Emotion Suggestions

There are two parts to an emotional response. The underlying reaction of the body is called affect, and consists of valence (positive or negative experience), physiological arousal (the "fight or flight" sympathetic nervous system), and motivational intensity (the desire to move). When people talk about feelings or a vibe, they are often talking about this underlying affect system. Emotions are at a higher level: the brain labels the feeling and conceptualizes the underlying body reactions (adrenaline, body gearing up to run) and expectations. Emotions are perceptions of constructed from feelings, history, and expectations.

Because emotional response is perception, there can be times when the underlying affect is ambiguous and uncertain. One person may be uncertain what they are feeling, or if they are feeling anything at all. Different people may interpret affect different, one person as nervousness, the other as excitement.

This underlying ambiguity can be used to suggest emotion. For example, the misattribution of arousal can cause people to interpret fear as sexual arousal when crossing a bridge and immediately seeing an attractive member of the opposite sex. It’s far easier to suggestion emotion when underlying affect is heightened, which is one reason that horror movies and rollercoasters are popular on dates.

But this doesn’t apply to everyone. Roughly 10% of the general population has alexithymia, an inability to recognize (or construct) emotions in themselves or others. These people do experience feelings, but cannot provide a label for these feelings. If they do bring up feelings, it may be in the form of physical sensations "good but a little queasy" or "very bad about to throw up" or a very long description of all the events and actions leading up to that point. These people will typically have a harder time with emotion suggestions.

Some studies have suggested six emotional dimensions, but a more recent study identified 27 distinct categories of emotion, with an interactive map. This description of emotions does not completely cover the human spectrum of emotion, but works as a quick way of identifying emotions, like naming colors on a color map.

The 27 emotions: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire, surprise.

Different emotions will last longer than others: sadness lasted the longest, whereas shame, surprise, fear, disgust, boredom, being touched, irritation, and relief were the shortest emotions.

Being able to quickly name and identify these emotions can pay dividends (especially if you or your partner have alexithymia) as it provides some basic labels to reach for. Being able to say "I’m feeling some confusion, some interest, a little anxiety" can be hugely useful during a pretalk or checkin.

The easiest thing to do for a beginner is to elicit an emotion. The emotion of entrancement is obviously elicited during inductions, but stage hypnotists commonly suggest amusement, excitement, or craving.

Suggesting an emotion is usually done through imagining or remembering a situation where the emotion takes center stage. Different people have different emotional reactions to situations, so the best way to suggest an emotion is to ask about a time when the hypnotee felt that emotion really strongly, and have them describe and recall the scene and placing themselves in that scenario. Alternatively, an imagery induction can be used to prepare the emotion about to be elicited. You can also play music that can elicit the emotion, or use a cue associated with a particular emotion, i.e. perfume.

Removing the negative emotions, we can break down into trance, surprise, desire, and highs.

Reducing the intensity of emotions is called down-regulation, or just regulation. Regulation can involve many different strategies: reappraisal of the situation, shifting attention to positive aspects of the situation, acceptance of the emotion, or suppression and denial of the emotion. No regulation strategy is specifically healthy or unhealthy, and different strategies are appropriate in different context, and flexibility is important.

Regulation can be done alone through self-regulation, but regulation can also be an interaction between two or more people, called co-regulation. For life altering events, regulation is a community process: a series of concentric rings, with people in every ring providing care to the inner rings and asking for help from the people on the outer rings.

Regulation is commonplace. Young children cannot self-regulate and depend on their parents to calm them down or distract them when they get angry or upset. Women are often socialized to co-regulate men who lack the skills to regulate themselves. Customer service workers are expected to both self-regulate and manage the emotions of their customers, an implicit duty of emotional labor. Aftercare is regulation. Holding and squeezing your significant other’s hand when they need support is regulation.

The main point is that using hypnosis for regulation is perfectly acceptable between consenting parties, and is not hypnotherapy. If you do not feel comfortable doing the regulation, you can find many videos on youtube that walk you through regulating negative emotions.

Hypnosis can be very useful in regulation: it is a ritual with specified behaviors that is expressly about changing perception. Inductions and hypnotic suggestions can directly address affect and the sympathetic nervous system, providing immediate relief from acute situations. Regulation does involve an extra level of trust and emotional intimacy, and so the pretalk should be very clear and upfront about what can be suggested, and the session should involve frequent check-ins and aftercare.

There are also risks associated with regulation.

Looking only at the negative emotions, there is anger, anxiety, awkwardness, confusion, disgust, empathic pain, fear, horror, and sadness.

Attaching emotions is a common activity in recreational hypnosis that can be exploited for fun.

Attaching emotions works very well when you can associate it with an already familiar response. People require very little prompting to know how to act and feel when show pictures of cats or other memes, and people often use emoji as shorthands for emotions. You can attach an emotion to an event or thing by saying "when you see this thing or hear me say this, it will feel just like you got a heart emoji."

Craving and sexual desire are obviously powerful emotions that can be leveraged, but perception is more than about wanting sex or food. Some of the worst, most twisted things you can do to people are making them appreciate or long for objectively bad art.

Both positive and negative emotions can be used to manipulate perception and provide motivation for following suggestions. It can be a great shortcut because emotions are not logical, and so don’t have to be justified; they are just felt and perceived immediately. If you want someone to avoid something or someone, disgust is a great emotion to attach because it can be very strong in the face of rationalization. Making somone love having bare feet or empty hands might be interesting, but not arresting. But if you make your partner feel disgust for their phone or shoes, they will immediately change their behavior.

Detaching an emotion can help in situations where it’s a requirement to be composed and dispassionate, but it’s rarely done for fun, unless you want to have your girlfriend feel nothing when you propose to her.

Do not use hypnosis to remove phobias or decondition someone. Talk to a certified professional.