When something confusing happens , the ‘ attention gates ’ of our minds open wide . We become confused when the mind has nothing to
match to , because everything feels unfamiliar and unexpected or beyond our current powers of understanding .
You are not expecting a sound in the night from downstairs , but you hear it . How do you make sense of that ? Maybe you can ’ t ! So now you become fully open to learning what might be there . You become wide open to experience .
Or you ’ re expecting another step on the stairs as you walk down in the darkness . But it ’ s not there . Confusion results because your expectations are confounded when you try to step down where no step exists . We can only be confused , and thereby have our ‘ attention gates ’ fully opened , when our expectations are confounded .
This is why hypnotherapists sometimes use confusion or surprise : to open the mind for learning . All psychotherapy , if it is to have an effect , requires new learning – as does the development of new abilities to perform better in life .
So how can we use confusion to tie up the conscious mind so we can appeal more directly to a person ’ s remarkable and powerful unconscious potentials ?
Loosening the reins on the mind We often see confusion as a bad thing , a state of mind to be avoided at all costs . But consider this : When we are confused it might be because our ideas as to what life should be like are too tight and rigid . The more rigid our expectations , the more likely it is that reality will jar against it . So confusion may be symptomatic of a rigid mindset .
Spiritual teachers have long used humour to shake up and loosen rigidities in the mind , and so have therapists .
A joke can loosen thought from its straitjacket if it enables us to see new realms of possibility and context . You think and assume a narrative is going in a certain way , then bam ! The joke shows you another level of meaning .