We all try to compose our suggestions as carefully as possible to completely involve our hypnosis partners in their content. Once we have done so, the BEST ME Technique can serve as a final checklist to ensure comprehensiveness. . (Gibbons & Woods, 2016).
The Best Me Technique utilizes the simultaneous involvement of Beliefs, Emotions, Sensationand physical perceptions, Thoughts and images, Motives, and Expectations, to involve one's entire being in the content of s suggested experience. Taken together, the elements of this technique form the acronym, BEST ME (Gibbons & Lynn, 2008), and may be summarized as follows.
Belief systems which orient an individual to person, place, time, and events may be suggested as being different, allowing the participant to mentally transcend present realities.
Emotions may be enriched, intensified, weakened, or combined with others.
Sensations and physical perceptions may be suggested and experienced with an intensity approaching those of real events.
Thoughts and images may be created and guided in response to explicit or indirect suggestions.
Motives may either be suggested directly or implied as a consequence of other events.
Expectations may be structured concerning the manner in which the participant will look forward to and remember suggested events which will occur in the future, and the manner in which suggested experiences will subsequently be recalled and interpreted in memory.
Here is a case example. I was working with a client who has PTSD, stemming primarily from previous sexual abuse by her husband. She married him on her eighteenth birthday in order to get away from home. He was from South America, and he only stayed married to her long enough to get his Green Card to become a U.S citizen. He would watch pornography morning, noon, and night; and when they did have sex, it was "all for himself," as she put it.
Here is a case example. I was working with a client who has PTSD, stemming primarily from previous sexual abuse by her husband. She married him on her eighteenth birthday in order to get away from home. He was from South America, and he only stayed married to her long enough to get his Green Card to become a U.S citizen. He would watch pornography morning, noon, and night; and when they did have sex, it was "all for himself," as she put it.
After a spree of wild promiscuity induced by anger at her husband, ("World, here I am!" she once said to me, in reference to this period in her life). she began living with a pilot who was several years older than she was, with whom she had fallen in love. But, every time they got emotionally too close for comfort, it would trigger her previous trauma. She would turn hostile and pick a quarrel, nagging him endlessly until they would briefly break up.
Using the Best Me Technique to provide suggestions to induce a higher state of awareness I provided suggestions as follows:
B. In this higher state of consciousness and in this higher level of reality, focus the power of your mind to recapture and concentrate into one single moment, all of the love that you and your lover have shared in the past. If you can believe in it you can believe it, and if you can believe it you can make it happen!
E Now, multiply this love 10 times over. Believe it will happen, expect it to happen, and feel it happening!
S, Concentrate this love and send it to him like a laser beam. Feel it now, flowing into every fiber and muscle and nerve of his body and feel him beaming it back to you. Believe it will happen, expect to happen, and feel it happening!
T His love for you is now so great that it is impossible for him to be romantically or physically or emotionally attracted to anyone else.
M. Your fears of abandonment have been eliminated, and you are able now to surrender yourself to loving him totally and completely, in body, heart, mind, and spirit.
E. Whenever you and he make love in the future, you will be so intensely aroused and so highly responsive that it will fulfill you as a woman more deeply than anything you have never known before. Let yourself believe in it with every ounce of strength that is in you If you can believe in it, you can believe it; and if you can believe it, you can make it happen!
After the suggestions described above, I provided an opportunity for my client to mentally make love to her boyfriend, while I remain silent to protect her privacy and allow her to imagine every detail of the experience herself, in much more intimate detail.
No matter how freely they discuss the intimate details of their lovemaking, there are still certain explicit details which they might prefer to remain private. The following application of the Best Me Technique allows a client to pave over previous experiences which have inhibited their ability to completely let go during the most intimate moments of the act of love:
The client had told me that she is especially fond of making love in the woods behind the house which she shares with her boyfriend. After the foregoing suggestions were given, I would proceed as follows:
B. Now the scene is changing once again, and you and your lover are all alone in the woods. He has brought a blanket with him, and he and spreading it out on the ground so that you can make love under the stars.
E. We are going to use this passion to pave over all of the thoughts that have been bothering you Believe it will happen expect it to happen, and feel it happening.
S, as the night slowly passes, you Join. so çompletely in mind, and body and spirit that you have become one in every sense of the word. Believe it will happen, expect it to happen, and feel it happening.
Now I will stop speaking for a few moments so that you can guide the rest of the experience yourself.
[After about a five-minute pause;]
T. Finally, as the sky above you begins to lighten, you sink back exhausted with joy, The intrusive thoughts you may have had in the past have been completely covered over by the power of your love, and you are truly one in body, heart, mind, and spirit.
M You will have neither the energy nor the inclination for thoughts of any other type of release; for your fulfillment here as a woman [or a man] has led you to joy beyond your wildest dreams
E. Each time these hypnotic experiences are repeated, they will become more vivid,more desirable, more intense and more fulfilling.
The client reported that these suggestions were effective in ending their pattern of frequent quarrels resulting in a temporary breakup whenever their emotional relationship became too intense. She referred to the current portion of their relationship as a "honeymoon." The last time I saw her, however, she said that the old fears had surfaced once more.
I suggested that this time, she and her boyfriend would be making love in a parallel universe, in which the stormy and traumatic events which she experienced during her adolescence and early adulthood never happened.
She is employed as a flight attendant, and on this latest visit she had to leave her phone on because she was on call for the upcoming Thanksgiving week end. Halfway into the self-directed portion of the experience, her phone went off. She gave no indication of having heard it. I apologetically spoke to her, and she opened her eyes as if being awakened from a nap. The caller turned out to be her brother. "We have twenty minutes to respond," she told me, and decided to turn the phone off for the remainder of the session.
"Now you can go all the way back into hypnosis, very rapidly," I said, and began an abbreviated progressive relaxation induction to take her back to the portion of the experience where she was making love to her boyfriend in a parallel universe, and directing the experience herself.
A few seconds into this induction, she giggled suddenly. I stopped and asked her what was the matter. She sad, "I didn't know I could go all the way back there so fast. WHEEE!" We both laughed, and I completed the induction. She later reported that the experience was highly effective. When I last heard fromher, she and her boyfriend were looking for a houwe in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania -- near a school!
References
Gibbons, D. E., & Lynn, S. J. (2008). Hyonotic inductions: A primer. In Ruhe, J. W., Lynn, S. J., & Kirsch, I. (Eds.) Handbook of clinical hypnosis, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Assn.
Gibbons, D. E., &; Woods, K. T. (2016). Virtual reality hypnosis: Explorations in the Multiverse. Amazon Books
