You’ve probably been there. You’re sitting in a chair, across from a very friendly therapist. There’s a cup of tea on the table, the room smells faintly of lavender, and the question you’re asked is: “So… how does that feel to you?”
Then you talk. For an hour. You dig into your past, analyze your childhood, dissect your relationships, and after ten sessions, you arrive at a fantastic, crystal-clear insight: “Aha! So I’m afraid to speak in front of a group because my sixth-grade teacher once laughed at me when I gave my presentation on guinea pigs!”
Wow. What an insight. Wonderful.
And the next time you have to stand in front of a group? You’ll be shaking like a leaf again. Beads of sweat will form on your forehead, and your heart rate will skyrocket to 180.
How is that even possible? You do understand where it’s coming from, right?
Well, that’s exactly where the problem lies. And that’s also precisely why talk therapy alone simply doesn’t work in the vast majority of cases.
Watch the video:
The Illusion of Insight: Why Understanding Doesn’t Lead to Change
Talk therapy relies almost entirely on insight—the idea that if you just understand something, it will change. But let’s be completely honest: insight isn’t a prerequisite for change at all. In fact, more often than not, that analytical mind is actually the biggest obstacle to your entire transformation process.
Imagine this: someone smokes. If you ask that person why they smoke, they can usually explain it in great detail. “It calms me down, it’s a habit, my parents smoked too.” Ask them why they want to quit? They’ll effortlessly list ten reasons: their health, their money, their children, the smell.
That insight has been there for an absurdly long time! Otherwise, that person wouldn’t have been seeing a therapist or coach in the first place. If the insight had been enough to stop, he would have stopped a long time ago .
I couldn’t care less where it comes from. The point is: how do you get rid of it?
The same applies to fears. Suppose someone is terrified of elevators.
- "Why are you afraid of the elevator?"
- "Well, I once got stuck in the elevator at the Bijenkorf for 45 minutes, and I haven’t dared to get back in one since."
Well, fantastic. You’ve gained some insight. You already had that insight before you walked in, and it doesn’t change a thing about the fact that you’re still taking the stairs to the tenth floor.
Talk therapy gets stuck at the level of the conscious mind. You’re talking to the very part of the brain that actually perpetuates the problem. The conscious mind is the critic, the analyzer, the doubter. As long as you keep chatting at that level, you won’t change a thing under the hood.
The Power of “Artistic Vagueness”
If you ask very specific questions during a session, give direct advice, or hand out strict assignments, what happens? Exactly: resistance.
If a therapist says to you, “Okay, and from now on, you’ll feel completely relaxed,” what does your critical, conscious mind say right away? “Well, sorry, but I don’t feel relaxed at all. I actually feel incredibly stressed!”
And before you know it, you’re caught in a “Welles-Nietes” debate with your therapist. A wall goes up, and you dig in your heels. The line goes dead.
How do we address this within effective hypnotherapy? We don’t use rigid, direct instructions. We use what I call “artistic vagueness”[1].
Instead of telling you, “You are now relaxed,” I might say, for example:
"And you might actually find yourself wondering... when you’ll start to notice that you’re beginning to relax..."
Can you sense what’s happening there?
Your conscious mind thinks: “Yes, that’s actually a pretty good question. When am I actually going to notice that?” In order to understand that sentence at all, your mind must already be internally searching for that feeling of relaxation. You have to experience it briefly to grasp the meaning of the word.
I don’t give a direct command that you can refuse. I embed the suggestions. I use presuppositions. In the sentence “When you start to notice that you’re beginning to relax, ” there is a temporal predicate (“when”). This means that you have a choice in the moment, but that the relaxation is going to happen is as clear as day.
It’s an embedded instruction that your critical mind can’t find a single flaw in. No one is going to parse a sentence like that linguistically and exclaim, “Hey, wait a minute! You’re telling me to relax!” No, you just accept it and go along with the process.
The Transderivational Quest: Let the Brain Do the Work Itself
To give meaning to that artistic, vague language, a client really has to go within. In hypnosis, we call this a transderivational quest[2]. That’s a very fancy word for something that’s actually quite simple: you step out of your head, you go inward, and you search for your own, personal meaning.
If I say to you:
"There is a place somewhere in your body... that knows exactly what safety is."
Of course, that’s a completely vague statement. After all, how can a “place in your body” actually “know” anything? But your brain wants to process the information. So what do you do automatically? You turn inward. You scan your own system. “Safety… where is that for me? Is it in my stomach? Near my heart? Is that a feeling from the past?”
The moment you embark on that journey, something magical happens:
- You’ll naturally enter a state of hypnosis (trance).
- Your conscious, critical mind takes a step back.
- You’re wide open to positive suggestions and real change.
My definition or my understanding of safety or peace of mind is completely irrelevant to you. If I were to tell you what you should feel, I’d be speaking from my own worldview. It’s much better to let it come from within you. When you look within yourself and search for that meaning, the change will be lasting.
This is why metaphors actually work well in therapy: because people then take ownership of the meaning and actions they associate with them[3].
Going with the flow of resistance (as in Aikido)
Now I can hear you thinking: “Yeah, but Edwin, what if there is resistance?”
Awesome! Bring on that resistance. I love it!
I myself hold a black belt in Aikido. In Aikido, you never engage in a head-on battle against your opponent’s strength. If someone is running toward you at 100 kilometers per hour and throws a punch, you don’t stand there to take the blow. No, you capture the other person’s energy, move with them, and use their own strength to take them down to the mat.
It works exactly the same way in therapy. An awful lot of therapists get stressed out when a client says, “Yeah, but none of this works for me at all.”
We actually use that resistance as fuel.
If a client says to me , “What you’re doing isn’t working yet,” I immediately respond with an artfully vague reply using one tiny, crucial word:
"Okay... so you’re noticing that it’s not working yet."
Do you see what’s happening there with the distinction? By adding the word “yet, ” I’m acknowledging that it’s not working right now, but I’m immediately planting the seed in the subconscious that it will work in the future.
Resistance is not an insurmountable obstacle. Resistance is just a little thing we can play with. You can even literally extract it from the client and make it external:
"Hmm, I sense some resistance. Do you notice that too? Okay, let’s imagine placing that resistance right here on the table in front of us... Take a look at it. What does it look like?"
Boom. Suddenly, resistance is no longer a huge, overwhelming emotional problem that the client is, but has become a small object standing before them. It has become smaller. It has become tangible. And suddenly, we can do something with it.
Time for real transformation
Keep this in mind: understanding is not a prerequisite for change. If you want to talk about your problems, go sit on a patio with a friend and enjoy a nice glass of wine. But if you really want to get rid of your fears, your obstacles, your addictions, or your mental blocks, stop talking at the problem.
Work around that critical layer. Use the language of the unconscious, dare to go deeper, and trust that your own system already holds the answers. That’s where the real magic happens.
Ambiguity and Learning Hypnosis
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