This weekend just gone by, I embarked on the journey that is my hypnotherapy diploma with my new set of students… Yes indeed, the road ahead is long and arduous, but we have the skills among us and years of our forefathers experiences to live up to… We shall all prevail…
Ahem, ahem… I shall end attempting to sound like a fantasy novel… As a youngster being raised in surburbia in Southern England, my world was inhabited my monsters… And mythical creatures, wizards, warlocks, trolls and all kinds of other things…

As a form of escapism, and much to the ridicule of my football team-mates and friends (the ones who did not know who Iron Maiden were, for example) I often retreated into the world of fantasy roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons. My parents worried about the people I mixed with there, who generally did not bathe as much as my other friends and wore Iron Maiden t-shirts and so on…

It was a place where I found distraction, adventure and mastery of my fate in a magical world where I was often the hero, though also sometimes the anti-hero of my own plot line. For many of the others there, it was a place where insecure, introverted, or less socially skilled could slay goblins, wield impressive swords and amass kudos, treasure and notoriety – for some, the perfect antidote to a mixed up world.

328974_6328

I read and re-read Lord of the Rings and works related to those of Tolkien… But I stopped playing those kinds of games when I went to college; girls and football became more important… Though in recent years, my favourite films have still been the Lord of the Rings trilogy and favourite novels all been fantasy and sci-fi…

When I look at the state of play today, something has radically changed… Fantasy roleplay and gaming has gone mainstream. Properly mainstream. Think of the popularity of online games such as Warcraft and Everquest, look at the success of Harry Potter, and other role-playing hobbies.

I became interested in hypnosis initially because I thought of it as another form of escapism… It is funny, just this weekend gone, as I explained theories of state and non-state ideologies of hypnosis, I realise how my own opinion, understanding and experience of hypnosis has changed… And how much my perception of escapism has changed…

The more I reflected on my and society’s interest in fantasy and gaming, the more doubts I seem to have. Yes, roleplaying games had helped me “escape” a life of school pressures and incessant need to rebel against the system… These days I wonder how healthy it was to have devoted so much mental energy to a fantasy world that didn’t exist.

Had my fellow fantasy role playing gamers and I just checked out of real life and the real world? Were there any long-term effects? Did a need for escapism explain why my life went so dark for alengthy period of time as a young man?

What about the 12 million (and counting) subscribers to World of Warcraft (WoW)?
The readers of Harry Potter?
The adult men and women who own and play Xbox and PlayStation consoles religiously?

Then what about people who escape to indulge in their own min? Through the use of hypnosis, many people believe it gives us access to other places whereby we can escape… Often, this can be a good thing – we all know about the value of people having a ‘happy place’ inside their minds that they can transport themselves to, don’t we?

Is this “escapism” normal? Is fantasy in all its forms fundamentally a good thing? Are some subcultures more dangerous than others? What healthy role does fantasy and escape serve? Surely it’s not all evil… And I don’t think I turned out all that bad in the end…

Many people believe that escapsim is a trance state of some kind, that being absporbed in your imagination is a hypnotic state of some kind… it has all been giving me much food for thought this week…