Amnesia is a very useful tool when you work with clients. Milton Erickson used to induce amnesia from the very first contact with your client. The idea is that if your client “forgets” (your client’s mind actually pushes the given time period into the unconscious) a certain part of the change work, they will be less likely to interfere with the results consciously.

For example, if during the session you and your client have discussed that she is binge-drinking alcohol because she wants to be more socially accepted, it would be more useful to use amnesia after you establish new and healthy resources for your client to be socially accepted.

This way, when your client goes on with her life, her mind will have forgotten why she felt like binge-drinking. Once there is no good reason, the alternatives become more prominent. If your client remembers “why I binge drink,” the emotional roller-coaster can lead her to binge-drinking again, regardless of your session’s success.

You can induce amnesia with a simple confusion method. “And I wonder if you would remember that when you came into this door, you put your right leg in and if you could forget to forget that when you leave this door, you will put your right leg out again.”

This is a very simple suggestion to tie the entrance to the room with the exit, and by that, “push down” the time period in between into the subconsciousness.