It may be possible for a person to block out the experience of pain entirely through the use of mental techniques, some mental techniques do have very significant effect, but the degree of evidence I've found available isn't enough to disabuse my skepticism.
It's difficult to know what another person really feels when you don't trust them to tell you. I know quite a few people who allowed needles to get sticked into their hands and didn't feel any pain because of hypnosis.
If I were a hypnotherapist who really did have abilities which were that profound, I would want to prove it in as high profile and fireproof a manner as I could manage.
You assume that it's a good business strategy for a hypotherapist to try to convince skeptics. In reality, there are many people who aren't skeptics out there. For a hypnotherapist it's much more effective to focus on winning those people as customers.
A lot of skeptics also have low hypnothic suggestibility in the first place with doesn't make them the best clients for a hypnotherapist.
You also shouldn't underrate the difficulty of finding a doctor that's willing to operate a patient without real anesthetics. A hypnotherapist who wants to demonstrate profound hypnotic power has a much easier time doing stage hypnosis. If you want an example of stage hypnosis producing such an effect, take a look at http://youtu.be/oC9J6O6soHA?t=11m35s .
You assume that it's a good business strategy for a hypotherapist to try to convince skeptics. In reality, there are many people who aren't skeptics out there. For a hypnotherapist it's much more effective to focus on winning those people as customers.
I assume it's a good business strategy for a hypnotherapist to try to convince many customers. Getting in a tabloid with high circulation is a good start, getting on television is better.
You don't need to wait for occasions where you need surgery, having an ability to render yourself impervious to pain is...
I started going out with a fantastic girl a couple of weeks ago. Everything is great, except that whenever I've sent her a text message or email requesting something and haven't received a response yet, I experience significant dysphoric anxiety, fearing that her response will be not just "no" but "no and I don't want to date you any more". This is due to brain chemistry or personal history, take your pick—either seems like a possible explanation to me. But there's certainly no evidence supporting the idea that this is likely to happen, nor is the anxiety helping me prevent it or helping me in any other way.
Does anyone have evidence-based advice, or pointers to same, on dealing with this kind of issue? It is the only splotch on what have otherwise been the best two weeks of my life.