How hypnotherapy unlocks the root cause of your pain
Unless you have learnt or experienced how hypnosis can be used to actually help repair traumatic memories, many people perceive hypnotherapy as predominantly used to help with behavioural issues like quitting smoking, losing weight or reducing stress.
I know that was my impression when I first started learning of the magic and mystique of this experience.
But what is clear to me now after specialised training in hypnosis with Clinical Psychologists and working with thousands of clients, is the much wider application and evidence base for hypnotherapy to help overcome the implications of trauma which can be the root cause of so many of our issues.
“TRAUMA” or trauma?
Often we think of past trauma as something with a capital T, meaning significant emotional and physical violence, threats, neglect, shocking accidents or those kinds of life-altering events. And it does.
What I have witnessed though too, is trauma can be inflicted from less obvious places and experiences. It can affect people from loving and stable homes, and there can be lasting impact.
Things like how we were spoke to as a child, whether our emotions were given space or hi-jacked by another member of the family and whether we felt wholly seen and heard. These kinds of less dramatic traumatic experiences do affect our worldview, our place in life ,whether we feel safe in our bodies and our environment and most definitely our self esteem.
Hidden Scars
There is much more understanding and language around trauma in general, yet so many of us are the walking wounded carrying those invisible scars that are the emotional, psychological and physiological residue.
How trauma manifests
Traumatic experiences - big and smaller - overwhelms your capacity to cope and it manifests in so many debilitating ways - from impacting sleep, including nightmares and racing thoughts when you try to sleep, phobias and irrational fears, depression and feelings of helplessness, addiction, low self esteem, and irritability, mood swings and emotional outbursts.
Do any of these sound familar?
Hypnosis is a safe space for change
In any therapy we want to give you a safe space to receive support.
Working with hypnotherapy is really about using counselling tools and hypnosis to work with your unconscious mechanisms - your fears, memories, defence mechanisms, emotional triggers and guide you to creative solutions.
It can be helpful in resolving the parts of yourself that may still be stuck in the negative experiences from your past and a powerful tool to help repair the mental injury from traumatic memories of very stressful life events.
Working through and processing trauma in the safety of a hypnotherapy session can help you find supportive ways to adapt – in a protective way – to the impact trauma is having on your life.
It is in the safety of the relaxed state of hypnosis that you can more easily process the triggers and the psychological residue from your traumatic experience
In order for trauma to integrate, the horror of the past, and the safety of the present must touch.
This means you can begin to build a bridge between the trauma experience and the present so you can teach your mind and body to trust that it – you – are now safe.
My hypnosis processes to understand and repair traumatic memories
1. Release
One of the first stages of overcoming trauma through hypnotherapy is being able to look at the traumatic event, experience or emotion with a degree of distance that the trance offers – without the anxiety or the re-traumatising that happens when you have to tell your story again.
In the safety of hypnosis, with support and guidance, you can begin to release the intensity of the emotions, the fearful energy, and the painful stories.
2. Reframe
In hypnosis, it is possible to see where your trigger was first pulled, yet be able to place some distance between you and this event. In this space, we can begin to use our kind, compassionate, adult wisdom to see the bigger picture and reframe the experience.
Making meaning from our pain allows our brain and nervous system to process and integrate and move out of the ‘fight, flight and fear’ state into a peaceful, calming and understanding state.
3. Recreate
Giving your unconscious mind the opportunity to recreate the traumatic experience in hypnosis from what was terrifying into something that is safe, more positive and more grounding is powerful. This is because your unconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between what is real and vividly imagined. This is why we can experience all the anxieties over something that is in the past, or in the future.
We can use this part of our brains to help overcome trauma by re-imagining the “trigger” moment into something that is empowering for us.
What hypnotherapy techniques do I use?
When you are in hypnosis, several techniques can be used to facilitate building this bridge in your healing process. Some of these techniques to overcome trauma in hypnotherapy are:
Crossing the Bridge of Time
This is gently and safely going back to the point in your life where you may have experienced trauma that is causing you issues today.
This does not mean that you will be re-traumatised all over again. It allows you to briefly look at the strong emotions that were present in that moment of time with the intention of finding a different relationship to your past experience.
We can then facilitate the release of stored emotions or help you to make the realisations that you need to truly heal and to find freedom from the past psychological residue that is impacting you and your life.
Parts Therapy to overcome trauma
Looking at the different parts of yourself. Which ones are more dominant? Which ones do we want to bring forward? For example, there may be a part of you that is motivated for change, to connect differently with people, to challenge the negative self-talk, but the part of you that is frightened, withdrawn and stressed is more dominant.
We can work to bring forward the calm, self-compassionate and brave parts of ourselves in this type of therapy.
Past Life Regression Therapy
When I first trained in therapy and hypnosis I was a complete sceptic in not only believing in regression through lifetimes, I would never even contemplate applying this kind of process to my work. So despite thinking it was far too “Woo Wo”, on recommendation, I read the book Many Masters, Many Lives by psychiatrist Brian Weiss and my mind was changed!
Through personal experience and working with clients I have learnt that Past life regressions help us to access past trauma that can be impacting us in this lifetime. By going back, we can see that incidents that have happened in previous lifetimes can be imprinted on us, causing us to relive the same emotional turmoil in this lifetime.
Using the power of our unconscious minds to heal
Over 90% of your mind is subconscious and this is where our most deep-seated beliefs and values are stored. By accessing this part of ourselves, we can make significant changes in our lives.
Using hypnotherapy to overcome trauma can help to release emotions and past traumas so that you can heal and live a more expanded life.
Want to talk?
If you want to discuss your unique situation I offer a complimentary 15 minute discovery call that can be used to answer any questions you may have about Clinical Hypnotherapy, what success I may have had in the past and how I might work with you.
These calls provide an opportunity to see if we are aligned.
As it is a discovery call with the opportunity to ask questions, and not an actual session I can’t actually offer therapeutic interventions.
https://rebeccaeather.as.me/?appointmentType=39504404
