#nlp+

Not every method has a name. Not every name tells you what it does.

Some letters are techniques, some are principles. The distinction is softer than you think.

✦ ᛉ ᚨ ᚷ ᛟ ✦

A — Amnesia Not forgetting. Replacing access.

B — Breathing The simplest induction no one respects enough.

C — Covert suggestion The ones you don’t notice working. “And you may not even realize when it begins…”

D — Double bind Two choices. Same direction.

E — Eye fixation Stillness as a doorway.

F — Fractionation Going deeper by coming back.

G — Guided imagery The mind follows what the voice draws.

H — Handshake interrupt Pattern breaks wearing a smile.

I — Ideomotor response The body answering before the mind does.

J — Jacobsonian relaxation Tension release as a road to trance.

K — Kinesthetic focus Sensation over thought.

L — Language patterns Words are not content. They are vectors.

M — Misdirection Attention is always somewhere. Choose where.

N — NLP Useful. Misused. Not magic.

O — Overload Too much input. One way out.

P — Pacing and leading Meet them where they are. Then move them.

Q — Quiet The space between words suggests more than the words.

R — Reframing Same reality. Different meaning.

S — Sudden shock Confusion can open doors. (Use with care.)

T — Triggers Neutral, until they aren’t.

U — Utilization Everything the subject does… becomes part of it.

V — Visualization The mind believes what it rehearses.

W — Waking hypnosis Eyes open. Mind elsewhere.

X — X-factor Charisma, timing, presence. You know it when you see it.

Y — Yes-set A string of agreements that becomes a leash.

Z — Zero effort The paradox: trying less works better.

I was reading a colleague’s post about the importance of indirect language in hypnosis and NLP. She mentioned that if you’re not careful, you can end up sounding like a Talking Heads song.

And I realized I’m exactly the kind of person who would start swapping synonyms just so everything doesn’t sound the same:

“I’m not going to repeat you may find… I’ll say perhaps you’ll notice… no, better it could be interesting to discover… no, that sounds forced… okay, I’ll just rewrite the whole sentence.”

And suddenly the script becomes a linguistic ritual instead of an induction.

But here’s the issue: changing synonyms doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.

If the pattern is:

Permissive opening

Progressive suggestion

Deepening

More deepening

Surrender

Even if you change the words, the brain still detects the same architecture.

In Ericksonian hypnosis, it’s not so much about avoiding repetition of words. It’s about varying:

Rhythm

Sentence length

Attentional direction

Type of suggestion (sensory, cognitive, metaphorical)

You may find yourself relaxing… You may notice your breathing slowing… You may feel your body soften…

Notice what stays the same:

Same beginning: pronoun (“You”) + permissive verb (“may find/notice/feel”). Same rhythm: stress on “You,” then a two-syllable verb, then the content. Same attentional direction: all suggestions point directly to a specific internal experience (relaxation, breathing, bodily sensation). Same syntax: subject + auxiliary verb + main verb + complement.

The human brain, especially in focused attention states (like the beginning of an induction), is a pattern-recognition machine. When it detects a strongly marked rhythmic pattern, one of two things tends to happen:

Habituation: the brain gets bored, disengages, and suggestibility decreases. It becomes background noise.

Ritual detection: the conscious mind recognizes a technique being applied mechanically. “Ah, I know what’s coming next. They’re trying to relax me.” That awareness can activate resistance.

Repetition, instead of inducing trance, can induce monotony — or at best, a kind of “grandma hypnosis” (someone falls asleep because it’s dull, not because they’re actually in trance).

You can break the pattern like this:

There’s nothing you need to do. Just notice what’s already happening. Breathing takes care of itself. And sometimes the body knows how to settle before the mind understands why.

✦ On Shiny Things & Structure ✦ A skeptical reflection on hypnosis trends. It dismantles the allure of NLP and redefines the true requirements for profound trance. Consider this a philosophical fragment for practitioners.

✦ ᚺ ᚢ ᚲ ᚺ ✦

Then comes NLP. Something modern. Something shiny.

Yes—thought and language matter. Yes—meaning shapes experience.

But if Neuro-Linguistic Programming were the holy grail, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, wouldn’t it be far more consistent and effective?

Perhaps someone read the word programming and thought: brain = computer.

Sure. A pre–Windows 95 computer, complete with blue screens.

You use what works. Not what promises miracles.

And finally, the part that actually annoyed me:

The idea that Ericksonian hypnosis is only for intelligent minds.

Milton Erickson was a genius. Many of us study him for years and still fall short.

What he worked with was not intelligence. It was:

metaphor

ambiguity

flexible language

Ericksonian work is for creative minds, for rich inner worlds, for symbolic thinkers.

People like those who read and write on Tumblr.

The world is full of idiots who are highly hypnotizable. And full of creative people who make excellent subjects.

Intelligence is not the requirement.

Structure is.

My nest shrinks, suffocates. Walls split me off , safe? Or caging me like a lab rat? Screw it. Safe enough.

PING

Fucking headlines burn my eyes. Can’t rip out this neural shit the Above, those greedy codelords, won’t let me. Stupid move, taking their free implant. They’re out here trawling for suckers, turning us into meat-machines, our brains just hackable merch. Neon City our collective incubator Mind the hive, dear reader.

Doomscrolling this garbage again. Walls clamp tighter, breathing faster Am I the last one not fried? No

something’s off. This spark in my chest isn’t theirs.

Guess I’m not safe in my head. Guess we’re all lost as hell, but we’re not their drones yet. Stumbling, clawing toward some raw dawn.

This is a Love Warriors Zone!

Listen to understand, not to respond.

make this World Great again!

maybe i am a dreamer but i am not the only one!

Don't Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin 🎵