Trauma informed hypnotherapy peer supervision April 2022

11/4/2022

These are my talk notes and below is a copy of the video too

In a fraction of a second, our lives can be utterly devastated by the forces of trauma, and loss can swallow us whole, trapped and lost we become hopeless and frozen by terror and feelings of helplessness.

While some people are able to recover from trauma by themselves, many individuals are not. 10s of thousands of soldier’s and refugees experience extreme stress and horror of war. This is where most of my work has been dedicated as I have worked alongside volunteers in Calais and Dunkirk assisting at the refugee camps there and my brother was very badly affected by PTSD after he came home from the war in Serbia.

Then there are other devastating occurrences, of rape, sexual abuse and assault.

Many of us however, have been overwhelmed by much more ordinary events such as surgeries, invasive medical procedures and traumatic births. In a recent study of orthopaedic patients 52% were diagnosed with full on PTSD following surgery.

Other traumas include falls, serious illness, abandonment, receiving shocking or tragic news, witnessing, or reading about violence, getting into a car accident.

Many experiences that we lived through in our childhood cause trauma, parents going to work, feelings of abandonment, punishment and violence in the home are all potentially traumatising. The inability to heal from such events, or to be helped adequately can lead to PTSD along with a mix, a myriad of physical and emotional symptoms.

Trauma informed care involves a broad understanding of traumatic stress reactions and common responses to trauma. As therapist’s it's really useful for us to understand how trauma can affect our clients and our selection of therapeutic interventions.

All traumatic experiences can lead to PTSD, psychiatrists in the USA eventually came up with the term PTSD and it was officially recognised in 1980 by the American Psychiatric Association in the third edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders.

Prior to this, it had been called various things, including shell shock in World War One, and combat fatigue in World War Two.

It has been acknowledged that an event does not have to be extremely traumatic for a person’s brain to respond by creating symptoms that we would recognise as PTSD.

Events such as natural disasters, road or rail accidents, or violent attacks or even if the person was not injured and was simply an onlooker, or a first responder, these events can be imprinted on the brain as trauma too.

Signs and symptoms of PTSD (NCCH students have access to several psychometric tests and Likert scale self-report questionnaires designed to assess the symptoms of PTSD in the resources).

Signs and symptoms will vary from person to person they may manifest differently in children and adolescence. The most common effect of PTSD is known as re-experiencing, this is where the person vividly relives parts of a traumatic event, these moments of reliving are involuntary, unwanted, intrusive, and can cause overwhelm, these take the form of:

flashbacks
nightmares
repetitive and distressing situations, images and sounds
physical sensations for example pain, sweating, nausea and trembling.

There can also be Avoidance and numbing.
Emotional avoidance it's often a reaction to trauma. A definition of avoidance is: actions designed to prevent the occurrence of uncomfortable emotions such as fear sadness guilt and shame.

It may also include avoiding certain places, people or activities, listening to music that reminds the person of the trauma, or talking to people about the incident. Avoidance may be useful in the short term to gain temporary relief, however long term it may exacerbate the symptoms of PTSD.

There is often hyperarousal.
A person with PTSD often experiences heightened anxiety due to a heightened sensitivity to external stimuli and events. They are in a state of increased sympathetic activation of the nervous system, and this can lead to:

Irritability
anger outbursts
sleep issues
concentration issues
hypervigilance
muscle tension
increased pain sensitivity
increased cardiac output
heightened startle response
shallow, rapid breathing
flashbacks

Other issues related to trauma and as a result of unresolved trauma, the knock-on effects to the mental and physical functions of the body can include:

depression
anxiety disorders
phobias
substance of misuse
eating issues
self-harming
chest pains
stomach and bowel issues
migraines
dizziness and Vertigo.

If we are seeing these conditions in our therapy rooms it’s a good idea to find out if a traumatic event is at the root of these responses, reactions and behaviours.

What’s happening in the brain when people experience traumatic events?

The main Brain areas involved with the stress response include the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex.

Traumatic stress can be associated with lasting changes in these brain areas too, With increased cortisol and norepinephrine responses to subsequent stresses.

PTSD can be understood as the failure to extinguish learned fear.
Both the amygdala and the hippocampus don’t function normally in a client with PTSD.

When a person experiences a traumatic event, adrenaline rushes through the body, and the memory is imprinted into the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system the old parts of the brain (involved with behaviour and emotional responses).

The amygdala holds the emotional significance of the event including the intensity, and impulse of the emotion.

So, if you're ion a scary place but it’s not life threatening for example on a rollercoaster, the sensory information being processed is fear, speed, stress and excitement, none of it life threatening.
The amygdala can read the emotional significance of the event as a fun ride, which you'll be off in just a few minutes.

The amygdala stores the visual images of trauma, as sensory fragments. This means the trauma memory, is not stored like a story, it’s stored as fragments of the story, and by how our five senses were experiencing the trauma at the time it was occurring.

The memories are stored through fragments of visual images, smells, sounds, tastes, touch or feelings.

Consequently, after trauma, the brain can be easily triggered by sensory input.

So, reading normal circumstances as dangerous.

for example, a red light is no longer a red light now, it's a possible spark, a barbecue had just been a barbecue, now, it sounds like an explosion.

The sensory fragments are misinterpreted, and the brain loses its ability to discriminate between what is threatening and what is normal.

The hippocampus is a part of the limbic system of the brain too.
The hippocampus is responsible for the ability to store and retrieve memories.

People who have experienced some kind of damage to their hippocampus may have difficulties storing and recalling information.

Along with other limbic structures the hippocampus also plays a role in a person’s ability to overcome fear responses.
Many people with PTSD experience memory related difficulties for example, flashbacks.
These memories may be vivid and feel as if they are happening right now or yesterday.

For some, memories may be vivid and always present.

People with PTSD have been found to have smaller hippocampi this indicates that experiencing ongoing stress as a result of severe and chronic PTSD may ultimately damage the hippocampus making it smaller.

People with a smaller hippocampus maybe more vulnerable to developing more severe cases of PTSD following a traumatic event.

The front part of our brain known as the prefrontal cortex is the rational part, its where consciousness lives, processing and reasoning occurs, and the bits of the brain where we make meaning of language, when trauma occurs people enter into a fight, flight, or freeze state which can result in the prefrontal cortex shutting down.

The brain becomes somewhat disorganised and overwhelmed because of the trauma, while the body goes into survival mode and shuts down higher reasoning, language, and language structures of the brain. The result of the metabolic shutdown is profound imprinted stress response.

Trauma will affect different brains differently, and people differently at different stages in their life, simply as a result of the of the stage of development they are at, their age, and the stage of development at which the trauma occurs.

I like to think of the amygdala as the part of the brain that's always on the lookout. During a traumatic event the amygdala takes in more information. Imagine this information as being a collection of books, the bigger the trauma the more fragments of sensory information, the more books.

For me it's like when you smell smoke all of a sudden you start sniffing looking around and your amygdala is taking in much more information than usual it's gathering more books.

The prefrontal cortex doesn't like books, it's not a reader so when large quantities of books start to arrive it shuts down.

The hippocampus is like the library, where all of the books go to be processed, timestamped, and then stored and recalled when necessary.

However, when they amygdala shows up with a massive quantity of books the hippocampus simply can’t process, timestamp all those fragments of sensory information, all these books. So, they left on the counter, unprocessed and not time stamped. The result is that the fragments of the traumatic event may continue to impact our clients, as if the event was happening right now, and the stress response continues on.

What’s happening in the body when people experience traumatic events?

Let's look at how animals release trauma. When an animal for example a gazelle is chased and caught by a lion,

We've all seen those natural earth TV shows, no doubt we are impressed by the lion, however many of us find ourselves cheering on the gazelle hoping that it is able to escape.

If the gazelle is lucky, and does escape, we will notice that the gazelle shakes, quakes, it tremors, it's this tremoring and shaking that brings the gazelles body back to homeostasis.

Musculoskeletal tremors are a common neurophysiological phenomena experienced before, during, or following stressful or traumatic events. These are what we know as, or called, enhanced physiological tremors.

These tremors are generally perceived as a pathological expression of stress and are included in the diagnostic criteria in a number of psychological illnesses such as panic attacks, social phobia, generalised anxiety disorder, and PTSD.

Doctor David Berceli Who developed tension and trauma releasing exercises, recognised the homeostatic and therapeutic value of tremoring.

TRE is a self-induced tremor that is believed to discharge physical tension mitigating the experience of extreme stress.

Doctor David Berceli noticed that's children in extremely stressful situations naturally shake and tremor, after severe traumatic experiences and many adults tremor too.

However, tremoring is not something that is sociably acceptable behaviour, we suppress, and stop the tremoring, and if you are in the back of an ambulance, you may even be restrained.

Doctor Peter Levine developed somatic experiencing as a body-based therapy to process and release trauma. In his book “Waking the tiger: healing trauma,” Levine notes that animals can be observed shaking to release tension and stress.

Our nervous system has evolved a hierarchical structure and the more advanced systems shutdown in the face of overwhelming threats leaving brain, body and psyche to their more archaic functions.

The autonomic nervous system regulates bodily process including:
blood pressure
heart rate
respiratory rate
body temperature
digestion
metabolism
and sexual arousal

It does this with two opposing functions, known as up regulation and down regulation.

Upregulation increases the energy available in the body.
Downregulation decreases it.

When the body experiences stress or traumatic events, the autonomic nervous system elevates and effects bodily functions.

In stressful situations the nervous system releases adrenaline and cortisol as a part of the fight flight freeze response. This speeds up the heart rate and gives the body a burst of energy and strength to respond to the perceived threat.

The body can also overreact to stressors particularly those people who struggle with PTSD. A constant level of anxiety as a result of work or family pressure takes a toll on health.

Deregulation is what is needed to bring energy levels back down, lowering heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure.

This brings the nervous system back to neutral and re-sets bodily functions, tremoring and shaking the body can help ease an over stimulated nervous system and calm the body back down.

Shaking therapy is something we can recommend to our clients it can be performed seated or standing the client simply focuses on particular parts of their body and shakes it out.

We may see shaking happening when treating clients, we often refer to this shaking as an abreaction.
The client simply needs to be supported, nurtured and guided through this intensely strange shaky experience. We must remember never to stop an abreaction or touch our clients whilst they are abreacting.

For many therapists this shaking can be overwhelming, I recommend when working with clients who have experienced trauma, you have a laminated sheet at hand, with some generic supportive nurturing direct and indirect suggestions, ready to grab so that you can maintain a calm, nurturing disposition, and guide the client through this deeply beneficial experience.

After the abreaction has subsided a combination of direct and indirect suggestions could be delivered, that reinforce the positive benefits of this experience that they've just had.

What are the long-term impacts of trauma?

Initial reactions to trauma can include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, dissociation, and physical arousal.

Indicators of more severe responses include continuous distress without periods of relative calm or rest, severe dissociation symptoms, and intrusive recollections that continue despite a return to safety.

Delayed responses to trauma can include persistent fatigue, sleep disorders, nightmares, fear of recurrence, anxiety focused on flashbacks, depression, and avoidance of emotions, sensations, or activities that are associated with the trauma even remotely. The constant release of cortisol and norepinephrine can continue to damage the brain and the hippocampus making our clients more vulnerable to stress and anxiety.

Go to techniques for Trauma and PTSD.

Our objective is to create deeply calming physical and mental states that transform feelings of fear and helplessness. We do this by bringing an awareness of the physical body’s sensations.
Our Client needs to be helped to develop an awareness and mastery of their physical sensations and feelings. A progressive muscle relaxation or autogenic relaxation can bring about a deeper awareness and connection to their body and a feeling of control. If I can tense a muscle, I can relax it.

Since time began, people have attempted to cope with strong negative terrifying feelings of fear, by participating in things that contradict perceptions of and feelings of fear and helplessness.
For example, religious rituals, acting and theatre, dancing, listening to music, meditation even ingesting psychoactive substances.

Many will benefit from the use of integrative and holistic methods such as yoga, Tai chi, exercise, drumming, music, shamanism and body orientated techniques.
Many people find these methods very helpful they are relatively nonspecific and don't deal with the core physiological mechanisms and processes that allow human beings to transform terrifying and overwhelming experiences and heal.

We should not underestimate the benefit of simply inducing trance, relaxing the body and creating inner sanctuary spaces.

During hypnosis the amygdala is less active, this contributes to changes in the autonomic nervous system, the body goes into parasympathetic dominance. Your heart rate slows down, your breathing slows, and your blood pressure remains low.

This produces and sustains the experience of relaxation and is why hypnosis is so wonderful to use with anyone who has experienced trauma.
The relaxation that occurs enables the mind to reprocess thoughts and behaviours and trigger emotional processing.

When in trance the hippocampus is able to process heightened information, so if there has been a lot of information (information overload, a busy mind, shock or trauma) it can help you to regulate emotions, process memories and information much better just by being in trance.
So, Being relaxed and in trance may also help prevent or reduce dissociation following exposure to a traumatic event.

Cautions and Contraindications.

PTSD often goes undiagnosed by the medical profession and even in the psychological community.

Common examples of undiagnosed people with PTSD can be adults who as children grew up with parents who were violent, or alcoholic, a home where there was lots of yelling, fighting, and bullying in the household.

Perhaps a person who was physically, emotionally or sexually abused during their formative years, most likely has grown up and has developed with symptoms of PTSD, having never had the symptoms recognised and diagnosed.

Hypnotherapy is an evidence-based treatment that can effectively treat the symptoms, as well as the underlying causes, hypnotherapy can be a powerful treatment for PTSD because of the similarity between hypnotic phenomena and the symptoms of PTSD.

Hypnotherapy does provide controlled access to memories that may otherwise be kept out of consciousness.

Hypnotherapy can provide:
immediate installation of powerful stress reduction techniques, these techniques can be recorded so a person can replay these recordings and practise these exercises and techniques every day.

Hypnotherapy can help identify the triggers that the person who has PTSD experiences, so that they can gain more control in their life.

Once we recognise these triggers, we can work to help reduce their reactions.

Hypnotherapy can assist in identifying situations and individual memories, of all previous stressful events that may be adding fuel to the fire of PTSD.

Hypnotherapy can help consolidate the memories into a more organised storage system in the subconscious so that the memories become less intrusive and less powerful.

We may be the first therapist that they've come across to recognise the signs and the symptoms of PTSD so we may need to refer them to a GP.

Hypnotherapy is not contraindicated when treating stress, anxiety depression, or PTSD, However, we must not work with clients in trance if they are experiencing suicidal ideation.

We must not use hypnotherapy if we feel the client has psychosis or a personality disorder, if in doubt, refer to their GP, and get consent, permission or an agreement to work with the client, from the clients GP.

We need to work cautiously.

Although we aim to reframe the experience, and usually the aim here is to change negatives into positives. In re-framing we must not dismiss the experience as the client remembers it.

It's more useful to recognise what they needed in that moment and bring that into the memory of that moment, and recognise the inner strengths the client accessed, to survive that traumatic experience.

We must not attribute blame, when the therapist has the potential for the inference of blame, for example, “this experience was not your fault” This is a common form of reassurance but it could potentially backfire, the client may already believe that it wasn't their fault and we could potentially be installing some additional negative ideas.

We need to mindfully listen and be aware of our own built-in biases we need to be careful not to pursue things that fit what we've learned most recently. Or have our own experiences colour the choice of techniques or suggestions we are using, keep our language clean.

We must work with caution so that their experience is not ignored or lost. for example, the recollection “my teacher shouted at me again, called me stupid, and then hit me”,
We have several emergent themes here 1. the teacher 2. the fact that shouting occurred 3. the fact that this wasn’t the first-time shouting occurred 4. the name calling and 5. the violence. Which one of these does the therapist address 1st.

We must we aware to not avoid that which is uncomfortable to talk about and instead stick with the stuff that we find safe.

Hypnotherapy for PTSD.

If there is a physical or emotional symptom there is almost certainly an underlying set of emotions that need to be discharged.

Clinical hypnotherapy cannot erase the traumatic events that a post-traumatic stress disorder sufferer has witnessed or been subjected to but can make it easier for a person to live with the memory of those events. Clinical hypnotherapy is a gentle but powerful tool which can change the way the memory is stored and the way it affects the body and the mind. It can give a voice to the lost parts of the self, the parts that were hidden away or shrouded in negativity as a means to survive.

While in a hypnotic state a PTSD sufferer can clearly experience the moment when their view turned negative and can begin to change any distorted beliefs and reclaim parts of their personality which were lost.

One of the primary goals of clinical hypnotherapy is restoration of the self to bring the different parts of the ego back together, some of which have been suffering for some time.

What techniques or metaphors could you use to restore the self and bring the parts of the ego back together?

Parts therapy.
Broken jar metaphor.

It aims to restore the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual balance in the body, to enable the client to visualise a happier, healthier future and a happier, healthier, more joyful life. The necessary healing process really can be generated by and take place within their own mind. In short hypnotherapy can give the brain the tools and experiences it needs to re programme itself for better functioning and diminish discomfort.

What techniques could you use to bring balance to the mind and body?
Apposition of opposites.

It can help the trauma survivor develop new coping skills related to their specific unique symptoms, these may involve emotional regulation, cognitive restructuring, relaxation and mindfulness techniques and Psychological education about symptoms and issues related to the type of trauma the individual experienced.

All hypnosis techniques are designed to neutralise the emotional connection to the root cause of the traumatic event. In most cases after a full discussion on how the PTSD sufferer feels and what physical symptoms they are experiencing and an examination of the key events in their life to date.

The clinical hypnotherapist will begin by teaching their client relaxation and calming techniques. I recommend that we use autogenic relaxation and progressive muscle relaxation.

For most PTSD sufferers it's been a very long time since they have felt relaxed or calm and even though it sounds quite easy this part of the hypnotherapy process can be the most difficult to achieve but the therapist has many different methods and tools that can help even the most agitated over stressed mum. We are able to still their body and their mind and enable healing to begin.

Relaxation itself is a potential counter to PTSD as it boosts inner feelings of safety and decreases environmental anxiety, lessens intrusive thoughts, and fosters re involvement in activities. Every single person on this planet is hypnotisable but it's true that some might take a little bit longer to hypnotise just to allow your clients the time that they need.

I recommend that you work 1 to 1 with them so that you can give clients who've experienced trauma and who are struggling with PTSD that space that they need to really enable them to get into a lovely deep hypnosis.

I like the three-phase intervention protocol for PTSD. Each phase is composed of numerous parts, but the three phases are impact, post disaster and recovery.

Let's look at impact.
It's important to make the PTSD sufferer feels safe, reduce the severity of the symptoms, and increase inner resources by boosting self-esteem and self-confidence.
The aim is to improve emotion regulation, increase tolerance to distress, achieve a state of calm, a state of mindfulness, with control over the body.

We enable clients to take control of their inner dissociation so that it only happens when the person wants it too, for healing purposes and generally to change behaviour in reaction to stress.

Secondly when that has been achieved, we move to phase two.
The post disaster phase, this allows for a re-evaluation, a reappraisal of the traumatic, memories. The success of this phase does depend on the willingness of the subconscious mind to tolerate the discomfort of reviewing the memories and it can take a few weeks until the subconscious mind feels comfortable enough to release the critical information.

For clients who can’t recall the specific traumatic memory I recommend that we use a technique called the Watkins bridge. We follow the emotion, we follow the stress, we follow the physical sensations, we follow the negative internal voice, and we allow the subconscious to guide us back to the root cause, to that moment it all began. Perhaps a specific moment that was the trigger. Once we've got really good rapport with our clients, we're able to guide them back to this moment and at this point we can then reframe this horrific memory.

We can give our client what they didn't have in that space, we can hold their hand, we can guide them, we can release the trauma, and we can disassociate.

If the client had an incredibly traumatic experience and we feel that revisiting that might be too much we can use the three-step rewind technique where we know what the memory is but we don't actually see it and we use a desensitization process, possibly doubly disassociated so that client doesn't have to see or experience the memory again and this is usually my go to.

In Phase three the PTSD sufferer is out of the other side of the PTSD and into recovery here our aim is to help the client apply their new knowledge and new insight. Perhaps any new skills that you know they may have gained that enables them to better understand themselves and provide them with the tools to prevent a relapse.

The tools.

Direct suggestion.
Direct suggestion can be used to relieve anxiety and panic attacks by the sufferer telling their subconscious mind that they will no longer react to stimulation in the same way or need the same habits to support behaviours.

Direct suggestion can reduce the negative behaviours around the post-traumatic stress disorder

Ego strengthening.
Anyone who has gone through a traumatic experience and has post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms will arrive at the office of the clinical hypnotherapist feeling pretty bad about themselves.
You know when they arrive at the first session, they often feel quite weak, they often feel guilty, they are certainly having issues with confidence, and may be worried about how they are responding or reacting to life events. Ego strengthening techniques allow the client to identify the parts of themselves which are strong, which have always been strong, lock in that resource to the subconscious mind, so whatever they had to tap into, whatever inner resources that they used to get through those negative experiences, courage, self-belief, perseverance, resilience, or all of those things. If you bring in an awareness of those inner strengths to the clints session, that will really help the healing. It directs positive energy towards healing. The subconscious mind allows the client to become fully aware of what negative direction their life might take if the power of their mind is not harnessed now to understand and resolve the internal conflict that they are feeling.

Establishing a safe haven.

One of the most important techniques in clinical hypnotherapy is establishing a safe place within one's own mind, a place where the client can feel secure, not at risk. As clinical hypnotherapy sessions progress, memories and feelings can become overwhelming. A clinical hypnotherapist process is to guide, but just as a subconscious mind is adept at hiding information deep within its recesses it's also capable of creating a refuge, a sanctuary, a special place, a sacred place, a safe space that one can retreat to in times of need.

The Watkins bridge.

The Watkins bridge regression simply means taking a person back in their own mind to explore memories and emotions to find out what is making the subconscious overwhelmed. PTSD people may remember an event of which they had no conscious memory before or they may actually revisit the event that they believe is causing the PTSD. When the human body is under threat it has three distinctive responses: fight, flight, or freeze. A major component of healing trauma is giving the clients the ability to complete the action they were not able to do when their trauma originally occurred. Clinical hypnotherapists encourage clients to move their bodies, to stretch, to reflex their body or to give themselves emotionally what they needed in that moment that they didn't have at that time of trauma. Someone to hold their hand, to say those words of encouragement to themselves.

Rewind therapy.

One of the most effective clinical hypnotherapy methods is known as revivification which means the person relives the traumatic experience, which appears to be causing such dramatic repercussions of their everyday life, while in hypnosis.

At Ottawa hospital a revolutionary new PTSD treatment involving virtual reality headsets is placing PTSD sufferers in virtual situations similar to what they have experienced to help them relive and re-examine exactly what happened to them, but in truth the mind does not need a virtual reality headset to achieve exactly the same thing.

Even if a person cannot clearly remember what happened the fractionated version is lodged in their subconscious and by using clinical hypnotherapy it can be accessed and laid bare.

PTSD symptoms can be provoked in a person to stop them remembering or dwelling on what happened.

People may feel too scared to re-examine what happened or see it again in vivid detail or they are specifically trying to escape the memories they have of it. Clinical hypnotherapy can go a long way towards insulating a sufferer from their upsetting memories while still allowing them to gain the insight they need to move on.

Cinema technique is one method of clinical hypnotherapy where the person vividly recalls a memory but with the isolation of seeing it in the third person, without any associated emotions. The subconscious mind is encouraged to put such barriers in place and protect the equilibrium of the individual.

Here a compromise can be sought with the subconscious mind to release the information but at the same time keep a protective shield in place an installation method as with the rewind technique a PTSD sufferer is encouraged to remember the traumatic event or events which are being played out in their dreams and in flashbacks they are given several suggestions on how to reduce the impact of the memory.

When the subconscious is most receptive to suggestion, they are asked to turn the memory into black and white and add a grainy filter to the images. They may be told to imagine themselves in the projection booth of a cinema watching their event play out on a cinema screen but they're standing behind a screen or wall.

They can be told to Fast forward it in reverse. As the client gets more acquainted with a memory, as they get desensitised to the traumatic effect of that memory, as they watch the film from the auditorium, eventually stepping into the film themselves and reliving the experience but with a number of repeated runs first.

PTSD sufferers have reported that rewind therapy has greatly reduced the number of flashbacks they have experienced and, in some cases, stopped them altogether.

It seems the process of playing and replaying the events diffuses their power to do harm in the body and mind and gives the subconscious the outlet it requires.

I use a combination of rewind therapy and the mobile phone technique here the client accesses the memory as a video on their mobile phone, they are watching themselves using the mobile phone.

With this technique they are not able to see the video but they can see themselves watching the video. They know when the video has played from the beginning to the end, they know when that movie is over, they know when the traumatic incident is over.

Once the client has watched themselves watching the traumatic movie several times (and have become desensitised to the event) and they can see that the person watching the movie has begun to get bored. The effect of the traumatic incident has become less they can then associate one step and become the watcher of the movie.

When that again has become less traumatic, they can then step into the movie and re-experience it with less pain, or they can choose to simply delete it or store it in an archive without having any knowledge of the movie without seeing it, without experiencing it.

Once stepping into the movie, they can step into the movie as an observer and actually bring into that what was needed at the time, a hug, a love, some care, some words of encouragement and that memory can be reframed and re felt.

Whatever trauma has happened to cause the PTSD whether it was poor medical intervention, whether it was a lack of support, while a person feels angry, bears a grudge or just feels so helpless about a situation that anger is literally routing them to the event.

When asked if they can forgive the perpetrator or the person, they deem responsible for causing the trauma most PTSD sufferers will answer absolutely not.

This means they will dwell on the situation repeatedly and that anger towards that person will heighten. That pressure will continue to reinforce the distress caused by the traumatic event and unfortunately will continue to anchor them to that experience.

It's essential to remember that forgiveness doesn't excuse the behaviour of the perpetrator, but forgiveness prevents their behaviour from destroying our hearts from destroying life any further.

There are key points when working to heal PTSD. We need to remember the absolute power of relaxation, we need to remember that just believing that we can be healed can actually heal us, drugs are not always necessary, belief in recovery is always the strongest factor for success in building self-esteem. Believing you can do it, believing you deserve it, and believing you can get it. What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.
It's a very good idea for clients with post traumatic stress disorder to regularly practice self hypnosis too.

Thank you for reading or watching you can reach me via email and book supervision at

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