“Do I have to relive anything awful that happened to me?” That is one of the questions CatchPTSD.com hypnotherapists get asked most often.
When people seek out therapy, they are often afraid they are going to be forced to focus on whatever has traumatised them, which they have probably long been trying to avoid thinking about. It is the very fact they are trying to ignore it which is creating the symptoms! Talk therapies like EMDR and CBT try to inure people to what has happened in their life, to look at it a different way, by talking about it over and over again. Some CatchPTSD patients who tried those therapies first said they made them suicidal. Even homicidal!
CatchPTSD does not believe that approach works for deep emotional trauma, mainly because whatever happened is buried so deeply, a person does not remember it anyway. One can’t talk about what they don’t remember! I liken it to a helicopter, hovering over a landing pad. One can stay up there with the propellers going around and around for ever – but it won’t influence anything down below.
Clinical hypnotherapy can help you access hidden memories. Your body knows everything that has happened to you. Indeed, your symptoms are coming from something your body remembers, but your mind doesn’t. But your body also acts like a giant inflatable sumo suit, protecting you, insulating you from anything that would upset you. While it wants your sympathy, and understanding, it does not want you to remember what happened, in detail, in case that destabilises you. So there begins this game of cat and mouse, where your body wants you to know what memories are buried, but it really doesn’t. It tries to find ways to get the message across which does NOT involve you reliving any awful moments.
It may just give you a feeling or a sensation, or a single image in your mind, or just a few words in your head, and then it will step back and ask, ‘Do you get it?” If you don’t, it will try again, another way. This is what CatchPTSD patients report. It can be frustrating, like an endless game of charades, or Cluedo, where it’s saying to you, ‘Okay, so it was in this room, with this person – the library, with the candlestick, with Colonel Mustard. He was there. Do you get it now?”
Eventually, your body will give you enough clues, or the right clues, so you DO understand it, without ever putting you straight back in the middle of it. This is our experience. Sometimes, the body will show you something that happened later in your life, like an incident when you were seven for instance, which was EXACTLY LIKE whatever happened when you were smaller. It is trying to draw an analogy to a theme, so it does not have to take you back to what it thinks is the worst thing. And indeed, the root cause which is fuelling all your symptoms is often NOT the worst thing that has ever happened to you. But it would have felt like it at the time.
The body’s creative ability to protect ‘its person’ can be jaw-dropping. It is for that reason CatchPTSD hypnotherapists do not try to force anything. We let the client’s body go at its pace, and let IT make sure the whole hypnosis experience is positive and fruitful.
CatchPTSD hypnotherapists will never tell you they know what is wrong with you. How could we if you don’t? We are simply the taxi drivers – the ‘tour guide Barbie’s’ – to help you achieve as relaxed a state as possible, so you can access your own subconscious mind, and your body can explain everything it needs to you. You don’t even need to share what you discover with your hypnotherapist. This is an intensely private therapy, where you decide how much you reveal. As I said, your body already knows what is wrong. Our job is just to let it tell you. All you have to do is listen.
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