Troubleshooting
Every single hypnotist, at some point, will give a suggestion that produces unexpected results. In some cases, these can be abreactions, unexpected physical reactions, or overreactions. These are mostly covered in the Risks section. In other cases, either nothing happens (or appears to happen), or the hypnotee does not respond to the suggestion in the way that the hypnotist wanted. This page is about working from that point — the suggestions that don’t work, the "difficult" and "analytical" subjects, and determining when things aren’t in sync.
There are a number of other guides, including Vhrehli’s [A Rant On Working With Low Responders](https://yourinductionsucks.fyi/hypnoquickies-lv03-toolkit/11---a-rant-on-working-with-low-responders/).
Troubleshooting is by nature an individual activity, but we can break it up into broad sections:
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Identification
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Moving On
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Feedback
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Adjustment
Identification
The first part is seeing that something happened.
This can be surprisingly difficult, especially in non-verbal actions that don’t involve movement. Your partner may be holding a position that is uncomfortable for them, may have a cramp, may need to use the bathroom unexpectedly, or may have hit an emotional wall unexpectedly. If you have constrained their movement or their ability to communicate, they may feel obliged to "hold on" even holding on could make it worse.
If you see that your partner isn’t looking great, you can tell them to check in and flip it into a situation where they are required to tell you what’s up.
A more common case is where you give your partner a suggestion and they don’t or can’t follow it. You tell them their hand will rise by itself, and the hand doesn’t rise. You tell them to forget a number and they still know it. You tell them to imagine a scenario, and they can’t quite get their head around it. You tell them to hallucinate and they say they don’t see anything.
Importance
The first decision to make is based on two factors: the importance of the suggestion, and your partner’s reaction.
If you’re in the middle of a flow and things are going well and your partner is not discomforted, you may just acknowledge it briefly and move on. This is also practical if you are testing until failure, and your partner is just expected to put their best effort in.
There are various strategies for moving on with a suggestion that didn’t work:
Utilization
Whatever your partner did or didn’t do, you meant for that to happen. Works well with a "there is no failure, only feedback" approach. For example, if your partner is not raising their arm because it feels heavy, switch to the arm being so heavy that they just can’t move it.
Pivoting
Rather than switching out the suggestion, you can give a different suggestion with the same effect. For example, you can tell your partner to raise their arm in the air directly, and experience lightness as they raise it.
Anthony Galie demonstrates here using a fixation technique with one participant while giving deepener suggestions to the group as a whole:
Fallback
Fallback is simple: give them a suggestion that you know they can follow, because they’ve successfully done it before. The classic case is dropping someone into trance by telling them to sleep — your partner can immediately drop regardless of their suggestion, and you’ll have some breathing room.
Another variant of fallback is nesting suggestions, popularized by Hypnosis Without Trance. For example, you might start by sticking your partner’s feet to the floor. Then, rather than cancelling the stuck feet, you immediately move to an amnesia suggestion. When you close the amnesia suggestion, you can ask "how are your feet?" If any nested suggestion fails, you immediately fallback to reminding them of the suggestion in the outer loop, and continue on from there.
Feedback
If it’s a new suggestion that you are focusing on, or if your partner behaved oddly to the suggestion and you don’t want to move on, it’s time to shift your focus to getting addtional feedback.
There’s two parts to getting good feedback from your partner: how did they feel, and what did they think? Listen without judgement and avoid injecting your own viewpoint.
This is also a good point to consider whether you want to continue with the session or stop and call a timeout. If it’s not working, it may be for bigger reasons than you can address in session, and there’s no harm in taking a break.
Feelings
Ask about your partner’s internal experience when given the suggestion, and how they reacted. Listen for points of conflict. Did they feel like they were forcing, fighting, or faking anything? Was there a part of them that felt unwilling or felt the suggestion was implausible?
Your partner may have feelings about the suggestion. In some cases, they might be upset, either at you or at themselves for their reaction or lack of it. Work this out first before you do anything else. It’s important to keep your partner’s morale up, and this may be a reason to move on rather than focus on it.
It is important to be kind and accepting of your partner’s feelings. Your partner, of course, may also want to timeout or halt the session, and of course has the final say in whether or not they want to continue.
Understanding
The way that you phrased the suggestion may be ignoring or work against your partner’s internal context, or your partner may not have any mental model of how it should work.
Misunderstandings are surprisingly common. Your partner might think they followed the suggestion exactly as you phrased it, even though you might have had something else in mind.
Another possibility is that your partner may simply not understand what you meant, or your suggestion may work at cross-purposes with another suggestion.
Workshop
You can ask your partner if they would phrase the suggestion differently. Workshopping with your partner can help here, but you have know when to let it go. Keep it moving and keep your partner engaged in following suggestions. It’s better to try several different things in succession, rather than getting bogged down with an interview.
Adjustments
Reframe
When following new suggestions, your partner may not have a mental model or story that works for them. If you can work out where that falls apart, you can give them options for how to think about following the suggestion.
The appropriate suggestion is the one that fits best for how your partner tends to think. If your partner is technical, they might like a mechanistic explaination. If your partner is very sensory, ask them to remember sensory experiences they’ve had that might be similar.
Focus on what your partner can do, and what they’re good at.
Ratify
Someone who approaches hypnosis in a particular style or as part of a particular induction may find it easier to follow suggestions when things are most familiar.
If your partner is most familiar with following suggestions in a deep trance or a fractionation induction, set the scene to one that is most appropriate for that suggestion.
Use analog phenomena over binary pass/fail tests. If your arm raises, that’s a response. If your hand feels light, that’s a response.