I was at a bus stop chatting with the locals. An amputee asked for the time, it was nearly 9pm. He said he'd usually be home drunk by now (it was a thursday). I asked why. He had chronic pain from his amputated leg, and he didn't like the meds his doctors gave. I asked him, your doctors gave you pain meds for a leg that doesn't exist?

Phantom limb pain is real. The nerves are "activated" at point of limb amputation. Sometimes that's the time of the accident. sometimes that's when the doctor cuts it off. Dr. Doidge (author and researcher on neuroplasticity) suggests the limb first be numbed then cut off. Otherwise the brain may still receive echos of a distressed limb (ie pain).

So the war vet drank b/c of pain. I also pulled out some childhood history. Drinking was also a learned identity thing. That left me about 3 minutes before the bus came to pick him up. Normally I don't use hypnosis but I had 3 minutes, and it works anyway.

There are a couple different ways to use hypnosis. You can just tell people to do stuff. That doesn't always work. First of all, they might not know how. Which is reasonable- if they knew how they probably wouldn't have the problem in the first place. The other way is to help guide their subconscious to choose to make new connections in the brain, leaving the type of connections up to the subonscious. Or you can guide the subconscious to make specific connections. That's what I chose to do, the last one.

I specifically told the subconscious how to break the pain loop. Then I told it to remove the drinking from his identity. Then we practiced it, thus rewiring connections, and solidifying the connections in the brain. That last step is what most hypnotists and other therapists miss. It's also a huge failure in therapy.  It makes a session seem great but then the client wanders away, quickly falling into old habits. the vet however, began to make changes as I talked to him (there are subtle subconscious responses).

I had  friend who drank at work- like a fish. The feelings and reasons he had for drinking were different. But since they're connections in the brain (all thinking and behavior are a result of connections in the brain), the process was the same. Remove reasons, rewire, practice. He stopped drinking that day. whether it's drinking, picking your nose, biting nails, whatever it is- it's all nearly the same. You just have to interchange a few structural variants. I like this process because it's more based on science, neural science on humans as opposed to projective "science" based on theories.

The testing for it can be easy too. The first time I learned the process I was skeptical. I figured if our experience is all wiring in the brain, then I can change experience- any experience, including taste. And if I could rewire without telling someone, then they could confirm the rewiring by explaining the new experience. So I temporarily rewired peoples taste/flavor of food without telling them what I was doing. When they ate xyz and it tasted like abc, then I knew it worked. strange, isn't it? So I applied the process to people's problems and it worked perfectly.