Every day I turn on the news and see reports of violence somewhere.
. . . it may be armed conflicts in the Middle East or Africa.
. . . it may be child or domestic abuse here at home.
As a psychologist, my next thought is how to treat the mental anguish that must be all-encompassing for survivors.
I wasn’t taught anything about treating trauma in my graduate program.
And most of the trauma recovery techniques that I’d learned soon after graduating have since been found not as useful as originally hoped.
Traditional talk therapy can sometimes actually re-traumatize the patient.
One option for the treatment of trauma is hypnosis. A number of studies have recently come out showing the help that hypnosis can provide when treating trauma.
The 2009 study published in the journal Bulletin de la Societe des Sciences Medicales du Grand Duche de Luxembourg found that patients treated with a blend of Ericksonian Hypnosis and EMDR techniques showed a marked decrease of PTSD symptoms than those patients treated by more traditional methods. Part of these results may also be linked to an early diagnosis of trauma by their primary care physician.
Successful diagnosis of trauma is key, followed by careful, innovative treatment tailored to each particular patient.
Our new teleseminar series will focus solely on innovative treatments for trauma.
You can check out the series by clicking here.
Great work! So many people are currently suffering from post traumatic stress in it’s various forms, including childhood abuse, traumatic adult events, combat stress, PTSD and CPTSD. Meanwhile there’s so many techniques that can offer real hope if there is going to be adequate research and adoption. Techniques like Hypnotherapy (and the many, many variants therein), BWRT, Havening, could potentially help millions of people, so that research is so important.
ari per trov
Eriksonian Hypnosis has proven effective along with the NLP model of therapy that deals with trauma without having to return into the original traumatic situation that ingrained the “bad trance”. Also very helpful is Timeline Therapy by Tad James. For me, staying away from all the talk and re-hashing of the causative events that can re-open the wounds has been the “pièce de résistance” of reprocessing without feeling the original pain.
Although I am not active, I still maintain my interest in these therapies that encompass the whole person, staying away from cliché labels that can me misunderstood and become trauma in itself.
Hello, your link to sign up for the discussion of trauma treatments above, is not working for me. Is there any other way I can sign up?
Thx, Mischa
Hello MistyAs a hypnotherapist mylsef you have more chance of gaining your dream to be a non smoker with sessions, rather than a one off. One off’s can tend to fail for most as it does not always address all of the aspects that the individual has that keep them a smoker. Hypnosis NLP can help you to create that want’.I hope that you get on well with your chosen therapist become a happy, healthy non smoker as a result good luck. Sadhara> see profile
These vignettes that draw out the connections between Trauma Stress and various medical conditions by research examples are vital light bulbs into human consciousness.
Giving ordinary people the information and resources to recognise the
signs of this illness in themselves and others is a contribution that I can build upon.
I hope to use this information in the hospital where I practice psychotherapy as a Trauma Specialist to further this connection between Trauma and disease states with Medical Consultants who specialize and
fail to embrace and treat the whole person. Thank you
I consistently use Ericksonian Hypnosis together with Timeline Therapy and find it very useful in dealing with Trauma.
Very valid, pithy, sunctcci, and on point. WD.
“Trauma as bad trance” is absolutely right. There’s the spontaneous hypnotic regression that occurs during “flashbacks” and the way innocuous triggers in the environment can produce “post hypnotic suggestibility” in the traumatized person (such as when a car back fires and causes the amigdala in the brain to re-activate the pattern response of the original trauma)
Certainly talking about the trauma can deepen it if it’s extreme. The “dreaming brain” tries to dream out the pattern of the trauma (and does for many people) but when this natural “psychological flushing” fails the PTSD victim is left with persistent nightmares-another common symptom of PTSD.
Hypnosis will work if it uses relaxation and disassociation to help re-code the traumatic memories from feeling present and overwhelming to past and contained. I’ve found the quickest, most comfortable and least voyeuristic way to do this is with the Rewind technique. It is also great for phobias as what is PTSD if not a phobic response to memory? It helps people review their memories from a safe and calm perspective, once the brain has done this the memory has a chance to henceforth be processed more calmly through the neo cortex memory centres rather than continually firing off the fight or flight command centre-the Amigdala each time it’s overwhelmingly recalled.
Keep up the great work, Mark