Adam Cox's Hypnotist episodes are all designed for individuals, but it's extraordinary how often they can segway into the realms of public policy. This episode is all about the challenge of turning decisions into decisive action: if that doesn't happen, it can better be described as dithering. In both business and social contexts, people discern what looks as the right way forward — but the follow-through into action requires a degree of emotional detachment: Adam draws on a number of movie metaphors for how it can be achieved. Could Rachel Reeves benefit from this in framing her forthcoming Budget?
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This episode revisits the motivations, expectations and emotions in the past — reaching right back into childhood years — which may have led to an overweight problem today, and how to let go of that baggage. It discusses a personal challenge, of course, but it could be approached as an analogy for the way that the post-war call for Attleean universal welfare has driven seven decades of excess public spending so that our country is now groaning from the weight of excess debt. It might therefore help politicians to let go of their emotional baggage and focus on a new slimline style of government which targets help and support where it's needed.
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Original Broadcast: The Hypnotist
For those unfamiliar with Schrödinger’s Box: a sealed box contains a cat which can release a gas that would kill it — but has it done so? Until the box is opened, it's all in the imagination. All possibilities exist until they are observed. Such multiple outcomes can exist in hypnosis, although not in reality: so, Adam Cox takes alternative journeys to help people resolve dilemmas which are presenting challenges.
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Effective negotiation requires both clarity of what you want to achieve and a clear understanding of what you're not willing to tolerate: confusion and anxiety are not the way to achieve successful outcomes. But best of all is to aim for a 'win—win' solution, where both parties feel satisfied with the outcome. And if negotiations can be undertaken in a optimistic and even playful atmosphere, so much the better. Try listening to this episode and then weighing up what you make of Donald Trump's skills in deal-making: he clearly thinks he's the bees' knees at it!
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Original Broadcast: The Hypnotist
Post-traumatic stress disorder — reliving traumatic memories — is widespread in today's society. This episode seeks to help in finding a way to break unsettling links between such past experiences and the way they impact today's emotions. Once those links are addressed and memories are settled into the past, it's possible to look forward to a more empowered future.
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This is a powerful episode which was recorded for someone who often felt disrespected and unseen, and that the respect that they showed for others was not returned. Combined with this was a tendency to get stuck in a rut, and not to combine progress on a number of areas in parallel. It could be a useful contribution towards finding a more forward-looking perspective on life.
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Original Broadcast: The Hypnotist
Past experiences may have not only treated you very badly at the time but also suppressed your anger, which has remained bottled up to the present day: so that they burst out when you'd least want them too. This episode is about going back to those early experiences, which may have been thoroughly unjustified, and finding ways to put them into perspective. Not all anger is irrational, but it's helpful to come to terms with it.
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Visits to the doctor and hospital appointments can give rise to irrational fear and anxiety — what is sometimes described as the 'monster under the bed' syndrome. If you struggle to find a justification for such fears, this episode may help you to build coping strategies and to become resourceful in getting on with having those checks — without anxiety.
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Original Broadcast: The Hypnotist
Those emotional triggers which go off when someone seems to provoke you could have their roots many years in the past. Of course, the comments that spark your reaction could be deliberate but the chances are that they're accidental. The sensitivity of your emotional triggers may hark back even as far as your childhood, when they were useful learning tools in the playground of early life. In that sense, they're a bit like landmines whose particular cruelty is in the fact that the person who buried them has no idea who is going to land on them in the future. It may prove easier to come to terms with your own emotional triggers before they accidentally harm your relationships of today.
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Original Broadcast: The Hypnotist
The body's alarm systems of pain or anxiety certainly need a medical check-out; but sometimes, rather like over-sensitive technology, they can send false signals. If there are no underlying issues, this episode might help to put things in perspective as Adam Cox explores what he describes as the control room of the mind. Once acted on, those over-sensitive meesages of pain or anxiety may stop demanding so much attention, and you can move on.
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