Reading time of the Maslow and hypnosis article: 18 minutes (scrolling on headlines is a bit faster)
Abraham Maslow was an American clinical psychologist you may know from his pyramid of human needs and/or motivations. That one looks like the one below in most images but it is not complete. There is one component missing that Maslow himself introduced in 1962 but is seen almost nowhere in images. That is the level of self-transcendence.
Hierarchy of Maslow
Maslow published his findings in 1943 and to this day it is widely used and taught at psychology courses. And rightly so. It is a great model for mapping human motivations.
If you look at the bottom layer of Maslow's pyramid you will see physical needs listed there. Think food, drink and sleep. I mean, if you're really hungry what do you want? Eat, it's as simple as that. You don't necessarily need safety or security then, you just want to eat.
Hence, people can maneuver themselves into unsafe situations to meet their physical needs. They may start stealing for bread or even start selling themselves for some food.
You can also immediately see in this model why addiction to drugs, for example, is so difficult to overcome. After all, it comes on par with eating and drinking. The addict must have it. Just as the hungry wants to eat, the junkie wants his dope. There is little free will there.
It is simply your primal brain talking to you
The lower layer is also related to our survival instinct, our primal brain. We want to survive so we do everything we can to get our food and drink. That we possibly break all kinds of laws in the process will be of no concern to us if we really must have it. So here we are at the mercy of our instincts you might say, and that is not really voluntary. You have to do it or you will die, simple as that.
Now it is true in our country that we don't necessarily have to go very far for bread. Every day, entire loaves of bread are thrown away. And a glance in the dumpster at the local Albert Heijn in the evening immediately teaches you that you can feed yourself just fine if you want to. Now you probably don't see yourself digging into a dumpster, but the opportunity is there.
When I traveled in Australia, I did that once and we pulled complete cakes out of the container. Unbelievable what we all throw away and what you can pick up like that. Yes, you have to cross a threshold for it but it can be done. You don't have to starve to death here.
You want assurance
And that, according to Maslow, brings us right to the second stage. You want to feel safe and secure. You want to have shelter. Now this is not a given for everyone, but for most people this is reality in the Netherlands. They have shelter, fortunately.
You also want to feel safe in your environment, in your family, in your relationships, and that can be lacking at times as the numbers show. A lot has to do with good bonding (as a child with parents).
And that doesn't always happen well, as evidenced by the numbers below:
- 40.9% of young people (15-25 years old) have occasional feelings of insecurity.
- 30-40% of children (ages 1-12) from healthy balanced families have disturbed attachment relationships with parents.
- Over three-quarters (80 percent) of children and youth growing up in families in which there is abuse, neglect and/or domestic violence (youth need not be victims themselves) have disrupted attachment relationships.
- 30 percent of children adopted after their 1st birthday have disrupted attachment relationships.
- When adoption occurred before the child's 1st birthday, the child can form attachment relationships similar to those of non-adopted children and adolescents.
- Over 30 percent of youth growing up in foster care have a disorganized/disturbed attachment relationship with the foster parents. It should be noted that the disorganized attachment relationship likely stems from a previous unsafe or broken relationship with the biological parents.
- About half of youth with developmental disabilities, autistic disorders or intellectual disabilities are insecurely attached. In the healthy population, it is 30 to 40 percent. Children and youth with developmental disabilities, autistic disorders or intellectual disabilities are also more likely to have disorganized/disrupted attachment relationships.
The prevalence figures reported here are based on both international and Dutch studies of attachment (Lamb et al., 1985; van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg, 1988) From the website guidelinesjeugdhulp.nl
Hypnosis Protocol for Asthma
So safety and security is not well developed in everyone, and American psychologist Dr. Tony Madrid has developed a protocol for this that is more than interesting. In a study with 16 children, Madrid helped 13 children get rid of asthma through hypnosis. That is already remarkable, but when you realize that those children never went under hypnosis it is even amazing and almost unbelievable.
He did the hypnosis sessions with the mother and the protocol roughly consists of three steps in three sessions:
- 'Creating' a good pregnancy in hypnosis
- 'Creating' a good birth in hypnosis
- 'Creating' a good attachment in hypnosis
Three steps and three sessions where each step was the starting point for the session. So the first session involved creating or remembering a good pregnancy. The second session was about childbirth and the third session was about optimizing attachment.
As a result, 81.25% of children were freed from asthma. How fascinating is that. The purpose of this article is not to delve into this, but this research illustrates the importance of good bonding.
So, do you think that attachment went voluntarily with you? No, because you had no control over it. You were dependent on your mother.
Road free will...
You want to be socially accepted
When you feel safe and that need is satisfied, then the third layer in Maslow's pyramid comes into play. You want to be socially accepted. Then you are loved and belong. This is a very important layer and is also, as crazy as it sounds, part of survival.
After all, as human beings, we need three things to survive:
- Food
- Drink
- Touch/Attention
You get the latter from others, and so you depend on others in the process....
You can obtain the first two (food and drink) yourself at some point, but the last one (touch) you need someone else for that.
It also often feels natural to cuddle babies, but do you know why this physical contact is so important?
One reason is that touch at a very young age influences how our bodies respond to stress. In fact, epigenetic research from Utah shows that touch is crucial to the healthy development of the stress system.
And that's tough, because how are you going to get that?
People have invented or learned all kinds of ways to do this. If Daddy never looked at you and you wanted his attention, you might perform very well or you might not perform at all. Maybe you put on a big mouth or maybe you were very shy.
Whatever worked best, that's what you started doing. However, most people still do it when now it doesn't have to. Just as you can get your food and drink in many different ways, you can also get your attention in many different ways.
Yet most people seek attention in only one way, and that makes sense
When you are young, at some point you learn ways that make you pay attention. You learn a lot of other things in the period from zero to five years old, such as talking, riding a bike, walking, maybe reading a little, climbing and nowadays operating all kinds of devices.
No need to think about that later, which is convenient.
You don't have to go through the whole process again on every bike to learn cycling. It saves an enormous amount of time that your brain has automated and even more beautifully generalized this. That means you can practically ride any bike similar to the one you learned on. An ingenious system if you think about it.
The same goes for driving a car, operating a computer and many other things. Your brain adapts at lightning speed, saving you a great deal of time and energy. The latter is the most important thing.
After all, your brain already uses twenty percent of all your energy at rest!
So when they have to think and work a lot, it takes a lot of energy. That's why small children sleep at noon. They work very hard. Later you have a lot of automation and you do a lot unconsciously automatically.
Almost everything you do is automatic!
In 2010, researchers at Northeastern University discovered that 93% of people exhibit predictable behaviors. As humans, we often do the same thing. It is also the most energy efficient and if it takes you less energy then it is more likely, that you will live longer. After all, if you have zero energy then you are simply dead.
So 93% you do unconsciously automatically.
So for most of your life, you are a slave to your brain, so to speak.
Everything programmed into it simply keeps spinning off.
And so most of these habits have been in there for a long time, since childhood, and changing them is therefore quite difficult, although it certainly can be done. In fact, a lot of research shows that your brain is plastic, which means you can change, but then why do you learn so easily when you are small?
Again, this is because of your brain, especially brain waves.
Lots and fast learning through Alpha...
As a baby, you have very low brain activity and are in the delta wave (0.1-4 Hz). Now you often only reach that when you are deep asleep.
From your second year, you are much in the alpha wave (8-12 hz) and therefore you learn much easier. Alpha waves must be accompanied by a small percentage of beta waves of ten to thirty percent, otherwise one is too inactive.
In alpha one is awake, able to think, perceive, study, make music, etcetera.
Studies show that when one produces alpha waves one is calmer inside and better able to focus attention on something. In alpha one absorbs new information better, it is stored better and one can recall the information better. It is in this Alpha state that one can learn most efficiently.
Alpha cannot coexist with fear or aggression. Therefore, one in alpha reacts less angrily to negative comments and is also less likely to become afraid. The more relaxed a person is in all kinds of situations, the less quickly the person is off balance. The presence of many alpha waves is therefore good for exams, job interviews, speaking engagements, etc. (source: science.infonu.nl)
So the alpha wave is where you come when you start to relax. Or when you're in a flow and focused at work. You then also often feel that time is moving much faster and you are not quite sure what is going on around you. It can happen when absorbed in a good book, a good movie or when you are driving a car.
You can also seek it consciously through meditation or by going into hypnosis where you also get into the alpha wave and learn more easily.
Lots of alpha waves is additionally very healthy because it eliminates stress and there can be no anxiety in that brain activity.
Slave to the beta wave?
It is only around your eighth year that the beta wave (16-38 Hz) becomes much more influential.
'For example, someone who is hyperactive produces extremely high beta waves, this person's ability to concentrate is very poor. It is also known that smokers on average produce more beta waves than non-smokers.
In small children, the brain generally produces a large percentage of slow brain waves and few beta waves. After age five, this changes slowly. By age eight, children produce about as many beta waves as adults, about 93% of the time.' (source: science.infonu.com)
Isn't that interesting?
93% of your behavior is unconsciously automatic and 93% of the time you are in the beta wave....
And you can't change anything until you go to the alpha wave, as you just read.
So 93% of the time you are essentially a slave to your brain....
Back to Maslow's pyramid
Back to Maslow's pyramid for a moment. So you can already see here, that what you learned to do to get attention, you're probably still doing. And that while I think you have many more ways to get attention.
You learned the first three layers of the pyramid in the family system. You learned the rules of the game, became adept at playing the game and it earned you something, namely; your food, your drink and your touch/attention. You belonged that way and were socially accepted.
This rite of course repeated itself in school (social acceptance) and there you learned how to fit back in. At least, you didn't necessarily want to belong to everyone I guess. You looked for similarities.
Your brain wants convenience so it looks for those things that make it easy for you. So what do you do? You seek out the "easy" people and you don't associate with "difficult" people. Of course, what is easy for you may be just another 'difficult' person for someone else. And by difficult I mean different from you. You haven't learned it, so it's more difficult and that's what most people avoid.
Of course, there are exceptions, because if in your family everyone is very friendly with each other and with others, then chances are very good that you will too.
Here you can see right away that what you learned between zero and five years is very decisive for your growth in the pyramid. What is "put in there," so to speak, keeps repeating itself as repetitive programs and makes you a slave to your brain, so to speak.
You also want recognition
The next layer in Maslow's pyramid is recognition and appreciation. Did you have that in the past? If so, you'll be looking for it less now.
Never had that before? Then you're looking for it now. Now we all want to be appreciated and recognized to some extent, but with some this is a bigger problem as with others. And again, this is because of what you have been given in the past.
Maybe you're a pleaser or just a rebel. You may be a perfectionist or aggressive. Whatever role you adopt to gain recognition is often one that worked well in your youth. That doesn't mean it still works well now. It may actually work counterproductive now, but again, your brain wants convenience and chooses what you are subconsciously good at.
You want to realize yourself
When your needs are satisfied in all layers of Maslow's pyramid, then the final layer of self-actualization appears in many textbooks and images. When you realize yourself then you are there, Maslow said in 1943. But the question then becomes, "Who are you?
Now that question is very personal, but also very philosophical, because who are you really?
In your younger years, you were very open to suggestions. You were also always learning new things and you were in low brain activity. Mainly in alpha which made you open to all kinds of suggestions.
This is also exactly the definition of hypnosis
'A state in which you are open to suggestions'.
When we look at a person's brain when they are in hypnosis we see roughly two things.
The first thing we see highlighted is an area called the precuneus. That area is in the back of the cerebellum.
The precuneus is a part of the brain involved in memory recall, integration of information related to perception of the environment, responding to pain, mental visual strategies and dozens more complex functions. In people who are relaxed or meditating, this area does not light up compared to people who are in hypnosis.
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine (2016) additionally discovered that three things are fundamentally different in a brain that is in hypnosis compared to a brain that is not in hypnosis
They also saw a reduction in activity in the cortex cingularis anterio, an area that processes pain and signals conflict. That area is in the front of your head (in the prefrontal cortex).
In addition, they saw more activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and insula. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DPC) is thought to be responsible for planning and higher aspects of controlled behavior, such as executive functions, "monitoring" behavior, and suppressing unwanted behaviors and motor skills.
The insula is a connector between the neocortex (our new brain you might say) and it is believed that the area bundles sensory stimuli together within an emotional context.
They also saw a reduction in activity between the DPC and the default network. The default network is an area of the brain that is especially active in a state of rest, when one is not focused on events in the outside world. This reduction in activity likely represents a disconnect between one's actions and one's awareness of those actions. (Dr. David Siegel - Stanford University - 2016)
Second, in addition, the brain activity of someone in hypnosis is much lower than normal. You often see people enter the alpha state to even the beta state. In those states you can learn very quickly and take suggestions faster. When you compare this to young children, the similarities are enormous. Children are also in low brain activity and take suggestions very quickly.
In my definition, children are constantly in hypnosis and thus parents are a hypnotist (whether they believe in it or not).
You as a parent are a hypnotist ...
Where the hypnotist (or hypnotherapist) really weighs his words and knows what he is doing, the parent can never sustain that. In an hour and a half session I can focus just fine on giving the right suggestions, but 24 hours a day for eight years is not going to work for me either as a trained hypnotherapist (unfortunately). I too have given my children some bad suggestions. Good ones too, of course, but often those bad suggestions stick around just a little bit longer.
When you are aware that you are giving bad suggestions, you can always turn it around to a great extent. That's the power of awareness. You may not be doing it right away, but you are aware of it.
That's the most important first step. Only then will you know what you didn't know. And then you can do something about it and learn, for example, how to give the right suggestions and when to give them. You see, people are much more susceptible to a suggestion at some times than at other times. Every hypnotist knows that and responds to it.
Awareness is the first step to becoming slave-free and coming out of past hypnosis....
Anyway, back to Maslow's pyramid for a moment....
Everywhere you see it said that self-realization is the ultimate goal, but is it?
Maslow asked himself in the 1960s. When did you realize your self and who are you?
That's an interesting question, and then the question arises, "What will your identity be based on?
Who are you and what is that based on?
On roughly 3 things:
- What you believe (your beliefs)
- What you care about (your values)
- How you see yourself (self-image)
Now we can debate whether experiences should be included or environment, but if you think about that, what you believe about that experience is more important than the experience itself. I mean, we can experience the same thing (a theater performance, for example), but have a totally different idea of it or with it. I believe different things about it than you do. That's always the case.
Go figure in your own life. It's never exactly the same and it can't be because you believe something different, you find something different more important and you look for that in that experience. If you miss that in that experience, then you find that experience worthless (a lack of value) and if you find what you find important, then you find it valuable.
Your IC is made up of these parts. You value things, for example, love, freedom, and joy. Coincidentally exactly those three things I find most important, that can't be a coincidence, can it?
In addition, you believe things about the world, about people, about your parents, about relationships, about your job, about everything. For example, the world is a beautiful place or right a bad place. Man is the ultimate crown of creation or just a terrible virus. The latter two shape your identity very differently because whether you see yourself as the ultimate crown of creation or as a virus does make a difference.
You may be thinking, "I don't believe either of those, that's just ridiculous what you're saying there. Then that's not consistent with your beliefs (your convictions) and that's fine. You believe something else and I use the word belief on purpose because it's not true. For you it is, but it is not necessarily the truth.
A belief can absolutely feel true or even be true, but the latter is a gray area, because what is true? I'm not going to elaborate on that in this article because then it will be even longer, but your beliefs do shape your identity to a large extent.
And finally, your self-image. How you see yourself has a huge impact on your identity. Again you could devote a huge article to this, but at first you see yourself as others see you (you think). So how others treat you is how you are.
At first, you confuse what people do to you or say to you with who you are. So when they say you're awkward, you start to see yourself that way (even though it's not true). Will you even then try not to be awkward? Some people do and become (at worst) very perfectionist and it's never good enough and others simply stop trying (and we often call that fear of failure).
How do you get your identity?
From your parents in large part. In the family, you are going to define who you are there, where you belong in the hierarchy and how you are going to see yourself. After age eight your brain activity goes up and it becomes increasingly difficult to change that. After that point, for the most part, you just start repeating what you learned and the neural network of who you are becomes more and more imprinted in your brain. A slave is created...
Why are you doing what you are doing now?
- Is it the work you wanted to do or is it something you happened to be good at and therefore started doing that?
- Have you chosen your relationship as filler or complementary?
Tough questions, but Maslow figured out that while you can realize yourself, that is not the highest need. It is developing an ego, a self, a strong self, but that is very individualistic. At worst, even selfish, narcissistic or even psychopathic.
In this day and age, that kind of trait is rewarded handsomely. One study shows that the number of people with psychopathic traits has skyrocketed since the 1960s. Why? It is appreciated if you can do your job emotionlessly. A CEO has to make rigorous decisions, and in business, those kinds of traits are admired and paid well. So it pays to develop them. The well-known elbow work, playing political games, you just have to be able to do it and the psychopath can do it like the best.
Before you think that people with psychopathic traits are just serial killers, you're wrong. People who also score relatively high on the scale of psychopathy are surgeons. I can't just cut someone open, for example, but a surgeon can do that just fine. If he had had a very bad childhood, you probably wouldn't want to run into him in a dark alley. That's often the difference.
Self-realization is a hypnosis
Self-realization is not the end point according to Maslow, and I share the idea. Self-realization is precisely the hypnosis you are allowed to come out of. Because when you realize yourself, who are you? Probably largely the product of your environment, your parents, your teachers, your friends, your experiences.
That's one big hypnosis.
It’s also the hypnosis of separation.
As if there’s you and the rest of the world. I am me, and you are you. We are two separate entities, and we now know from recent research that this isn’t true. That’s how you’ve come to see it, and that’s also how your brain is wired. It’s designed to reason, and that’s precisely where duality lies.
Your brain thinks in black or white, male or female, light or dark, good or bad, yin or yang, you and me. Being able to deliberate that within ourselves is a fine system, because it did make us the dominant species today (whether that is convenient I leave to you).
However, quantum physics shows very nicely that we are not separate, but are one. And sometimes you do have such an experience. Perhaps in nature or during a moment of relaxation. That you almost have a mystical experience that you are connected to a greater whole. That is what Maslow called the level of self-transcendence. That you transcend yourself and become in service to the rest of the world. That you are not alone, but all-one.
For me, this is the way out of hypnosis. Limiting beliefs about yourself or a poor self-image are simply bad hypnosis. That's not who you really are.
To truly realize yourself, you must break free of your old programming from your past.
As many as possible.
But yes those are "hidden" between zero and five and you don't reach them consciously, but you can if you go into low brain activity and get the right suggestions to find them. With hypnosis, that's what happens.
When you track and change those then you will find that you begin to increasingly let go of your "old self" and create a "new self. That is the moment of true self-realization, and when that moment arrives?
Then you can transcend, and essentially Maslow's pyramid should then look like the one you see below.
The final small point belongs on top. Transcendence. transcending or transcending your "I.
What you see a lot of now is that people already want to transcend and let go of their "self" or "ego," when they don't even have one. That, according to Maslow, is impossible.
Compare it to someone who is hungry. Of course that one also wants recognition and social acceptance, but first eat. After that, we'll see. It is the same with this.
First, break free from your old hypnosis, realize your true self, and then transcend it.
First, breakfree from your mind, which is full of old habits, programming, and beliefs.
First, as it were, become “free” from the “old ways that don’t work,” as far as possible.
Then create and "install" something new as a habit or unconscious automatic program.
And when that new "I" truly stands, it transcends...
You then remain essentially a slave to your brain afterwards, but you have programmed it yourself 😉
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