The Problem of Can’t Get into Trance in Hypnosis

This morning, I was ironing a shirt. Nothing special, just getting ready for the day. And I found myself completely absorbed in the task—focused on smoothing out the wrinkles, making sure I got the collar just right, watching the fabric transform under the heat and pressure. My attention was narrowed down to that small space where the iron met the cloth. The sounds of the house faded away. My thoughts about the day ahead quieted. There was just this moment, this task, this focus.
And then it hit me: this is exactly what the American Psychological Association describes as trance—"a state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion."

Now, there were no conscious suggestions happening during my ironing experience. No one was telling me to relax or to let go or to go deeper. But there were absolutely internal and subconscious goals present. I wanted the wrinkles gone. I wanted the collar straight. And my consciousness organized itself around those goals, filtering out everything else, creating a narrow beam of attention that made the task not just possible, but almost effortless.
This is trance. This ordinary, everyday, utterly mundane experience—this is hypnosis.
And here's where most people get it completely wrong: they believe that "hypnotic trance" is something that only happens with a hypnotist, or only with a recording, or only in some special setting with dimmed lights and soothing music. They think it's something external, something that's done TO them.
But the reality is this: we all have the capacity to experience hypnosis. It is a resourceful state that occurs from within. The hypnotist—whether it's a stage hypnotist, a clinical hypnotherapist, or even a recording—is merely a facilitator of this natural ability you already possess. They're not creating the trance. They're simply guiding your attention in a particular direction, helping you access a state you enter dozens of times every single day without even realizing it.
You know what? I want to let you in on something that might completely change how you think about hypnosis, about trance, about your own mind.
You're already in trance. Right now.
I know, I know. You're thinking, "But I'm awake! I'm listening! I'm aware!" And you're absolutely right. And you're also in trance. Because trance isn't some mystical altered state that only happens when someone swings a pocket watch in front of your eyes. Trance is the very fabric of human consciousness. It's how we experience every single moment of our lives.
Alan Watts had this beautiful way of pointing out that we're not so much living life as we are experiencing a particular flavor of consciousness from moment to moment.
Think about it. When you wake up in the morning, groggy and disoriented, moving through your routine on autopilot—that's morning trance. You're navigating your world with a particular focus, a particular awareness, a particular set of filters about what matters and what doesn't.
When you sit down at your desk and suddenly three hours have vanished while you were deep in work—that's study trance, flow trance. Your attention narrowed, the world fell away, and you were completely absorbed in what you were doing.
When you're scrolling through your phone and suddenly realize you've been doing it for forty minutes and you can barely remember what you even looked at—that's digital trance. Your consciousness was somewhere else, focused on nothing and everything, drifting through an endless stream of information.
When anxiety grips you and suddenly every small problem becomes catastrophic, every future moment feels threatening, and your heart races at thoughts that haven't even happened yet—that's anxiety trance. Your mind has focused intensely on danger, on worst-case scenarios, filtering out everything that might suggest safety or possibility.
And depression? Depression is perhaps one of the deepest trances of all. It's a state where your attention becomes magnetically drawn to everything that confirms hopelessness, where the past feels heavy and immovable, where the future seems to have disappeared entirely. It's a trance of profound absorption in a particular reality tunnel.
Every single one of these is trance.
We are constantly moving from trance to trance, sometimes in an instant, 24 hours a day. The real question in hypnosis is not, "How do I get into trance, or bring a client into trance?" but rather the question is how can I use hypnosis with intention to move from a non-resourceful trance to a more resourceful trance. This is the challenge of professional hypnosis.
So when someone says to me, "I can't go into trance," or "Hypnosis doesn't work on me," I want to ask them: "Really? You've never been absorbed in a movie? You've never driven home and not remembered the journey? You've never been so caught up in worry that you couldn't think about anything else? You've never lost yourself in music, in conversation, in memory? You've never ironed a shirt?"
Of course you have. You're a human being. Trance is what human beings do. It's not a bug in our system—it's a feature. It's how our consciousness works. We focus. We absorb. We filter. We create meaning through the lens of whatever state we're in.
And here's where it gets really interesting—we spend so much energy trying to control and fix our states of mind, trying to eliminate anxiety, trying to force happiness, trying to be "not in trance." But what if the very effort to escape trance is itself just another trance? The trance of resistance. The trance of struggle.
The real question—the only question that actually matters—isn't "Can I go into trance?"
The question is: "Which trance am I in, and is it serving me?"
Because here's the beautiful, liberating, absolutely crucial truth: if you're always in some kind of trance anyway, that means you have choice. Not about whether to be in trance—you don't get to opt out of consciousness—but about which trance you inhabit.
You can learn to recognize when you've slipped into anxiety trance. You can notice it, acknowledge it, and then gently, deliberately shift your focus. You can ask yourself, "What would it be like to be in curious trance instead? What would I notice if I were in grateful trance? How would I move through this situation if I were in confident trance?"
This is where the somatic therapy principle of pendulation becomes valuable. The most effective approach isn't stopping something, but rather moving between states with awareness and intention. Depression and joy. Anxiety and peace. None of these are permanent. None of these are who you ARE. They're states you flow through, patterns of consciousness, temporary dwellings.
This is what hypnosis actually is. It's not about making you do something you don't want to do. It's not about control. It's about learning to navigate your own states of consciousness with intention and skill. It's about recognizing that your mind is already powerful, already capable of deep focus and transformation—and learning to steer that power toward where you actually want to go.
You can't muscle your way into peace. You can't think your way out of overthinking. But you can notice. You can observe. You can allow yourself to become curious about the dance of consciousness, and in that curiosity, something shifts.
When someone who's been stuck in depression trance for months suddenly has a moment where they notice something beautiful, where they laugh at something genuinely funny, where they feel a flicker of possibility—that's not a miracle. That's a shift in trance. Their consciousness moved, even briefly, to a different state, and suddenly a different world became available to them.
The hypnotist isn't creating something new. The hypnotist is a guide, helping you recognize the trances you're already in and showing you pathways to more resourceful ones. The hypnotist is saying, "Hey, you know that thing you do when you get completely absorbed in a good book? That thing that happened when you were ironing your shirt? What if you could do that same thing, but point it toward healing? Toward confidence? Toward peace?"
The hypnotist is like a skilled facilitator of consciousness—they're not adding anything foreign to your system. They're simply helping restore a natural flow of your awareness by removing the blockages that kept you stuck in one particular trance state. They're helping you remember that consciousness is dynamic, not static.
So if you've been struggling to "go into trance," I invite you to let go of that struggle entirely. You're already there. You've always been there. Instead, simply recognize that consciousness is already flowing—you are that flow—and all you're doing is choosing which direction to move.
The real work, the meaningful work, is learning to recognize your current trance and developing the flexibility to shift into states that actually serve your goals, your growth, your wellbeing. This is the essence of the Ericksonian approach to trance utilization.
You don't need permission to go into trance. You need permission to realize you're already there, and that you have more power than you ever imagined to choose which trance you inhabit.
The question is not: "How do I get into trance?"
The question is: "How do I move into a more resourceful trance? One that serves me, empowers me, and helps me become who I'm meant to be?"
And that question? That's the beginning of real transformation.
The answer? Stop trying to go into trance, and embrace the trance that is already within. Decide if it is beneficial to keep it, or to allow yourself to shift into a different trance. That is all there is to it.