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In this clip, Milton Erickson talks about his approach to auto-hypnosis. There is a value in activating unconscious processes within clients, or even ourselves. There are dormant resources within us — that we may not realize that we have — which can be activated to provide us with new appraisals on situations we face.

Self-hypnosis is originally thought to be a procedure that occurs from the outside in. You would put suggestions into your unconscious mind to program yourself with ideas. Dr. Erickson had a very different idea about auto-hypnosis. He believed that auto-hypnosis shouldn’t be done by programming, but by “awakening”.

Typically we see hypnosis as a dream-like state, but to Erickson, hypnosis was an activation. You were activating unconscious processes. You were awakening the client to potentials that had previously been dormant.