Due to the way hypnosis is portrayed in society today, people are afraid that they will tell a hypnotist all of their deep, dark secrets. They are worried that they may divulge their checking account numbers or tell where they have money buried in their backyard while in a deep trance.

Hypnosis is not a truth serum; in fact, it is more the opposite. You are a better liar in hypnosis. The reason for that is while you are relaxed you are able to retrieve information from your subconscious mind more readily and therefore have more knowledge at your fingertips than you would normally. Also, since you are more relaxed you would appear to be truthful while telling a lie.

Confabulation

Confabulation is a phenomenon where a subject under hypnosis makes something up, either knowingly or unknowingly, in response to a question. An example of this is a subject who is extremely relaxed and asked to remember information from a hit-and-run accident. While the subject is attempting to recreate his steps and what he saw, the hypnotherapist begins to ask him questions that he cannot presently answer.

Due to the extreme relaxation and enjoyable feeling of hypnosis, a subject may become frustrated due to the barrage of questions and may give answers that are not true just to appease the hypnotherapist.

Confabulation can be done unknowingly. Keep in mind that everything you have ever experienced in your life is stored in perfect clarity in your subconscious mind. Even though you may think that many incidents from your childhood have been forgotten, they are still there in your subconscious.

So if you are under hypnosis and are asked a question, there is always the chance that you may come up with some elaborate story with very specific details that you believe actually did happen but may have simply been something that happened in your childhood or even something that you watched on television from your childhood.