. They don't say I'm looking for
• 25:24
  an Ericssonian therapist. They just say I'm looking for a
• 25:28
  hypnotherapist or I'm looking for a therapist that can help
• 25:30
  me. Can you help me?
• 25:31
  And I think if you, if you kind of become too attached to a
• 25:35
  modality or a style and that kind of stuff, one, it gives you
• 25:41
  less choices rather than more. And part of what attracted me to
• 25:46
  NLP was this idea that the more resources you have and the more,
• 25:49
  the more choices you have, the more flexibility you you have in
• 25:53
  your life and your options. Therefore, why know that and
• 25:56
  believe that and then give yourself less choices and less
• 25:59
  options. That seems, you know, ironic in
• 26:02
  in many sense. So I would say I'm a big
• 26:06
  believer of, and it might sound like a weird reference, but if
• 26:10
  you remember Star Trek, there was this kind of enemy called
• 26:13
  the Borg. And what the Borg did was kind
• 26:15
  of try and synthesize and, and kind of extrapolate anything of
• 26:20
  value and then integrate it into its, it's kind of world view.
• 26:24
  So if I, if I see an approach that I think is, is very
• 26:28
  effective or useful, I'm thinking, right, can I build
• 26:31
  this into my style of hypnotherapy without attaching
• 26:35
  labels to it, without attaching, you know, kind of certain
• 26:40
  approaches? And I think the people that
• 26:41
  really get obsessed with modalities and structures are
• 26:49
  the trainers because they've got a vested interest in having
• 26:53
  their approach be the right approach, particularly if it's
• 26:56
  these kind of catch all approaches that say, right, it
• 26:58
  works for anything. Well, now what you're doing is
• 27:01
  you're trying to put the client into, to force it into your
• 27:05
  funnel, into your, you know, acronym, your modality,
• 27:09
  irrespective of what the client is actually going to benefit
• 27:11
  most from. That's a disservice to the
• 27:14
  client. So I'm a big believer that, you
• 27:17
  know, as therapist, if we can take anything of value from any
• 27:21
  other kind of approach that works and integrate that into
• 27:23
  how we work and our style, we're going to be better therapists.
• 27:27
  And the better therapists we are, the better value we can
• 27:30
  create for our clients. So I, I wouldn't really say, you
• 27:33
  know, there's certain things that I love.
• 27:35
  You know, I love metaphor, you know, I love nested loops.
• 27:38
  I love levels of disassociation. I love past therapy.
• 27:41
  I like doing in a child work. I've used past life regression,
• 27:45
  but I'm not going to say, oh, I'm, I'm a metaphorical
• 27:48
  Ericssonian hypnotist. Why?
• 27:50
  Because there's so many other stuff that I love doing as well.
• 27:53
  I love the work of Gordon Emerson in terms of resource
• 27:56
  states therapy. And, and before that he was a
• 27:58
  big advocate of ego state therapy.
• 28:00
  I think, I think there's some amazing stuff there.
• 28:03
  But equally I wouldn't want to attach and say, right, you know,
• 28:06
  I'm, I'm the resource state therapy guy in the UK.
• 28:09
  Like why? Because there's so many other
• 28:10
  cool stuff that I get to do just by being this kind of chameleon.
• 28:14
  I think you use the word and I, I, I, I like that word.
• 28:16
  I think it's, it's great. Like a shapeshifter hypnotist.
• 28:19
  I think is is a great archetype to to yeah step into.
• 28:25
  Oh, I love that. The shapeshifter.
• 28:27
  That is good. That is good.
• 28:29
  Yeah. I, I, I certainly wonder about
• 28:35
  also, I mean, I think there are within that there are certain
• 28:40
  fall backs. Obviously you can find on.
• 28:42
  I know that some people describe themselves to that, but they
• 28:45
  find themselves just doing a lot of parts therapy work.
• 28:48
  In your case, I know you do a lot you you go to root cause a
• 28:52
  lot. What is?
• 28:55
  So let me hear your take on that.
• 28:57
  I'm curious about this cuz I guess it kind of goes back to
• 29:00
  what you were learning in the world of academic psychotherapy
• 29:05
  too. When I started early on, I
• 29:10
  trained with Jeffrey Stevens, the late Jeffrey Stevens who was
• 29:13
  a direct hypnotist advocate. And he was also of the also
• 29:19
  recently passed Jonathan Chase school of thought that well, if
• 29:22
  you just, there's certain people, you can say you're a
• 29:24
  non-smoker now and boom, you're a non-smoker.
• 29:28
  And the imaginative part of me goes, yeah, why shouldn't that
• 29:32
  be the case? Hypnosis, you're changing their
• 29:35
  wiring. Therefore, you could do a direct
• 29:37
  suggestion and boom. And then when I found out as I
• 29:41
  started digging deeper into some of these direct hypnotist work,
• 29:44
  that their work and and the results that a lot of times, if
• 29:48
  you weren't going to cause or really get into that root, then
• 29:52
  eventually the stuff would fade over time.
• 29:58
  Do you do you? Is that always the case that you
• 30:02
  found? Is is it just the most effective
• 30:05
  way of getting at change? Like what it what is the
• 30:07
  philosophy of root cause mean to you?
• 30:10
  And, and I'd love you to put that against some of the direct
• 30:15
  hypnotist school of thought. Yeah.
• 30:18
  So I think, you know, there's a lot of therapists I really
• 30:22
  respect the really mock the root cause, you know, kind of thing
• 30:26
  because they're like, well, there's, there's too many things
• 30:28
  that could be the root cause of it.
• 30:30
  How could you possibly get to the root cause?
• 30:33
  And, and I don't think you need to actually get to the specific
• 30:36
  point of inception because a lot of people with phobias, for
• 30:40
  example, they don't know like they could have been two years
• 30:43
  old and a spider comes out of, you know, toy blocks and they
• 30:48
  freaked them out. They don't remember that.
• 30:50
  So you can't always get to the the root cause, But there is
• 30:53
  value in going to a point and, and saying, well, look, there
• 30:58
  was a time when this thing wasn't there.
• 31:00
  So therefore you've definitely got the neural pathways to have
• 31:03
  a, a different way of operating. There had to have been a point
• 31:07
  of inception that from that point onwards, something
• 31:10
  changed, which in all honesty was probably the a coping
• 31:14
  mechanism to something, you know, awful.
• 31:17
  Sometimes it's fucking obvious, like if someone was raped, you
• 31:21
  know, and then at that point onwards, you know, they're binge
• 31:24
  eating because they at some level want to make them less
• 31:27
  desirable to predators. Like it's fucking obvious what
• 31:30
  the root cause there. And if someone I've worked with
• 31:32
  so many phobias, the phobic clients and it's just kind of
• 31:36
  like they can recall like the neighbour's dog, like jumping up
• 31:39
  and barking at them. And when I asked them like,
• 31:42
  well, proportionate to your height, how how much bigger was
• 31:45
  the dog? And they're like twice my size.
• 31:47
  So it's like, OK, that's the equivalent of a bear for an
• 31:49
  adult male. Like, of course you would be
• 31:52
  terrified at that particular point.
• 31:54
  So sometimes there is value in going to the the root cause
• 31:58
  because what you know, and I use, I use this phrase which sow
• 32:03
  seed of doubt. I say, well, it's highly likely
• 32:06
  you created a belief at that point to make sense of what
• 32:09
  happened. But what if 1 + 1 equal 3?
• 32:12
  And I want, I want them to acknowledge the possibility that
• 32:15
  the belief that they created in that moment, it wasn't true and
• 32:18
  certainly isn't useful because then if we change the belief and
• 32:22
  a lot of the times, like the root cause, like that's already
• 32:25
  happened in the past. So what actually happened is
• 32:28
  almost immaterial. But if it led to a belief system
• 32:32
  and that belief system is still with them now, actually, that's
• 32:35
  the bit that you want to change. And although I like working with
• 32:39
  kind of, you know, particularly with people with trauma, you
• 32:42
  know, they, they do recall the very moment that this thing
• 32:46
  freaked them out. Maybe it was someone, you know,
• 32:48
  in the military and they saw their friend get blown up.
• 32:50
  Or maybe someone was doing a presentation and they had a
• 32:53
  panic attack live on stage. Like sometimes, sometimes there
• 32:56
  is a reason why things happen from that point onwards.
• 33:00
  Sometimes there isn't. I'm a big advocate of Robert
• 33:04
  Dilt's logical levels. And you know, it's kind of like,
• 33:08
  well, if you just say right, you're a non-smoker.
• 33:12
  It's not saying you have no desire to smoke.
• 33:14
  It's saying you're a non-smoker. They're trying to make a shift
• 33:16
  at the identity level of the logical levels.
• 33:21
  Or it might be a suggestion that links to values like you no
• 33:25
  longer value smoking. You don't need to smoke anymore
• 33:28
  because you value your health and, and well-being much more
• 33:31
  than you ever do the temporary gratification of, you know, of a
• 33:35
  cigarette. So then what you're doing is
• 33:36
  you're working at the the values level where it might be the
• 33:38
  belief level. What a lot of, I would say,
• 33:43
  beginning hypnotist tend to do is they give suggestions at the
• 33:47
  behavioural level. What if the behavioural level is
• 33:51
  a consequence of the belief or the values of the identity that
• 33:54
  come up before that? Well then you could say, well,
• 33:57
  operating at the identity level is the equivalent of a root
• 34:00
  cause because everything flows from that level outwards.
• 34:06
  So again, I would say there's value in this, particularly with
• 34:10
  phobias like you want to get to the point.
• 34:12
  I asked clients to prepare for the first session of a phobia by
• 34:16
  thinking about three key memories and and it's first,
• 34:20
  worst and last. So, and I say the first doesn't
• 34:23
  have to be when it all started. It's just the first memory you
• 34:26
  can remember of this particular anxiety.
• 34:29
  And the worst is the the most intense it's ever been and the
• 34:32
  last is the most recent. And all I'm going to do is model
• 34:36
  the strategy of not what or why, but how, how do they, how do
• 34:40
  they get themselves to that point of freaking out?
• 34:43
  Because it's a recipe. And those three memories are
• 34:46
  going to give me everything I need to figure out what it is.
• 34:49
  And it normally is how the thing looks, how it's moved,
• 34:52
  proximity, you know, their choices as to how they can
• 34:56
  navigate away from whatever this thing is.
• 34:58
  Like you see patterns over time, but the idea that you have to
• 35:03
  kind of get to the root cause isn't true.
• 35:05
  What is helpful though, is that a lot of clients have this idea
• 35:09
  that you need to deal with the root cause.
• 35:12
  So there's this lovely phrase that I have and I say, I'll ask
• 35:15
  a client, I'll say, what's the biggest tree in your garden or
• 35:18
  in your neighborhood? And they make a picture of it in
• 35:20
  their mind. And I say, how difficult would
• 35:23
  it be to take that tree out by the roots?
• 35:27
  Bear in mind, this is the biggest tree in their, in their
• 35:29
  garden or their neighbor. It's impossible.
• 35:32
  And I said, but if we could go back in time to the point where
• 35:35
  this tree was a tiny sapling, how easy would it be to get the
• 35:39
  tree out by the roots then? And they're like, oh, easy.
• 35:42
  You could just do it with one hand.
• 35:44
  And I'm like, right, well, I think we need to go back to the
• 35:46
  point where this belief was created because we can get it
• 35:49
  out by the roots then. They're already on board.
• 35:51
  I've paced where they're at. I've given them a metaphor that
• 35:54
  seems something's impossible and now it's possible.
• 35:59
  And because they buy into that, now when we do regression,
• 36:03
  regression to cause, it's more likely to work because I've
• 36:05
  primed them in a particular way. So for, for me, it's not like
• 36:09
  why be a slave to, you know, I'm a root cause therapist.
• 36:12
  It's like, no, it can. It can work really well with
• 36:14
  certain clients. That is the best root cause
• 36:18
  metaphor I've ever heard. Holy moly.
• 36:20
  It's right there too. Wow, that okay?
• 36:24
  That was good. That was good.
• 36:25
  If you're listening, that was gold.
• 36:28
  So good. Yeah, love that Adam.
• 36:32
  Holy moly. Thank you for that.
• 36:35
  You know, he's going to as I was thinking, my brain is going in
• 36:39
  so many different directions, which is probably by nature.
• 36:42
  In this interview, I want to ask you something that's a little,
• 36:47
  let me ask you this a little off the beaten path perhaps.
• 36:50
  But you know, as you were talking about logical levels, I
• 36:53
  started thinking about these hypnotists that invent new
• 36:58
  processes where they're like, OK, we're going to hit them at
• 37:01
  the behavioral level. Then we'll hit the values, then
• 37:03
  we'll hit the identity and then we'll do like a full scan.
• 37:05
  And and you know, they look, there's a lot of wildly, I mean,
• 37:08
  you know it. We saw in him the thoughts live.
• 37:10
  If you look at the roster of any hypnosis conference, the fact
• 37:14
  that there can still be hypnosis conferences, the fact that this
• 37:19
  can be beyond science into art. And I really do think this is an
• 37:24
  art form as much as it's of science makes me go, wow,
• 37:31
  there's so many possibilities. You obviously, look, you've got
• 37:34
  a very tight running business going on with, with working with
• 37:40
  people. I'm sure, I'm sure there are,
• 37:43
  you know, processes in place and and helping, helping people with
• 37:47
  hypnotherapy is enough of a job with, with even if you were just
• 37:52
  like Greg, I'm the parts therapy guy, you could spend the rest of
• 37:54
  your career really making a lot of profound changes doing that.
• 37:58
  Do you ever get a chance to experiment?
• 38:00
  Do you play around with it? Do you have like the off office
• 38:03
  hours where you're like, OK, come in, let me toy with this
• 38:06
  new process? I mean, I'm sure you might get
• 38:08
  some of that in sessions. But I wonder when it comes to
• 38:11
  things that might be even dramatically different or you
• 38:15
  hear of a new process, you're like, OK, what if I hit him at
• 38:17
  this level? And at this level, I mean, what
• 38:20
  it what is that side of you? How do you honor that side of
• 38:24
  yourself that maybe wants to tinker around if if it's outside
• 38:28
  the bounds of of what you've built for yourself?
• 38:31
  Yeah, So an amazing question. I I think that one of my core
• 38:35
  values is innovation is experimentation.
• 38:39
  And when, and it's about five years ago now, but when the
• 38:44
  pandemic came along, I was in Harley Street, had very
• 38:46
  expensive rent, quite a prestigious address, But I, I
• 38:50
  cancelled that contract at Harley Street because I knew I
• 38:54
  wouldn't be seeing clients. And that's the very time that I
• 38:56
  created the hypnotist podcast. And, and I had two main
• 39:00
  intentions when I set out to do that.
• 39:03
  One was to experiment and attempt to be a pioneer in some
• 39:11
  way in the world of hypnosis. Like that was the intention.
• 39:15
  I also had had an intention to make an impact and I set the bar
• 39:19
  so low it would be impossible to fail.
• 39:22
  The, the intention was with the podcast.
• 39:24
  If I can make one change to one person's life, then the podcast
• 39:28
  is a success. That's a very, very low bar, but
• 39:33
  it means I'm guaranteed to win. And, and, and, and I like these
• 39:37
  things of feeling like, well, you know, I did it in the first
• 39:40
  couple of weeks. And from that point onwards,
• 39:42
  it's just kind of everything is kind of letting your winners
• 39:45
  ride. But in, in the, in the sense of
• 39:47
  the innovation. I had a lot of experience doing
• 39:51
  weight loss hypnotherapy at the time that I launched the
• 39:53
  podcast. I'd recorded my voice in all of
• 39:56
  those sessions. So I started putting them out
• 39:58
  there, but it got too repetitive because a lot of these weight
• 40:02
  loss hypnosis were very similar to each other.
• 40:04
  Now I know that you know you can have the same.
• 40:08
  Kind of process, but introduce one new metaphor, you know, you
• 40:12
  know, change the chronology of a few things.
• 40:14
  It sounds entirely different. But back then they were, you
• 40:17
  know, quite formulaic. So I thought, right, I needed
• 40:19
  new stuff, but it was a lockdown.
• 40:21
  So I'm watching movies and I watched, I watched a very weird
• 40:27
  TV show, science fiction TV show on Amazon Prime called Tales
• 40:31
  from the Loop. And it had some fascinating
• 40:35
  storylines. Like there was this sphere that
• 40:38
  if you look into, you could then see your future stuff.
• 40:41
  And I'm like, this is timeline stuff.
• 40:43
  And it had this kind of body swap thing.
• 40:46
  And I'm like, oh, OK, this is changing perception.
• 40:50
  And it had this other storyline where you could freeze time and
• 40:52
  navigate around that. So each of those episodes of
• 40:55
  Tales from the Loop, I created a brand new hypnosis session
• 40:59
  inspired by that. It just wasn't a very popular TV
• 41:02
  show. So it was amazing for me because
• 41:04
  it gave me this ability to play with kind of perception and time
• 41:08
  and, and all of this stuff. What really helped the podcast
• 41:11
  grow was that I watched the movie Limitless with Bradley
• 41:14
  Cooper and and Robert De Niro. And I think the concept of you
• 41:19
  take a pill like NZT and then you tap into more of your
• 41:22
  brain's potential. Secretly, most hypnotherapists
• 41:25
  are in hypnotherapy because they they subscribe to that idea that
• 41:29
  we can get more out of who we are.
• 41:31
  So I thought, right, let's use NZT as a metaphor and certain
• 41:35
  elements of the storyline, like straight after Bradley Cooper
• 41:39
  takes takes this pill, he tidies his his flat.
• 41:43
  Why? Because if you've got unlimited
• 41:45
  resources, being organized and intentional helps you get more
• 41:49
  out of those things. Well, that's as true for someone
• 41:52
  taking NZT as not taking NZT. So there were certain kind of
• 41:55
  elements of the storyline that I just turned into a hypnosis
• 41:58
  session, put a post on social media and said, like, I've
• 42:01
  created this hypnosis download inspired by the movie Limitless
• 42:04
  if you want to drop me a message.
• 42:06
  And what that actually was was a link to my podcast.
• 42:09
  And I didn't realize at the time, but what I was actually
• 42:12
  doing is training the algorithm of the podcast to get it in
• 42:15
  front of more people like that that were getting the direct
• 42:18
  link. I didn't know that at the time,
• 42:20
  but that's kind of what was happening.
• 42:22
  And then I saw a big boost in in the numbers.
• 42:25
  So I'm like, OK, what other movies can I make hypnosis
• 42:27
  sessions from? So the movie Inception, you
• 42:32
  know, there was Interstellar, which has this incredible kind
• 42:36
  of, you know, we might talk about the fourth dimension
• 42:38
  before, but you know, that kind of element of this very famous
• 42:42
  scene where he goes close to a black hole.
• 42:44
  And then when he returns, his daughter is older than he is,
• 42:47
  which is, you know, very similar to the thought experiment that
• 42:51
  Einstein did of travelling at the speed of light to realize
• 42:54
  that time is relative to, you know, the, the, you know,
• 42:58
  different variables. So I created loads of hypnosis
• 43:02
  sessions and, and even now I will create hypnosis sessions
• 43:07
  from very random elements of, of inspiration because I feel like
• 43:15
  there is, there is too much. I, I've, I've heard from people
• 43:21
  I respect, like Mike Mandel, for example, I, I think he's
• 43:23
  amazing. He, him and Chris have said
• 43:27
  several times on the podcast, like everything that can be
• 43:30
  known in the world of hypnosis has already been figured out.
• 43:34
  We already know all the different kind of modalities.
• 43:36
  We're just giving different names for it.
• 43:38
  And I think the opposite. I think we're at the tip of a
• 43:43
  very big iceberg and there is so many things that we simply don't
• 43:49
  know. You don't know what you don't
• 43:50
  know. And that's why in Ireland in a
• 43:53
  couple of week, I'm, I'm going to be doing a talk about
• 43:56
  hypnosis in the 4th dimension because I think the, the
• 44:00
  imagination operates more like a four dimensional realm.
• 44:02
  And if that's true, but we're treating it like a
• 44:05
  three-dimensional realm, then by the very definition of 4th
• 44:10
  dimensional physics, there is so many things that is possible.
• 44:15
  Like why can't we have, you know, for, for example, I'll,
• 44:20
  I'll share this with you because it highlights the point.
• 44:22
  There's a movie called Tenet and, and they have a, a
• 44:27
  storyline in there which is based on this temporal pincer
• 44:30
  movement, which is where you go backwards and forwards in time.
• 44:33
  At the same time, I've, I've worked with people that have
• 44:37
  been, you know, raped or, you know, had horrible traumatic
• 44:41
  things. And what we do is we visit that
• 44:44
  moment in time from the future, from the past and in the
• 44:46
  present, teleporting to that moment, colliding with this
• 44:49
  moment in time to give it a new meaning.
• 44:51
  That's 4th dimensional thinking brought into PTSD hypnotherapy
• 44:56
  session. So yeah, I mean, for me, I think
• 45:00
  we have a duty to be innovators and pioneers in the world of
• 45:04
  hypnosis. Because if we're just copying,
• 45:06
  you know, the same kind of modalities, it just has a
• 45:08
  different acronym. How are we moving it forward?
• 45:11
  Like we can only really move it forward if we try some crazy
• 45:14
  random shit and, and see if that works more, more effectively
• 45:18
  than the stuff we've been doing up to that point.
• 45:20
  So, you know, I, I, I love experimenting.
• 45:23
  I am so with you about that. Yes, yes, it's the human
• 45:28
  potential movement. It's not like that came to an
• 45:32
  end. It's not, oh, we found the
• 45:33
  potential. You know, I mean, that's the
• 45:36
  whole idea. It's, it's constantly looking
• 45:38
  forward. I mean, I put this out as a
• 45:40
  Facebook post about a year and a half ago.
• 45:43
  And I, I was actually looking for some real answers though,
• 45:46
  you know, people who know me from Facebook sometimes question
• 45:49
  my intention and, and I'm glad they do and continue to.
• 45:53
  But I, I do think this is a very apartment question, which is
• 45:57
  this NLP, neurolinguistic programming was using the mind
• 46:02
  as a computer metaphor as its crux.
• 46:06
  This is the idea. Now, look, there are a lot of a
• 46:09
  lot of people out of the UK, often though some of the US too,
• 46:13
  that are like, yeah, that was a simplification.
• 46:16
  When we look at the science, you know, if you read that Oxford
• 46:18
  handbook of hypnotherapy, hypnosis or whatever, you start
• 46:21
  going like, OK, it's not as much of a computer as we think it is,
• 46:25
  and memory is constantly changing, blah, blah, blah,
• 46:28
  blah, blah. OK, still great metaphor.
• 46:30
  It works. It's good.
• 46:33
  Why, why, why aren't we playing around with this quantum
• 46:38
  computer thing that keeps coming up?
• 46:40
  If quantum computers are the next level of programming, where
• 46:45
  is the, where are the NLP practitioners that are like,
• 46:47
  well, maybe the minds more like that?
• 46:50
  And then what kind of techniques can we come out of there?
• 46:53
  I feel like there's the quantum computer factor.
• 46:56
  Maybe it's tapping a little bit into what you're going with,
• 46:59
  Lieutenant, there could lead us to some very interesting ideas
• 47:03
  about the way. If we can program these machines
• 47:06
  that come at it from infinite number of directions, then how
• 47:11
  can we use that to reprogram ourselves?
• 47:16
  Yeah, I, I think the computer metaphor is certainly a part of,
• 47:20
  of NLPII think what was more influential on me was the, the
• 47:25
  presuppositions or the tenants of, of NLP.
• 47:29
  Like there's no, no failure, only feedback.
• 47:32
  And the, you know, function of your communication is the, you
• 47:36
  know, or, or the purpose of your communication is the, is the
• 47:38
  response you get. Because these link to things
• 47:40
  that are generative in nature, like sensory acuity, like
• 47:46
  changing your approach and elicitation.
• 47:49
  I think some of Bandler's stuff on design, human engineering
• 47:53
  looked at this element of, OK, precision elicitation is this
• 47:58
  sense of let's figure out exactly what's going on, this
• 48:00
  combination of kind of thoughts and, and, and he touched on this
• 48:05
  in the sense that he was looking at and thoughts almost like a
• 48:08
  holograms. When people use those gestures,
• 48:10
  it's like it's in a three-dimensional space rather
• 48:13
  than just like images in the mind.
• 48:15
  It's kind of like it's out there being created.
• 48:17
  And you would see from the hand gestures like how that was
• 48:19
  created. So I, I, I do think that NLP had
• 48:22
  more to offer than just a computer metaphor.
• 48:25
  And I think modelling of the how was such a, a vital distinction
• 48:31
  because so many therapists up to that point had been obsessed
• 48:35
  with, but why is this happening? And I still have clients that
• 48:38
  come to me and they say, I don't know why I feel this way.
• 48:42
  So I, I do like a matrix metaphor with them.
• 48:44
  And I said, just imagine there's 2 pills, you know, red pill,
• 48:47
  blue pill. The red pill is that you know
• 48:50
  exactly why this is happening to you, but you keep it for the
• 48:54
  rest of your life. And the blue pill is you have no
• 48:57
  idea why this thing ever happened, but you don't feel
• 48:59
  this way anymore. What do you choose?
• 49:02
  And they always choose. I don't need to know why.
• 49:05
  I just want it to go away. OK, great.
• 49:07
  Now we can work on that. But before you, before you get
• 49:10
  that commitment from them. But but why?
• 49:12
  But why? But why?
• 49:13
  It's like, no, no, we've got to take that off the table.
• 49:17
  And I do think computers as a metaphor is, is kind of like a
• 49:20
  natural thing because you can look at memory as kind of like
• 49:23
  short term memory, long term memory.
• 49:24
  You could look at intelligence as kind of like the CPU
• 49:27
  processing power, like as a metaphor, it kind of works.
• 49:30
  But my metaphor that I've been using more often now is that the
• 49:37
  imagination is A4 dimensional realm.
• 49:39
  And we know that can be true because when you access a
• 49:43
  memory, a lot of people will access a memory and take a first
• 49:47
  person perspective. And that's the equivalent in a
• 49:50
  three-dimensional realm of teleporting back in time to that
• 49:53
  memory, OK. And a lot of anticipatory fear
• 49:57
  is going forward to an event that hasn't happened yet.
• 50:00
  So if we look, and I know lots of, you know, physicists say,
• 50:03
  look, the 4th dimension isn't time.
• 50:06
  But you know, for the purpose of me using it, I look at two key
• 50:09
  distinctions with two separate 3 dimension and four dimension and
• 50:13
  that is time and perception. And that is OK Time is something
• 50:17
  you can navigate in the 4th dimension.
• 50:18
  Again, certain physicists would disagree with that.
• 50:22
  And then the other thing is that perception isn't limited to one
• 50:25
  perspective. So in the, the reason that
• 50:28
  Schrodinger's cat as a meta, as a, as a thought experiment works
• 50:31
  in a three-dimensional realm is everything is possible before
• 50:35
  you open the box because you've only got your perception, which
• 50:37
  is outside of the box. In a four dimensional realm, you
• 50:40
  would know what's happening outside of the box and inside of
• 50:42
  the box simultaneously. And therefore you would, you
• 50:45
  would know if that makes sense. I think also we've got this
• 50:49
  element of multiple dimensions. And I love the fact that even
• 50:54
  Marvel, which is a fairly kind of mainstream, you know, kind of
• 50:57
  film franchise, introduced this idea of the multiverse.
• 51:02
  And, and I, I love saying to a client, I said, have you seen
• 51:06
  like Doctor Strange and the multiverse?
• 51:07
  And Oh yeah, I've seen that. Well, just imagine there is
• 51:09
  infinite versions of you. Do you reckon there's a version
• 51:12
  of you that exists that doesn't have this problem anymore?
• 51:14
  And they're like, I guess if there's infinite versions of me,
• 51:17
  yeah, that must happen. Let's visit that person.
• 51:20
  Let's, let's see what they're doing.
• 51:21
  Let's see how they figured it out.
• 51:24
  And what you're doing is you're introducing infinite resource
• 51:26
  states. And then you're saying of all
• 51:28
  these infinite resource states, let's, let's go to the version
• 51:31
  of you that no longer has this issue anymore and is living the
• 51:35
  best life. And let's, let's harness those
• 51:36
  resources. Why don't we of this 8020 rule,
• 51:40
  forget the 8020 and go straight into the top nought point,
• 51:43
  nought, nought, nought, nought, 1% of the best strategies, the
• 51:47
  best resources and, and, and the most aligned values.
• 51:51
  And then you get to kind of leapfrog.
• 51:53
  And then you're not modelling excellence.
• 51:55
  You're, you're modelling, let's say, like a quantum version of
• 52:02
  excellence is kind of like that. That's what made people like
• 52:06
  limitless. It wasn't that they got a little
• 52:08
  bit better. It's like, no, they got in like
• 52:12
  like a light year forward and exponential growth in, in kind
• 52:16
  of capabilities. And I think that's why for me, I
• 52:18
  like it as a metaphor because it gives more, more possibilities.
• 52:23
  You know, I, I call it the playground of possibilities
• 52:27
  because there is infinite possibilities, because the
• 52:29
  imagination isn't restricted by anything.
• 52:32
  Like you've had dreams of flying, you've had dreams of
• 52:35
  going backwards and forwards in time, you know, of taking on
• 52:37
  the, the perspective of, of a different entity, let alone
• 52:40
  yourself. Like if it's, that's all
• 52:42
  possible in your dreams, but you don't expect to be able to do
• 52:45
  those things in your 3 dimensional reality.
• 52:48
  But I think where the real value is, is harnessing the this kind
• 52:51
  of four dimensional realm and then bringing value back in the
• 52:55
  three dimension. And that's why, you know, I talk
• 52:58
  about Einstein because his thought experiment at travelling
• 53:01
  close to the speed of light led to an actual theory of general
• 53:04
  theory of relativity that changed like the aviation
• 53:07
  industry. It changed the, you know, kind
• 53:10
  of space rocket industry, like because of his theory.
• 53:13
  So that absolutely did create changes in our three-dimensional
• 53:16
  reality. But he could never have driven,
• 53:18
  you know, actually flew the speed of light in, in reality,
• 53:22
  but he could do it in his imagination.
• 53:23
  So 4 dimensional thinking led to actual changes in our
• 53:27
  three-dimensional reality. And I think that's, that's the
• 53:30
  exciting bit of this. If we can harvest the potential
• 53:33
  of our imagination and we can do a lot more in our actual lives.
• 53:37
  Oh my gosh, I asked for loops. I asked for loops.
• 53:42
  I am in them, Adam. You're giving them to me and
• 53:46
  maybe not. Maybe I'm just like hypnotically
• 53:48
  drawn to what you're saying. I'm now like, I wonder what
• 53:50
  would happen if Adam released this recording on his podcast,
• 53:55
  but without my questions. Would that be an episode of his
• 53:58
  show? I don't know.
• 54:00
  Because it feels like an area, It feels like I'm going through
• 54:03
  an intervention with you right now.
• 54:04
  Man, I love this. I love this.
• 54:07
  I you know, one of the things that this brought up in me was a
• 54:11
  question that I sometimes have about therapy in general and
• 54:16
  hypnotherapy, which is this, sometimes what people think they
• 54:21
  want isn't what they actually want.
• 54:27
  That's one thing. And then the other piece is
• 54:30
  this, like, what is if generativity and possibility are
• 54:35
  kind of these, you know, on one level I might say, well, I want
• 54:40
  more confidence, but really what I want is the ability to, you
• 54:48
  know, keep, keep writing every single day and, and play out my
• 54:54
  full creative potential. And, and even like have my, my
• 54:59
  subconscious aligned with my conscious mind in a way, like
• 55:03
  bringing them together so that I can access that creative state.
• 55:06
  But it comes to you in this, I would argue for the sake of the
• 55:09
  metaphor 3D version of like, I'm just not really confident around
• 55:13
  people. Is there?
• 55:15
  Do you feel ever that you you have almost I I don't want to
• 55:25
  use responsibility, but but I guess it there there is kind of
• 55:28
  an imperative for for a responsible hypnotherapist to to
• 55:34
  go beyond what people think they want.
• 55:36
  It's so often about here's the symptom, here's the problem, fix
• 55:40
  the problem in hypnotherapy, but.
• 55:42
  Given that it's about human potential and there's always so
• 55:44
  much more beyond the traditional therapeutic interventions.
• 55:49
  I mean, how can we, as is people that see the power of the mind,
• 55:54
  push people to go beyond the place that they don't even know
• 55:58
  they want in a world that doesn't really?
• 56:01
  Advertise to that. Yeah.
• 56:04
  So I, I like, I like, I like the train of thought there.
• 56:07
  And, and, and if you project it onto a client, then what you're
• 56:11
  doing is you're assuming you know what the client wants.
• 56:14
  And I think that's unethical. What you, what, what I think is
• 56:16
  entirely ethical is to give them choices or give them the
• 56:23
  suggestion that they're going to find something which takes it to
• 56:27
  that next level for them. And when I'm working with people
• 56:30
  with a phobia, I, I frame it in a particular way so that it
• 56:34
  could just be the thing, but it could be so much more.
• 56:38
  So I'll say to them, look, you know, when I work with people
• 56:43
  and I used to do before COVID, like this monthly workshop 2025
• 56:48
  lifelong arachnophobes, you know, terrified of spiders, but
• 56:52
  at the end they're holding tarantulas.
• 56:54
  And I, and I remember saying, you know, and I say every, at
• 56:56
  the end of every workshop, I would say like this could just
• 56:59
  be you've had this phobia all your life and you don't have it
• 57:02
  anymore. And you can go home and whenever
• 57:05
  you see a spider, it's fine. You just pick them up and take
• 57:07
  them outside and that's fine. Your, your life is still better.
• 57:11
  But then I say, but what if, what if the fact that you have
• 57:16
  this lifelong fear and you don't have it anymore, It is evidence
• 57:20
  that the next time you have a fear that that is also
• 57:22
  changeable and you've got irrefutable evidence in your
• 57:25
  life every time you pick up a spider, that fear is temporary
• 57:28
  and it can change. And then that next thing that
• 57:31
  you're afraid of doesn't have to stop you living the life that
• 57:35
  you want. What if you go away from this,
• 57:39
  you know, knowing that you can live the life that you want.
• 57:42
  Now that's a that's a post hypnotic suggestion.
• 57:44
  Any hypnotist would recognize that and, and and a lot of
• 57:48
  people would forget that I say that.
• 57:49
  And all that's happened is that they had a fear of spiders for
• 57:52
  most of their life. And then they don't have it
• 57:54
  anymore. But a few of them won't.
• 57:56
  A few of them will be like, yeah, damn right.
• 58:00
  Like I got over that fear of spiders.
• 58:02
  That means that, you know, I can get over this fear of public
• 58:04
  speaking and, you know, yeah, I can be self-employed and I can
• 58:07
  do this thing that I've always wanted to and I can write that
• 58:09
  book I've always wanted to write.
• 58:11
  Great. But, but I think as as
• 58:14
  hypnotist, we can lead, but we can't force, you know, we can
• 58:18
  suggest, but we can't, you know, it's not our decision to make,
• 58:22
  it's their decision to make. And I think that's where the
• 58:26
  balance is for me is that you, you, you show them how it could
• 58:31
  be so much more. But whether or not they move in
• 58:34
  that direction, that's down to them.
• 58:36
  That's the free choice piece, which I I do like.
• 58:39
  Yeah, now I think it's that's very interesting about
• 58:44
  metaphors, you know, and and I'll ask you this is like a
• 58:48
  total shop question, but but it maybe it'll help people out
• 58:52
  there that want to be better storytellers in general.
• 58:54
  I've always, you know, as I've read all the Bandler and Grinder
• 58:58
  books and and Eric Sonian stuff, I've always thought to myself,
• 59:03
  Oh my gosh, why am I not a metaphor guy?
• 59:07
  And again, there's a belief system right there.
• 59:09
  But but a story. But, but it's a story I tell
• 59:11
  myself. And and I wonder, I've always
• 59:14
  thought, OK, well, what do I need to do?
• 59:15
  Is it just that I need to start thinking in terms of resources,
• 59:21
  resource states more and then back play it and build a catalog
• 59:26
  of metaphors? How is there people out there
• 59:28
  that just, they just seem to spit out the right story or the
• 59:32
  right film reference and they get the whole story and they get
• 59:35
  the resource state and it, And I feel like it, it can be a
• 59:38
  practice for some people, but at the same time, I've also heard
• 59:41
  people say like, no, it's just you.
• 59:43
  You got to just think about it like this.
• 59:46
  What is your take on that? Was that something you needed to
• 59:48
  develop or you just naturally like tapping into a storytelling
• 59:52
  ability that you always had? Did you have to think about
• 59:54
  stories differently? Like what?
• 59:56
  What was that for you? I think it's a bit of both, but
• 1:00:01
  but I do, I do like how most things map across.
• 1:00:07
  So I I love the hero's journey because that's such a broad
• 1:00:12
  metaphor that relates to so many people's individuals.
• 1:00:16
  And, and if you think of kind of like, whether it's Harry Potter
• 1:00:19
  or Lord of the Rings, like so many books and stories follow
• 1:00:22
  the hero's journey where it's kind of like there was some kind
• 1:00:24
  of flaw or issue facing the main character.
• 1:00:28
  They go on this journey, they meet, you know, some kind of
• 1:00:33
  challenge to that. Everything looks hopeless.
• 1:00:37
  It's the the point of the abyss. They dig deep, they find a way
• 1:00:40
  through, and then they're tested on that.
• 1:00:42
  And then they're victorious in the test.
• 1:00:44
  And then their life has changed from that point on.
• 1:00:47
  I mean that that's such a broad metaphor, but it but it works.
• 1:00:51
  It why that why the hero's journey is in so many books and
• 1:00:55
  movies is because it's a nice story arc.
• 1:00:58
  OK, So therefore any hypnotist can just kind of have variations
• 1:01:02
  of the hero's journey and, and have that, you know, a metaphor
• 1:01:07
  for transformation. Most people like how many
• 1:01:09
  hypnotists have some kind of logo of a butterfly as part of
• 1:01:12
  their, you know, their hypnotist.
• 1:01:14
  It's because it's the classic metaphor of, of transformation,
• 1:01:18
  you know, frogs into Princess and another metaphor of
• 1:01:21
  transformation. So you've, you've got, you know,
• 1:01:24
  metaphors for transformation. You've got metaphors of, of
• 1:01:27
  change and, and kind of digging deep and kind of breaking
• 1:01:31
  through. And I think, yeah, it's useful
• 1:01:33
  to kind of have a few kind of starting points, but I'm a big
• 1:01:36
  believer in allowing the unconscious to do the therapy
• 1:01:40
  for you. So what I how I structure most
• 1:01:42
  of my sessions is that I'm, I'm mindfully asking lots and lots
• 1:01:47
  of questions, having a loose idea of what kind of modality or
• 1:01:51
  protocol or, or rough metaphor I'm going to use.
• 1:01:56
  And then I just, it is weird, like my unconscious is, is the
• 1:02:01
  hypnotist and doing the therapy. And sometimes I'll listen back
• 1:02:04
  to my own recordings and I'm like, wow, where did that come
• 1:02:08
  from? I have no fucking idea, you
• 1:02:10
  know, but, but, but how, how can we work with the unconscious if
• 1:02:14
  we're not also putting the unconscious to work?
• 1:02:16
  Let the unconscious do the heavy lifting, set the intention, you
• 1:02:20
  know, and then see what it comes up with.
• 1:02:21
  And if it's good, you can use it again in a in a similar
• 1:02:24
  situation. And if it isn't, you know, you
• 1:02:26
  learn from it. And one of my favorite beliefs
• 1:02:29
  is you either win or you learn. So like, if you work with a
• 1:02:32
  hypnosis client and a metaphor doesn't quite sit right, who
• 1:02:37
  cares? Like they don't notice, you
• 1:02:40
  know, But if it does, you, you get the benefit.
• 1:02:42
  I also think there was a lot of, there was a lot of value in the
• 1:02:46
  metaphors that the client already resonates with.
• 1:02:52
  So quite often I'll, I'll, I remember this lady who, you
• 1:02:55
  know, she was a recluse. She'd been sexually abused in
• 1:02:58
  her in her teenage years. You know, she was a hoarder as
• 1:03:01
  well. There was several things going
• 1:03:03
  on. I just said, you know, what's
• 1:03:05
  your what, what's your favorite TV show?
• 1:03:07
  Like what, what character did you really resonate with?
• 1:03:09
  She was an American, but she resonated with Doctor Who.
• 1:03:12
  Now, here's the thing. At that point, I was going to do
• 1:03:15
  timeline anyway. But she's given me the gift of
• 1:03:17
  using the TARDIS as a way of doing timeline that I wouldn't
• 1:03:21
  have done had she not given me that gift.
• 1:03:23
  So sometimes the clients just make it so easy for you.
• 1:03:26
  They, they tell you, you know, I'm, I'm an atheist, but I work
• 1:03:29
  with a lot of people that are, are quite religious and I'll use
• 1:03:34
  biblical metaphors, you know, I'll use, you know, for, for,
• 1:03:39
  for me, God is just whether you call it the unconscious, the
• 1:03:43
  Super conscious is kind of like a very powerful resource.
• 1:03:46
  So for me, religion and God maps across quite nicely with kind of
• 1:03:51
  hypnosis anyway, because it's kind of like it's, it's a, an
• 1:03:56
  ability to harness a resource state.
• 1:03:58
  So the clients will make it so easy to become metaphorical.
• 1:04:02
  You just got to ask questions and listen, I think.
• 1:04:04
  Yeah. You know, you strike me as
• 1:04:07
  someone that is, is your presence is very grounded, very,
• 1:04:13
  very, you know, calm, contained. I feel, I feel confident in and
• 1:04:20
  you know, in a in a warm authority talking to you.
• 1:04:24
  It's specifically, I mean, maybe you have to be with a podcast
• 1:04:27
  called the hypnotist. I don't know.
• 1:04:29
  But what I was going to say is that you know, when you're out
• 1:04:32
  in the world as somebody that loves living in the loops,
• 1:04:37
  you've got the nested loops, you've got these movie
• 1:04:39
  metaphors, you've mentioned 4th dimensional metaphors and you've
• 1:04:43
  talked about the Christopher Nolan stuff and Tenet.
• 1:04:46
  Do you in the real world going out there practical day-to-day,
• 1:04:52
  do you actually experience life in a multi dimensional way?
• 1:04:57
  Like does that come up for you? Do you see coincidences and go
• 1:04:59
  like, oh, that's the synchronicity?
• 1:05:01
  Or is it really just in this realm where it lives the most?
• 1:05:05
  How do you how does that actually exist for you?
• 1:05:07
  Just truly curious. Yeah, I'm, I'm a, I'm a real
• 1:05:11
  pragmatist. So although, although I'm, I, I
• 1:05:16
  think the multiverse is an excellent metaphor and and a way
• 1:05:21
  to harness resource states. I think the imagination for me
• 1:05:25
  acts more like a four dimensional realm, but I don't
• 1:05:28
  think I exist in A4 dimensional realm.
• 1:05:30
  You know, I, I say like I'm, I'm a three-dimensional entity with
• 1:05:34
  A4 dimensional imagination. So me being in A4 dimensional
• 1:05:38
  realm is, is as likely as, you know, Bart Simpson jumping off
• 1:05:42
  the screen and, and walking around our three-dimensional
• 1:05:44
  reality like it's not going to happen.
• 1:05:46
  So, you know, so, so sometimes, you know, it's, it's funny
• 1:05:51
  because I, I, I think these are very powerful metaphors, but
• 1:05:54
  sometimes I see people and they, they talk about law of
• 1:05:57
  attraction in, in a, in a way. And it's kind of like, all
• 1:06:01
  right, I know it's a belief system and I know you're saying
• 1:06:04
  that belief system with congruency, but like, don't
• 1:06:07
  drink your own kool-aid that much that you actually believe
• 1:06:10
  that by you thinking in a particular frequency, you can
• 1:06:13
  actually manifest shit. Like, no, it's a powerful
• 1:06:16
  metaphor. It might actually get you in a
• 1:06:17
  resource state. So I'm, I'm, I'm this weird
• 1:06:21
  dichotomy in the sense that, you know, I, I think that incredible
• 1:06:25
  things are possible, but I'm also not afraid to call out on
• 1:06:28
  the bullshit on stuff. And I think that I think there's
• 1:06:31
  a hell of a lot of bullshit out there.
• 1:06:34
  And, and, and it, and it's fine if if people say like it's a
• 1:06:38
  metaphor, you know, it's a belief system, you know, it's a
• 1:06:42
  paradigm that makes me feel empowered.
• 1:06:46
  But a lot of people are trying to use these metaphors and stuff
• 1:06:49
  and they say it's true. And it's kind of like, OK, no,
• 1:06:53
  that just mean it's a really strong belief.
• 1:06:56
  But, you know, but there is a distinction there.
• 1:06:59
  So of course there is going to be coincidences.
• 1:07:03
  Of course there's going to be serendipity and, you know,
• 1:07:07
  moments of Deja vu. Do I think this is the fourth
• 1:07:10
  dimension wormhole giving me a glimpse of different realities?
• 1:07:15
  Not really, if I'm honest. You know, and, and I, and I
• 1:07:18
  think there's, there are certain people that will jump on these
• 1:07:21
  things using cognitive bias and, you know, certain kind of
• 1:07:27
  certain flaws and biases that the human mind has as convinces
• 1:07:31
  to sell them their particular brand of kool-aid that they want
• 1:07:34
  them to consume. And, and I think I'm, I'm, I'm
• 1:07:38
  the right balance of being very empowered and positive and, and
• 1:07:42
  enthusiastic without, without bullshitting myself that, you
• 1:07:50
  know, for, for example, I have this course called hypnotic
• 1:07:52
  wealth, but, but that doesn't mean I can just hypnotize myself
• 1:07:56
  to be a billionaire. What, what I can do is use
• 1:08:00
  hypnosis to help me make really good decisions about risk, to
• 1:08:06
  generally do the kind of things that over time accumulate
• 1:08:12
  incredible wealth using principles like compounding and,
• 1:08:15
  and kind of risk reward ratios and, and, and all of this kind
• 1:08:19
  of stuff. But if it was the case that all
• 1:08:26
  it takes is kind of affirmation and self hypnosis and and law of
• 1:08:31
  attraction to have anything, why is it that the richest man in
• 1:08:35
  the world right now is Elon Musk?
• 1:08:37
  That is an absolute workaholic, you know, as opposed to someone
• 1:08:41
  that's just fucking amazing at law of attraction.
• 1:08:44
  It's because law of attraction is just an empowering belief
• 1:08:46
  system. But unfortunately a lot of
• 1:08:49
  people, you know, they, they like the, the virtue signalling
• 1:08:55
  and they like the kind of, you know, I manifest this in my
• 1:08:58
  life. No, you, you went out and you
• 1:08:59
  worked for that or you took out a loan to buy that car.
• 1:09:01
  You didn't fucking manifest it. You just did that thing, you
• 1:09:04
  know, And I think I think there is a lot of bullshit because
• 1:09:07
  there's a lot of very desperate people that are looking for
• 1:09:10
  something magical and wonderful to make them feel like they can
• 1:09:14
  live this kind of incredible life.
• 1:09:17
  And I think hypnosis can do that in certain aspects.
• 1:09:22
  You know, I think hypnosis is great to change emotional
• 1:09:25
  states. I think it's great to get you
• 1:09:29
  out of certain kind of loops that are disempowering.
• 1:09:33
  I think it's great for that. I think it's great to to kind of
• 1:09:36
  get a new sense of kind of purpose or clarity.
• 1:09:39
  But if I had a, a broken leg, I'm not using self hypnosis.
• 1:09:45
  I'm going to the doctor. You know, there there's certain
• 1:09:47
  things that I think you, you use the right or the most suitable
• 1:09:53
  modality or protocol for the thing.
• 1:09:57
  You know, if I'm going to invest, I'm investing in, in
• 1:10:01
  assets, you know, I'm not hypnotizing myself to become,
• 1:10:05
  you know, make a million the next year.
• 1:10:07
  You know, the hypnosis can help me to actually make the
• 1:10:09
  decisions that can lead to those things.
• 1:10:11
  But, you know, and I, and I, and I do think sometimes there is
• 1:10:16
  this weird incongruence that, you know, people in hypnotherapy
• 1:10:21
  and, and kind of related fields like personal development, you
• 1:10:25
  know, they're, they're charlatans, they're bullshit
• 1:10:28
  artists. And, and I think, you know, it's
• 1:10:30
  not for me to call these people out in the same way that it's
• 1:10:32
  not for me to, you know, criticize any other therapeutic
• 1:10:37
  mortality. I'm going to keep doing my thing
• 1:10:39
  because, you know, I, I think it's an effective thing.
• 1:10:43
  But, you know, sometimes I look at, I look at these things and
• 1:10:46
  it just makes me, it makes me laugh.
• 1:10:48
  It's kind of like, yeah, it's a belief system.
• 1:10:51
  It's a metaphor, but that is not real.
• 1:10:53
  Yes, Oh my gosh, this is yeah, if you, you must really I I'm
• 1:11:00
  just imagining you walking through the hallway of a
• 1:11:04
  hypnosis conference because, yeah, you're confronted with it
• 1:11:07
  on somebody you've got like the evidence based hypnotist that
• 1:11:11
  may be a little too straight. And then you've got some really
• 1:11:14
  wild stuff and I, you know, but. But just to say, Greg, I, I like
• 1:11:19
  the wild stuff. I just treat it as metaphors and
• 1:11:22
  belief systems and ways of thinking rather than, you know,
• 1:11:29
  the, the bit, the bit that I found really useful as a general
• 1:11:33
  belief system is that is not to worry too much about is it true
• 1:11:37
  or not? It's more, is it useful or not?
• 1:11:40
  Is that way of thinking useful? And, and, and just to kind of
• 1:11:45
  make me sound like not so righteous, I never pass a
• 1:11:48
  wishing well without throwing a coin in.
• 1:11:50
  You know, I have a collection of crystals, I have a vision board,
• 1:11:54
  you know, I just know what these things are.
• 1:11:56
  If I throw a coin in the wishing well, you know, it's a post
• 1:11:59
  hypnotic suggestion of a positive intention that I want
• 1:12:02
  that probably is going to prime my reticular activating system
• 1:12:05
  to help me get that particular thing.
• 1:12:07
  I know what it is, but I I put the coin in there anyway because
• 1:12:10
  I'm going to get a little bit of cognitive dissonance by creating
• 1:12:13
  an action linked to that that thing.
• 1:12:16
  I have a vision board because I want to be clear on my
• 1:12:18
  intentions. It's not because having the
• 1:12:20
  vision board magically manifest stuff, It's because by knowing
• 1:12:24
  what I want, I'm more likely to make decisions that align and
• 1:12:27
  create self fulfilling prophecies.
• 1:12:29
  So all of these things, it's not, it's not like I'm mocking
• 1:12:31
  them. I do most of them.
• 1:12:33
  I just do them with a sense that I know that these are just, you
• 1:12:38
  know, they, they work on a certain level, but not quite
• 1:12:41
  often in the, in the way that they're, they're presented or
• 1:12:44
  misrepresented. Oh my gosh, is there, you know,
• 1:12:49
  the, you know, the next tough question I've got is and I know
• 1:12:53
  you have to go soon and we haven't even talked about nested
• 1:12:55
  loops. I really wanted to get into that
• 1:12:57
  more, but maybe we can say that for another time.
• 1:12:59
  It's a it's a very interesting topic.
• 1:13:01
  I and and something I love a lot.
• 1:13:05
  My next question is this. Are you sure that you don't have
• 1:13:10
  any cognitive biases? No, I I definitely have.
• 1:13:15
  That would prevent you, well, and, and I mean specifically,
• 1:13:18
  that would prevent you from being completely open to the
• 1:13:21
  idea that you could experience something beyond rational
• 1:13:27
  explanation. Like are you open to that
• 1:13:29
  possibility still, that magic could be real?
• 1:13:31
  OK, cool. I feel that that way too.
• 1:13:34
  Is, is, is, is magic, magic or, or anything like, like, why did,
• 1:13:40
  why did the Vikings believe that lightning was Thor angrily
• 1:13:45
  hitting his hammer against the clouds?
• 1:13:47
  Because they didn't have a better explanation of this.
• 1:13:50
  And, and there's lots of things that we encounter the at the
• 1:13:54
  time in history that we're living right now, we can't
• 1:13:56
  explain. And that's why a lot of people
• 1:13:59
  do look to religion and spiritual guidance and metaphors
• 1:14:05
  and, and tarot and horoscopes and those kind of things,
• 1:14:07
  because we can't make sense of stuff.
• 1:14:09
  Like the idea that we can make sense of everything in our
• 1:14:12
  existence is lunacy. Like we, we can't possibly,
• 1:14:16
  we'll never be able to do that because there's infinite things
• 1:14:19
  that that we we don't know, but doesn't mean that it's magic.
• 1:14:25
  Like if if we took, you know, something like a satellite back
• 1:14:30
  a few hundred, that would look like magic.
• 1:14:32
  You know, like something like electricity, a light bulb would
• 1:14:37
  look like magic. So, you know, am I open to the
• 1:14:40
  idea of magic? Well, yeah, if.
• 1:14:42
  But it depends on the definition of magic.
• 1:14:44
  Things that I can't currently explain is magical, you know,
• 1:14:49
  and there's so many things like you hear stories of, of people
• 1:14:53
  that have very low probabilities of surviving cancer and yet
• 1:14:57
  still do. So the word miracle and magic
• 1:15:01
  gets used. What's more likely is that we
• 1:15:04
  just don't have the science currently to explain that
• 1:15:07
  particular thing. But as a hypnotist, I've, I've
• 1:15:11
  worked with people with stage 4 cancer and, and the whole thing
• 1:15:15
  is about, OK, let's have the suggestion that there is a
• 1:15:20
  possibility that you're one of those people that defy the odds.
• 1:15:23
  Because then if it is happening at the belief level, at some
• 1:15:27
  kind of psychosomatic cellular level, responding to
• 1:15:30
  suggestions, we've got the possibility of that.
• 1:15:34
  I personally don't believe in past life regression in the
• 1:15:37
  sense that we've actually had past lives, but I use past life
• 1:15:40
  regression a lot because I think it's a powerful modality if
• 1:15:43
  people either don't know the cause or don't want to go back
• 1:15:46
  to, you know, some kind of very kind of traumatic kind of thing.
• 1:15:51
  So I use all this stuff. And so I'm not here judging and
• 1:15:55
  mocking. I just think my, my preference
• 1:15:58
  is to say like what's useful and, and rather than this kind
• 1:16:03
  of philosophical stuff of what's true, the, the squabbles I've
• 1:16:06
  seen on social media about people squabbling, whether or
• 1:16:09
  not the unconscious is real and if trance is real.
• 1:16:12
  And if this, it's like, I couldn't care, like my time is
• 1:16:14
  too valuable. It's like, is it, is it useful
• 1:16:18
  as a, you know, and it, and it depends on the definition.
• 1:16:21
  I define unconscious as anything you're not consciously aware of
• 1:16:25
  in that moment of time. So based on my definition, it is
• 1:16:27
  true because everyone that has a memory that they're not thinking
• 1:16:30
  about in the moment that they can achieve, We can just say it
• 1:16:32
  is in the unconscious based on that definition, with this idea
• 1:16:36
  of endless kind of squabbles and, and posturing on social
• 1:16:39
  media about what's true and what isn't true and, and this and
• 1:16:42
  that. Like I see it for what it is.
• 1:16:44
  It's this element of they're trying to get significance from
• 1:16:47
  being right on something that is impossible to prove.
• 1:16:52
  I mean that that seems, it seems odd, but equally, if that's
• 1:16:56
  where you get your status and significance, go for it.
• 1:16:59
  Again, it's nice to feel good. It's nice to feel right.
• 1:17:02
  It's nice to feel like you're smarter than other people.
• 1:17:05
  Go for that if if you want to do that.
• 1:17:07
  But but there is these kind of lots of ironies that I see.
• 1:17:10
  I I just obsessed with what's useful, what's useful for me,
• 1:17:13
  and what's useful for my clients.
• 1:17:15
  Yes, Oh my gosh, there is so much here, so many more
• 1:17:20
  questions. I I I really it's.
• 1:17:24
  Almost like we've created lots of open loops here, Greg.
• 1:17:28
  Adam, you have nailed the assignment.
• 1:17:30
  This guy has nailed it. Yes.
• 1:17:33
  Now this has been, I mean, I, I in a way, I never, I, there's a
• 1:17:39
  part of me that always wants or, or maybe it would satisfy my
• 1:17:43
  unconscious to be like, OK, that was a complete interview, but
• 1:17:46
  when it's complete, it's not as good.
• 1:17:49
  So I, I'm glad, I'm glad we've left it open.
• 1:17:54
  We're going to link to everything.
• 1:17:55
  Everybody needs to check out the podcast The Hypnotist, available
• 1:18:00
  on all podcast platforms, as well as adamcox.co.uk, which we
• 1:18:07
  will link. That's a D AM cox.co.uk defined
• 1:18:14
  your courses, defined stuff about your podcast, where you're
• 1:18:18
  going to be appearing next to book sessions.
• 1:18:21
  And if you want to see Adam in almost a suit, if you go to the
• 1:18:26
  website, you can see it pretty much it.
• 1:18:29
  It is a classy look you've got there.
• 1:18:31
  So you don't need to worry man, but you'll break out more of the
• 1:18:34
  suit after this. That's what that's what we've
• 1:18:35
  got. We've got we've got a we've got
• 1:18:37
  a lot of nice open loops here. Yo, yeah, this has been you.
• 1:18:42
  You definitely have stimulated a lot in my mind, which is all I
• 1:18:46
  can ask for. That's all I'm looking for and
• 1:18:49
  even better than have such a competent and and well regarded
• 1:18:54
  hypnotist do it. So Adam, I am so grateful you
• 1:18:57
  came on. This has been amazing.
• 1:18:59
  It's been a pleasure, Greg. Thank you.