Dr. David Spiegel

They tend to be so over-controlling of thought.

They're all busy evaluating rather than experiencing.

it's kind of a balance we have to hit.

And sometimes we get too emotional and too absorbed and you don't

you're not with it enough to sort of see other possibilities, that can be a problem.

But on the other hand, sometimes you're too rigid and controlled and you don't let your emotions guide you to what you need to do to protect yourself or protect others.

So I would say in general that people with OCD are on the less hypnotizable side of the spectrum.

They're less likely to allow themselves to engage in any, and you know, the typical example is the checking with OCD, for example.

They don't remember

whether they lock the door or turn off the gas in the oven, and they keep going back and they keep checking.

So there, the evaluative component of the brain kind of overrides the experiential one.

And sometimes people can get some benefit, but they're not a group that I would select for being the most likely to respond to self-hypnotic approaches.

Hypnotizability is just a capacity to have hypnotic experiences.

And we have a test called the hypnotic induction profile where we give a highly structured hypnotic experience.

About a third of adults are just not hypnotizable.

Two-thirds are.

About 15% are extremely hypnotizable.

And we can measure that and give it a number from 0 to 10.

And that's very useful.

People who are low to moderate hypnotizable like explanations about what you're doing, but then they can still get the benefit.