THE LAW OF REVERSED EFFECT

The Law of Reversed Effect describes a familiar but often misunderstood phenomenon: the more we consciously try to make something happen with sheer willpower, the more elusive it becomes. This is especially true when we attempt to create or control physiological responses.

Think of occasions when you have tried to force your body to do something “on command”:

• Trying to will yourself into an erection or an orgasm.
• Going to bed overtired and trying to fall asleep faster, only to feel more alert.
• Attempting to make yourself perspire, salivate or relax by direct effort alone.

In these situations, the conscious mind pushes harder and harder, yet the desired response moves further away. The result is frustration and a sense that something is “not working,” when in fact the problem is the method, not the person.

This is the Law of Reversed Effect in action:
The harder you consciously strive to produce certain physiological or emotional states, the more you interfere with the very processes that generate them.

For hypnotherapists, this has a very practical implication. Relying on conscious willpower to produce therapeutic change is usually ineffective, particularly when we are dealing with physical sensations or autonomic responses. Instead of trying to push the client into change, we invite the unconscious mind to respond through imagination and imagery.

Working With Imagination Instead of Willpower

When formulating hypnotic suggestions, it is far more effective to engage the client’s imaginative and experiential systems than to ask them to “try harder.” The unconscious responds to images, sensations and remembered experiences much more readily than to commands addressed to conscious effort.

So rather than issuing a direct instruction such as:

“Your hand is becoming numb now… try to make it numb…”

We shift to an approach that activates sensory imagery and prior experience.

For example, you might invite the client to:

• Imagine placing their hand into fresh snow,
• Or dipping it into an icy cold stream,
• While gently suggesting the development of numbness and anaesthesia.

In doing this, you are no longer asking them to force a physiological change. Instead, you are guiding them to re-create a familiar sensory pattern to which the body already knows how to respond.

Evoking Past Experiences to Create Present Change

Another powerful way to bypass the reversed effect is to connect the desired response to memories of times when it naturally occurred in the past. You are not asking the client to do something new and challenging; you are reminding them that their nervous system already knows how to do it.

You might say something along the lines of:

“There are things you know how to do, without even knowing that you know them… including how to lose the ability to feel in a part of your body.
And you’ve experienced that many times –
for example, when you’ve fallen asleep on your hand or arm and woken to find it completely numb,
or when you’ve been to the dentist and had a local anesthetic injected
and you remember those numb, thick, leathery sensations, don’t you…”

Several things are happening here:

• Confusional opening: A slightly puzzling phrase (“things you don’t know that you know”) gently overloads the conscious mind and creates a moment of curiosity and wonder. This makes the client more receptive.
• Truisms and common experiences: References to falling asleep on an arm or having a dental anaesthetic are everyday situations. Almost everyone can recall something similar, so the suggestions feel true and relatable.
• Sensory specificity: Words like “numb,” “leathery,” “thick,” or “heavy” help the client to recreate the quality of the sensation, not just the idea of it.

By evoking these memories, you are inviting the client to re-access an existing neurological pattern of numbness. The body has already done this before. Under hypnosis, it can do it again – now under therapeutic guidance.

Practical Implications for Hypnotic Suggestions

When you understand the Law of Reversed Effect, the way you construct suggestions begins to change:

• You avoid telling clients to “try” to feel something, or “make” something happen.
• You focus on guiding them into remembered experiences, imagined scenarios and sensory detail.
• You bypass the conscious struggle and invite the unconscious to reproduce what it already knows how to do.

In effect, you stop fighting the Law of Reversed Effect and start using it.
Instead of pushing against the client’s conscious resistance, you step around it – and let imagination do the work that willpower cannot.