Changing how we listen to noise By Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
If the noise bothers you, listen to it. (John Cage, 1912-1992)
We live in a world of
confusion: lights, colours, engine sounds, voices, ideas – a multiplicity of
ideas, signs, symbols – a rap dance of images, people telling us what to do and
what not to do, smoke/don’t smoke, drink/don’t drink, get a job, get an
education, be true to yourself/follow the crowd and don’t be too different, stay with an abusive
family, because they’re family; noise, so much noise. What to do, how to be?
In the noise we seek
solace and sense. Some seek solace in the arms of someone else, anybody else,
and a whole lot of them. Some look to security in substances and food that
allow them to bliss out, at least temporarily. Some gamble on the horses and
dogs and coins and leaves fluttering to the forest floor. Some watch television, show after show.
Some run and cycle frenetically, till their muscles melt. Some read books, book
after book, till their eyes burn. Some meditate for so long they lose touch
with the ordinariness of the world. Some play video games, day after day, night
after night, and so on. None of these things are wrong in themselves, but when
done to extremes, then there is a problem.
Noise. We humans are
really challenged in the face of noise.
We hate it. Confusion is so unsettling that we seek a solution to clear
it up, or at least find something,
anything to stop it.
Clinical hypnotherapy uses this propensity as an amazingly valuable tool. We practitioners use confusion to elicit a hypnotic state, to deliberately create a dissociated condition in which the client’s unconscious is able to respond with a greater capacity of autonomy than their usual waking state. In this state, the unconscious mind is more amenable to hearing alternatives – and hopefully more healthy helpful ones – to the problem choices the client was making previously.
Clinical hypnotherapy uses this propensity as an amazingly valuable tool. We practitioners use confusion to elicit a hypnotic state, to deliberately create a dissociated condition in which the client’s unconscious is able to respond with a greater capacity of autonomy than their usual waking state. In this state, the unconscious mind is more amenable to hearing alternatives – and hopefully more healthy helpful ones – to the problem choices the client was making previously.
Milton Erickson
(1901-1980), the father of modern clinical
hypnotherapy, used this technique beautifully. Consider the following,
[…some family member or friend] … knows pain and knows no pain and so do
you wish to know no pain but comfort and you do know comfort and no pain and as
comfort increases you know that you cannot say no to ease and comfort but you
can say no pain and know no pain but know comfort and ease…
There is a play on the words, “no” and “know”, as well as on “you cannot say no to ease and comfort,” but “no pain” and “know no pain but know comfort and ease.” Just in these words, focus is shifted from a focus to ambiguity and in this shift, the locus of pain dissipates, for these are not just words, but a physiological perception as well.
I recently was asked
to do a hypnotic session on a woman about to have surgery on her foot (very damaged
in a horse riding accident). She’d had several surgeries under general
anaesthetic and the surgeon wasn’t keen on giving her more general anaesthetic
if it was possible. I used a
confusional technique and shifted her awareness from her foot to noticing how
her hips feel when she is dancing (for she is a dancer), and so she imagined
the dance. She got through the whole surgery without needing a general
anaesthetic and was, in fact, not aware of her foot at all.
I use confusional
techniques often because they work so brilliantly and quickly. There are
several kinds of confusional techniques (humour, surprise, amplifying
polarities, double-binds, paradox, etc), and all are designed to shift
awareness, and in a long term way. All serve to break the current problem story,
and facilitate healing. In fact, clients say to me, after I ask them on a
follow up session how they’re getting on, “What problem? I haven’t got a
problem.” This is sometimes quite disconcerting for me, but nevertheless I see
they’re right, they really do not have a problem any more, and it feels to them
that the problem has never been there.
Re-entering confusion
thus loosens and expands a person’s capacity for being present with other ways
of being. It is pretty hard to make someone do something they don’t want to do.
You can’t say to some smoker, “Give up smoking, or else!” and expect them to
follow suit. The old style of hypnosis uses this direct approach, but generally
the effects do not last. What prohibition does is set up resistance to the idea
of change. What re-introducing confusion does is shift consciousness from the
focus on the problem to multiple other ways of seeing, such that the problem is
no longer a problem and resistance has been circumvented. It deliberately
disrupts clients’ everyday mental set to allow a suggestion in without the
client desiring to resist it.
Noise thus has a
purpose. Listen to it, and it will teach you things.
Some years ago I attended a series of talks, chants and meditations from visiting Tibetan lamas over at the Perth State Library. I’d park my car in the underground car park and then catch the lift to the place the lamas were, sit cross legged, meditate and listen intently. Then I’d get up and go to the lift and down to my car. There in the underground car park was a deafening air conditioning unit. By the 7th day, I could hear the chanting lamas in the air conditioning unit, in my car engine, and in the wind. I can still hear the chanting these 10 or so years later. There is no longer noise, but a greater willingness to listen to the layeredness of confusion and seek other ways of understanding things, other than my own story. It’s there in the hum of things, this place of many ways of being. There are many other choices than the one that locks us in.
