Milton Erickson obligation reduction

In a highly organised and complex society, obligations can be the biggest block to spiritual experience, because you are always, always worrying about them.  And you cannot get rid of them because they are usually a permanent fixture of our lives.  We may be able to simplify, but we cannot remove on a permanent basis.

But we can remove them on a temporary basis and this is what Milton Erickson did, by suggestion again.  He both sought temporary removal of obligations that could not be removed on a permanent basis, but also tried to help people come to terms with the obligations they had and resent them less – acceptance as opposed to futile resistance.

The use of permissions to break free - He used words like 'reasonable', and 'of interest to you' [as opposed to what others have demanded of you], 'letting you', 'helping you' [so the reverse of what is expected of people in general].  He also added a touch of excitement to the process in the sense that it was possible to break the boundaries in the world of trance [the spiritual world] so he used words like 'dare' to.

He gave people whose lives were filled with restrictions 'permissions'.

Appealing to the naughty child – Erickson  often used provocative suggestions or statement  that implied a sort of 'naughtiness'. This of course was appealing to the child in the  person – the idea that they could be naughty and also helped to place in their minds the idea that there are no rules in the spiritual world, as such it also helped with breaking down the concept of the obligation. He added words like 'secret' and 'forbidden' where the forbidden is shown to be not forbidden.

Empowering – another strategy was to imply that the person had power over their lives again.  And once you feel you have the power to do things, you do them – make the needed change, do the things that will make you happier.  Much pain derives from a feeling of loss of control – which means people fear and agonise and are frightened.  They also tend to be stunned into a form of submission, paralysed by the fear.  But Erickson gave people the feeling that they did have power over what happened to them, they only had to let the composer in and things might happen that gave the person control of their life.

Erickson never called the composer, 'the composer' for the very obvious reason that this is my name for the higher spirit or daemon or atman.  He simply referred to this other world as 'the unconscious', but every sentence he uttered about this unconscious betrays his fairly obvious belief in the fact the composer was a separate entity with far more power than the conscious will.  Furthermore the higher spirit acted always in our best interests if we let it.

Removing time constraints – One of Erickson's biggest preoccupations and work involved the person trying to get away from the obligation of time. Here he used words like 'slow', 'drifting', 'sooner or later', and as you can see above, the idea of reinforcing the concept of a pressure free process 'to take as much time as it needs'. Our western society is obsessed by time, deadlines, calendars, schedules, plans and so on. As such this particular almost obsessive set of obligations is difficult to get the person to remove and he spent some time on gradually whittling  it away..........

As one who has tried this, this aspect is extraordinarily liberating in its own right, you feel as if a great weight has been taken from your shoulders.

Removing himself as a source of obligation - He even included himself in the obligation free world he created for a person, you don't have to listen to me, you can do what you want [for a change] you need not even fear 'failure'  at this task – going into a trance – because there is no obligation to go into a trance either.  If you want you can sit and look out the window all day …. and drift …...... drift …......... drift …..........

Erickson talked to the composer in us all.