Misdirection
I find that many people who become interested in hypnosis and persuasion will naturally gravitate towards magic, sleight of hand, psychological illusions, and mentalism. There is a good reason for this.
Magic and mentalism rely much on misdirection. They lead your attention to one place so you’ll overlook what they’re really doing. Conversational hypnosis and persuasion, of course, work in a similar way.
Derren Brown caught my attention because he supposedly uses hypnosis, NLP, and other methods of persuasion. Sometimes he will explain what he did at the end of the show, like using embedded commands for example. I wasn’t always convinced. His conversational hypnosis skills are not THAT good from what I’ve gathered, but his skill of misdirection is phenomenal.
It wasn’t until I began to study magic and mentalism that I realized what he was really doing. His misdirection had persuaded me to accept his explanation, but his explanation may not have been what he’d really done at all.
Although it helps, you don’t have to study magic and mentalism to understand and use misdirection in conversational hypnosis and persuasion.
Any type of language pattern that causes a person to go inside themselves can be used for misdirection. Also, misdirection doesn’t necessarily have to be verbal. You can interrupt any kind of physical pattern or routine by simply deviating from it. For example, when you shake a person’s hand you have certain unconscious expectations because you’ve gone through the motions so many times.
When someone shakes your hand in a way you’re not used to or not expecting, it causes you to pause and perhaps start an internal dialogue, “What the hell was that?” Every so often someone comes and shakes your hand with a grip of steel or a hand which feels dead. Although they may not be consciously misdirecting you, the action still causes you to go internal and assess the situation.
So far I’ve covered a few different techniques.
Chaining nominalizations is a wonderful method of losing someone’s attention because they have to think constantly about what you’re really trying to say. They are forced to start applying their own meanings to the words you are using. Chaining nominalizations and using them with double binds actually takes a lot of practice before it really starts to flow, so it isn’t a method I recommend to beginners. For example…
“I can really appreciate your ability to make the excellent decision to commit to this project or the wonderful experience of your realization to accept this opportunity for growth.”
Uh, yeah…what did he just say exactly? Misdirection. There it is.
Or you can embed commands within stories. You’re not telling them to do anything, the characters in the story are.
One of the most simple ways to misdirect is to use an interrupt. Humans are pattern machines. They get into a rhythm and let their conscious minds drift. You can confirm this just by going out to the store or a restaurant. Look for someone who has a job which is routine. I’m always using interrupts to break people out of their trances.
For example, there are so many stores now that offer some sort of rewards card, be it a book store, grocery store, or coffee store franchise. It is routine to ask the customer if they have the right card or not. The usually expect one of two possible answers, yes or no. If you deviate from this pattern, you will interrupt their trance, and they will briefly go internal to make sense of what you just said. Perfect misdirection, allowing you to throw in whatever you want.
I usually just interrupt people’s patterns, but I don’t take it any further than that.
“Do you have our preferred rewards card?”
“What colors do your cards come in?”
“…” A few seconds pass. “Um, I’m sorry what did you say?”
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admin :: Aug.15.2007 :: NLP, advanced language patterns, covert hypnosis, hypnosis, persuasion :: 1 Comment »
Nice post Allen,
I’m glad I am not the only one who started out with hypnosis and gravitated into magic
-Bill