Hypnosis Alternative to Emotional Clearing of Childhood Trauma
There are at least three distinct schools in the field of
emotional clearing work taught in hypnotherapy schools in
California.
The first of these, developed by Milton Erickson, involves
the use of hypnotic suggestion in which the hypnotist feeds
“new” childhood experiences or ideas directly into the
client’s subconscious mind, while the client is in a
regressed state. The therapist takes complete control of
redesigning the client’s childhood.Erickson even used
deliberate amnesia to prevent the client’s conscious mind
from interfering with or negating the process, although this
step has not been found necessary by modern practitioners of
his technique.
A second more interactive strategy (”interactive” means that
the client and therapist work together in the process of
healing) involves the client setting up a new ending for the
injured child’s experience. This modality, described by
Frieda Morris in Hypnosis for Friends and Lovers, involves
the therapist helping the client relive a traumatic event
first. Then therapist and client together decide on a new
experience which is a positive one to replace the original
memory. For example:
Therapist: “Well, what can we do differently now with this
experience with your mother?”
Client: “I’d like her to be nice to me. She could say, ‘I
love you. I’m sorry I lost my temper. It’s not your fault’.”
Then client and therapist together re-create the memory as a
series of positive words and images while the client is in a
regressed state. This allows the client to feel love, bliss
and nurturance.
These two methods work well for many clients, but often fail
to address the client’s underlying feelings of frustration,
helplessness, anger, guilt, or abandonment. If the client,
for example, feels angry about mother’s behavior, neither
Erickson’s nor Morris’ technique provides a complete
solution. Also, many of my clients experienced such a poor
relationship with a parent that it is impossible for them to
imagine their mother being a loving, understanding parent.
As a third method, Alchemical Hypnotherapy combines the best
features of emotional release and emotional clearing therapy.
It creates a dramatic encounter between the client’s adult
personality, the hurt, traumatized child and important people
in the client’s past. This process, called the “rescue
mission”, allows the expression of feelings which stem from
the incident, as well as empowering the client to heal
himself. Here’s an example:
The client is feeling helpless and angry in the midst of a
memory of being beaten up by father in a traumatic
regression.
Now, I interject:
Therapist: “Let’s imagine your adult self is entering the
room right now. What would you like to say to your father,
Mr. Adult?”
Client: “I’d like to shake some sense into my father! (grabs
an offered pillow) Now you listen to me, you jerk!”
Therapist: “Good! What is his response?”
Now the client has the opportunity to release all of his
repressed feelings toward his father (including grief,
abandonment, admiration, etc.) and clear the way for a new
level of understanding with him. Often this dialogue moves
the client towards forgiveness as he begins to hear about his
father’s stressful life and underlying love for his son.
Most important, however, is that the client is empowered to
rescue his “inner child” from the past. This nurturing
relationship between the adult and his inner child can
continue between therapy sessions. This considerably reduces
the time needed for therapy by giving the client an
opportunity to heal and revise his own childhood during a few
minutes of every day.
In Alchemical Hypnotherapy, this self-nurturing process can
be expanded to include “inner parents”. A new mother and
father are discovered in the child’s own subconscious mind
who fill the child’s needs while providing both love and
wisdom to the client’s adult self. This allows the client who
has a seriously disturbed childhood (and therefore no
knowledge of what parental love feels like) to recreate a
happy childhood from scratch with a minimum of time spent in
therapy learning to contract the sources of love and healing
in his own subconscious mind.
Any way you look at it, emotional clearing is therapy that
creates the solid foundation of love, support, and positive
nurturing necessary for emotional security and happiness. In
the complex world of modern therapy, emotional clearing is
the wave of the future!
About Alchemy Institute of Hypnosis: America’s oldest
spiritually oriented hypnotherapy training program has
trained over 2000 hypnotherapists since 1983. The Alchemy
Institute is approved by the state of California Bureau of
Private Postsecondary Education (BPPVE) and American Council
of Hypnotists Examiners. Our website offers an extensive
library of articles about hypnotherapy. If you’re interested
in making changes in your life through the techniques of
hypnotherapy described here, call our office at
1-800-950-4984 or visit our website at
http://alchemyinstitute.com/withhyp.htm
