PTSD Treatment: Creative Self-Hypnosis - Another Tool For Self-Healing

Hypnotherapists are so generous with their time. Take Roger Straus, for example. I asked him how PTSD experiencers might use self-hypnosis to supplement their healing progress – and he wrote this entire post about how self-hypnosis and related methods can be used to help those with PTSD self-heal. Just more info for us to throw into the healing mix...

Roger Straus, PhD., has a background as a sociological practitioner. He co-founded the Clinical Sociology Association (now part of the AACS) and put out three editions of the fundamental text on sociological practice, Using Sociology, with a new book, Doing Sociology, to be released this fall. He has published many other social science books and journal articles, etc. Additionally, he’s written two classic books on self-hypnosis and related topics (one of which was a trade best seller), with another in preparation.

As a Clinical Sociologist, I think the most exciting thing about “hypnosis” and “self-hypnosis” is that they boil down to using your own thinking, feeling and imagining strategically in order to accomplish things that would normally be difficult or impossible. And that includes “reprogramming” yourself, so to speak. Using creative self-hypnosis (pun intended), you can bring to bear all levels of your being to help make your life what and how you want it to be. It’s a way of getting at that “programming.”

Two key principles of sociological social psychology apply here. The first, known as the Thomas Theorem, points out that what a person defines (or imagines) to be real is real in its consequences. If you’ve come to accept something as “being that way,” it is that way for you. The second is that our very sense of self – who and what we “are” in the world – is something we build as we go through our lives in the ongoing process known as “socialization.”

Putting it a different way, we are all acting out “post-natal” suggestions that we receive from our society, our culture, our groups (including our family), and all the other people with whom we have ever interacted with directly or indirectly (through books, media, etc.). That includes both our friends and those who are not our friends. Now this is not just superficial. We humans respond to how we imagine things to be at multiple levels – conscious, unconscious and even physical. You can modify even physiological states and reactions by using your imagination strategically.

You can, however, overcome those “post-natal” suggestions, in effect become your own self-programmer. That’s what creative self-hypnosis is all about. You can choose your inner realities to get what you want out of your life, work and relationships. By changing what you take for-granted about yourself and your life, you can transform not only your thinking and behavior, but also how you act and respond on a physiological level.

The central “trick” I’m going to teach you now is something I call “remembering the future.” Think for a moment of how you want to be and feel, how you want your life and relationships to be. What would it be like for you if you actually accomplished that self-healing, actually freed yourself from all the negative constraints and effects of the past? Imagine yourself and your life “if only it were the day after,” as my family says. If you’d like, jot down some notes, really let yourself get into it. Don’t worry, whatever you’re envisioning right now is just a starting point. This imaginary future will shift and grow and acquire more detail and evolve in totally unexpected ways over time. We just want a starting point.

If you already practice meditation, visualization, self-hypnosis or some other way of letting go and just letting yourself be, continue with that and perhaps just add the ideas I’m sharing with you. If not, you really should learn some kind of practice along these lines (which, by the way, does not replace taking care of your body but should, rather, supplement exercise and proper nutrition, and other healthful practices). Either of my books offers a pretty thorough training program – Strategic Self-Hypnosis uses a more traditional (“you are becoming very, very relaxed”) type approach, while Creative Self-Hypnosis also shows you more contemporary, non-trance, wide-awake techniques. It takes some learning to get either method down.

To start, why not try this (first read through it a couple times and then give it a go – feel free to peek if you lose your place):

• Sit down in a quiet place, free from distractions, where you can be alone for about 15 minutes. Make yourself comfortable – loosen your clothes, remove glasses or contacts, recline if you have a recliner, dim lights, turn off the cell phone, and so forth.

• Take a deep, deep breath and hold it for as long as you can, and as you do, tense every muscle in your body that you can – your face (scrunch it up), neck, arms and shoulders, hands and fingers, chest, back, belly, legs, feet… (Also do a “Kegel” if you know how, tensing up all the muscles of your abdominal floor as if you’re trying to stop peeing in mid-stream.)

• Then breathe out as slowly as you can, letting yourself go limp and loose as you do so, letting both your body and your mind relax as much as they’re able as you breathe out.

• Repeat a couple of times if you’d like.

• Now just imagine that it is, indeed “the day after,” and you have already achieved your goals for self-healing, that your life, your relationships, the way you feel and act are already as you envisioned they could be. Just imagine you are sitting quietly and looking around yourself and seeing what you would see if that were so, feeling as you would if that were so. If it only were the day after, and you opened your eyes, what would you see that tells you that you have achieved your goals for yourself? What would the room look like? What colors would you see, what shapes and objects, things and people? What might you see on the wall – what pictures or objects or decorations? Just imagine you are on the inside looking out and seeing the realization of your dreams – what would you see? What would you be hearing? Smelling? Tasting? What would you be feeling physically, mentally and emotionally? Just decorate the scene with anything and everything you could imagine that tells you that you’ve done it, you’ve achieved the healing you’ve wanted, that you’re actually there. Spend at least a few minutes (but as long as you’d like) “remembering the future” in this way, making it really real to yourself.

• Now, when you’re ready, take another deep breath and, as you breathe out open your eyes and tell yourself that you are wide awake, alert, calm and comfortable, just feeling wonderful. Ready to get back to your life with energy and peace and focus and confidence and comfort.

Practice this at least once or, better yet, two or three times a day for a while. You’ll find that getting into it grows easier and easier, that you get more and more relaxed, and that your imagined future gets more and more finely detailed, maybe shifts and evolves in a way that even better represents success to you. You may notice both mental and physical (somatic) changes. By drilling this imagined future deep down into your mind until it seems almost a memory, something you can take for-granted, you will find yourself acting as if that were so. You will find your whole being responds as if it were so – and that you will more or less automatically act in a way that makes it real for so. This represents what I call Straus’s Law: the way to be changed is to act changed.

If you want to take this all a step farther, get a hold of a copy of Creative Self-Hypnosis and work through the exercises. Not only will you do yourself a big favor, but you’ll have fun while you’re doing it!

Roger A. Straus, Ph,D.
Dr.rogerstraus@yahoo.com

PTSD Treatment: Busting Hypnosis Myths

It would be wrong of me to post about hypnotherapy without addressing the myths associated with hypnosis. For an overview of the Top 10 Hypnosis Myths – and then a bust of each one – I asked my friend Jon Rhodes to write a guest post. After all, his business includes the web site Hypnobusters, so he knows a thing or two about the perceptions vs. reality. He also has a terrific site, Hypnosis Articles Directory in case you’re curious enough to do some further reading. I particularly love the free hypnosis videos available on Jon’s All Hypnosis Downloads site. Jon has a soothing voice and a wide range of skills in creating short hypnosis sessions. For those of you uncomfortable with the idea of someone else hypnotizing you, you might like to check out how you can reap the benefits of hypnosis right in the comfort and security of your own home.

Trained at the London College of Clinical Hypnotherapy, Jon worked in a rehabilitation center for mental disorders before he became a clinical hypnotherapist.

There are probably few subjects that have more myths and misconceptions than hypnosis. This is largely due to films, television, and newspaper coverage that make little or no attempt to properly research and represent hypnosis in its true light. They are simply aiming to sell their wares with sensational news and drama. The truth about hypnotherapy is actually nowhere near as exciting, sensational, mysterious and magical as many are led to believe. It can be a powerful tool for change when in the right hands, but there is no actual ‘magic’ involved.

In order to dispel some of the misconceptions surrounding hypnosis, here is a run down of the top ten popular myths surrounding hypnosis.

1) A hypnotist might turn you into a chicken (or pull some other silly or embarrassing tricks on you).

An ethical, clinical hypnotherapist would never do this. This is confusing a stage hypnotist with a therapeutic or clinical hypnotherapist. A stage hypnotist will do this because that is what is expected of them. You agree to this by stepping on stage and joining the show and you will easily return to your normal state at the end. However, in a clinical setting you only agree to the therapeutic goals for the session, so that is all that will occur.

The majority of clinical hypnotherpists (me included) would not know how to do these tricks even if they wanted to. Stage and clinical hypnosis are two very different disciplines.

2) You must be weak-minded if you can be hypnotised.

This is the wrong way of looking at the situation. A hypnotherapist simply guides or helps a person into trance. He does not ‘make’ them go into a trance. A hypnotic trance is a normal and natural mental state that most of us slip into several times a day. It occurs when you are daydreaming, or so totally absorbed in a book or film that you forget what is happening around you.

Actually, it is a skill to go into a deeply relaxed trance when you want to. The hypnotherpist helps you, but ultimately it is how you use your mind that determines how deep into a trance you go. People often find that the more experience they have of going into a trance, the easier and deeper they go. So ‘being hypnotised’ is actually a skill on the part of the subject, that can be improved over time.

3) You are asleep when in a hypnotic trance.

Many years ago hypnotherapists did use suggestions of ‘sleep’ when guiding someone into a hypnotic trance. However, this is rarely done now as most hypnotherapists agree that this can confuse the subject as to what state of mind they are aiming to achieve. Most now use suggestions of deep relaxation rather than sleep. Unfortunately, the media seem to still continue to portray a very outdated image of a hypnotist.

4) Hypnotists swing a watch in order to hypnotise a subject.

Although this is one technique that can be used out of thousands of others, hypnotherapists rarely do this. I personally do not use a watch as I wish to distance myself from the stereotype of a stern and sinister hypnotist, with a thin black moustache, wearing a tall dark hat, and a manic stare in his eyes.

5) People sometimes become stuck in hypnosis.

This is simply not true. On rare occasions a subject may not come out of the trance straight away. This is usually because he is enjoying the relaxing state so much that he doesn't want to come out. A few gentle prompts is always sufficient to wake him!

6) You will become stuck in hypnosis if something happens to the hypnotist.

Again this is not true. A person will eventually become bored and will just get up when he feels like it. The hypnotist holds no special power over the subject whatsoever. In fact, a person can hypnotise himself. This is called self-hypnosis, and then you wake whenever you choose.

7) Hypnosis is dangerous in the event of a fire or another disaster.

A person in a hypnotic trance is just as aware, if not more so, of potential danger. If a fire broke out during a session, a person would easily come out of the trance and deal with the situation immediately, and in an appropriate way.

If you drive a car, then you might be able to understand what I am about to say. When driving we often slip into a trance, especially when we are driving routes that we often take, such as to and from work. We can slip into a trance and daydream, and barely remember the journey at all. Sometimes we may even wonder how we managed to get to our destination at all! Sound familiar? In the event of danger, we instantly snap out of this state and deal with the situation. In fact we probably deal with it quicker and more effectively as our minds do not have chance to ‘over think’ with the conscious mind and slow down the response

8) You are not hypnotised if you can hear the hypnotist.

This is also not true. Each person has a unique experience of hypnosis. Some people consciously hear the hypnotist, whereas others do not. This has no bearing on the success of the session whatsoever. It is usually down to choice. You can choose to allow your conscious mind to drift away, or you can choose to listen carefully to what the hypnotherapist is saying. Some people simply cannot resist allowing their minds to drift away, as they gain so much relaxation pleasure from it.

9) You can be made to reveal your deepest secrets when in a hypnotic trance.

Since your mind is fully aware and awake during a hypnotic session, this is not possible. If you really do not want to talk about something you are under no compulsion to do so. A person can easily lie and is more likely to be creative with the truth when in a hypnotic trance, which is why courts will not accept the testimony of witnesses who are in hypnosis.

10) Hypnotherapists have special powers.

This is simply not true. A hypnotist is a normal person who eats, sleeps, feels happy and sad, and loses his car keys. There is nothing special or magical about us at all. We have simply been trained, and have honed this training with experience, to help guide people into a hypnotic state. A stage hypnotist may play on having ‘hypnotic powers’ in order to add excitement and drama to the show, but he, too, will readily admit he simply uses techniques that have been learnt and developed with practice and experience.

So there you go, hypnosis and hypnotherapy is not magical or mysterious when you know the true facts. It is simply a group of techniques for focusing the mind so that the unconscious can absorb pre-agreed suggestions in order to facilitate change.

I’ll end with this thought: With an ethical and professional practitioner hypnosis is perfectly safe. If it is not for you, then simply disregard it. But if hypnotherapy is for you, then you haved the potential to unlock a whole world of possibilities for personal growth, change and improvement. Many people’s lives have been turned around with hypnosis. Don’t let this potential opportunity slip you by without at least giving it some thought. You can receive some free hypnotherapy audio sessions here.

PTSD Treatment: Interview with Hypnotherapist, Laura King

Many people will be quick to tell you that any given treatment doesn’t work for everyone. To which I say, No kidding!

Swapping healing stories doesn’t suggest we are all on the same path and will get the same results. It only suggests, This helped me – have you tried it?

In the spirit of that idea, I'm about to explore the option of hypnotherapy in-depth here because it is the one and only modality that brought me ultimate relief. Psychotherapy, CBT and the information processing therapies (EMDR, EFT, TFT and TAT - all of which I'll cover next week) alleviated some of my symptoms but didn't wholly eradicate them. Is that because my healing process just took longer? Possibly. Could hypno have worked earlier in my healing journey without all of the other work I did? Maybe. The truth is, we just don't know where or when healing is going to come. I believe it's achieved through a sort of cumulative effect and we have to keep trying until we hit the right combination.

Hypnosis, if administered by the right person to a subject in the right frame of mind, can be a powerful tool. Below are some questions I asked Laura King during our pre-treatment interview process, and then in more depth after I saw the results of our work together. They shed a little light on one therapist's motivation to heal, plus why and how hypno can help a willing subject.

What is your background in hypnotherapy?

34 years ago hypnosis saved my life. After 3 attempts at suicide my parents decided that the conventional therapy and drugs just were not doing it. They had heard about hypnosis and researched it and found one of the pioneers in hypnosis, Dorothy Gates. She saved my life. Since then I have used it to overcome many of life’s negative events. I now realize my experience with so much turmoil prepared me to become a hypnotist so I would know how to help in a lot of situations. Through my own successes with hypnosis I can guide someone through with confidence that what I do works because it worked for me.

What made you decide to become a hypnotherapist?

I always thought that after raising my children I would work with my mentor and promote her and her products, but 9 years ago she passed away. I came home from the funeral and asked my husband what was I going to do for the next 50years of my life. He told me to do it! Go be a hypnotist, he said. NO way!, I thought. I didn’t like my voice recorded, couldn’t even speak in front of my 9 year old girl scout troop, and just knew I could not go into a room alone with strangers, especially men. Well, I went to hypnosis school and I tell everyone I was hypnotized to do it all!

What was the education process to become a hypnotherapist?

I went to the Omni Hypnosis School in Deland, Florida. It was the best experience of my life. I learned that I had been taught most of it from Dorothy and that I was on the right track. Going to school there opened my life up to the possibilities of helping people. Using the techniques and learning all the areas that hypnosis can help changed my world.

What is your professional approach to hypnotherapy?

I am a professional hypnotherapist and life coach. I follow all the regulations that are required by the state. Plus, I choose to follow the code of ethics the National Guild of Hypnotists has us follow.

What is your approach to the therapist/client relationship?

My approach is about educating my clients about what their brains can do. I must say that 90% of what I do is teach about the brain.

What is your philosophy about hypnotherapy and using it as a tool for treating trauma?

With every person who walks into my office I find out what their thoughts are about life. How do they see life or believe life should be... or any would-a, could-a or should-as. From there, how would they want life to be different? What are their desires?

Many PTSD experiencers have trouble giving up enough control to submit to hypno; how can we make that easier for them?

First , we must straighten out that no one really submits! All that hypnosis requires is that one just allow oneself to relax. I have never controlled anyone, nor can I.

In your book PEFECT ENOUGH you say that hypno only works if the mind is prepared to accept it, that it cannot work if the mind rejects or does not care about the suggestions. What can a prospective client do to get his mind in the right place?

I find the most important thing to do is to want to be healthier or happier. Habits that have been formed to keep one from getting healthy are just that--- habits! So with hypnosis habits are easy to change, as easy as they were created.

(Photo: Laura King)

PTSD Treatment: What About Hypnotherapy?

As many of you know, I have a big soft spot for hypnotherapy. When all else failed, hypnotherapy finally helped me (as hypnotherapists like to say, You did the work yourself!) find relief from insomnia, nightmares, anxiety and a slew of other lovely PTSD symptoms.

I've written about hypno a lot already - the history of it, why and how it works, and my own experience with it. I'm not going to repeat all of that here (exept to say that it's a lot like guided visualization). Instead, I'm going to let Laura King, my hypnotherapist, have the floor. I interviewed her recently about how hypno saved her life and why it motivated her to open her own practice.

Before I let Laura speak, however, I just want offer this interesting, documented-from-a-high-up-source tidbit:

The American Medical Association (AMA) has officially recognized hypnosis as a valuable and beneficial treatment as applied and used since 1958. In “Psychotherapy” magazine (Volume 7, Number 1), various types of techniques were listed and profiled in a review of relevant literature by Alfred A. Barrios, PhD. In the above quoted text, the techniques that proved to generate the greatest success in providing lasting change were the following (listed in order of success rate):

Hypnosis -- 93% recovery after 6 sessions (approx. 1 1/2 months @ 1 session per week).

Behavior Therapy -- 72% after 22 sessions (approx. 6 months @ 1 session per week).

Psychotherapy -- 38% recovery after 600 sessions (approx. 11 1/2 yrs @ 1 session per week).

Hmmmm.…. Just a little factoid for you to chew on today.

(Photo: zoomar)

Something Strange is Happening; Or, Groovy PTSD Healing

I woke up this morning and the temperature was in the 50s! Clearly, when I moved from Manhattan to Florida I didn’t go far enough south.

But that’s not the strange thing that’s happening. The strange thing is this: During my second decade of PTSD my physical symptoms became so severe that at times I was completely bedridden. My body was wracked with pain. My organs malfunctioned. I was weak and weary. The brain fog was almost impenetrable. The depression almost insurmountable. Hope completely unfathomable.

Whenever it was plausible, I forced myself to carry on despite the extreme physical and mental pain I was in daily. I pushed and pushed and pushed myself until I collapsed. Summers were the easiest season to muddle through. The heat, the humidity, the warmth of New York City crept into my bones and subtly energized me.

And then the fall would hit and the humidity would evaporate and immediately, my body curled inward upon itself. It always began in September: the leaves would begin to turn and the days would develop a slight chill and right on cue the aches and pains would increase and I could feel my body cowering as if from a physical blow. The muscles contracted and tensed. I was incredibly fatigued and everything ached as if I’d just completed a triatholon without training. My head hurt, my eyes hurt. Beyond insomnia I looked like I hadn’t slept in 20 years. I stayed in this state throughout the fall into the winter and until the first few days of spring when my body seemed to begin thawing at the same time as the earth.

I guess I should divulge that my trauma happened in September. I guess I should say that I’d had a really wonderful summer before it occurred. I guess I should mention the fact that I had no pre-existing physical ailments that would be worsened by weather.

I’m embarassed to tell you, it never occurred to me that my reaction to the cold weather (more accurately: the season of my trauma) was part of PTSD. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like the cold, but now we get to the strange thing that’s happening:

I went for my first hypno a little over a year ago on October 10, 2007. Right away that night a slew of my PTSD symptoms ceased – insomnia, nightmares, anxiety, etc. (For more on the effects see the post ‘After Hypno, Part 2’). It took five more sessions before I felt PTSD-free. The interesting thing is that I didn’t know how free that could be. I thought that the relief of immediate symptoms was all it would be; a lifting of depression, an absence of flashbacks, an elimination of triggers – you know, that sort of thing. But here I am all this time later and I’m still discovering new nuances of freedom.

For example: it is 50 degrees and windy today (and has been for the past few days) and I am not, at this late hour of the day, still in the bed. I am not dragging around a pain-riddled body. I am not deep into a head fog. In fact, I feel terrific. My thinking is clear and I am full of energy and while the cold is annoying and I miss wearing my flip-flops, that’s all the cold is: annoying. A simple atmospheric fact. It is not translated into my own physical or mental condition.

Interestingly, my hypnotherapist, Laura, and I never discussed the cold or my physical symptoms because of it. I took it for granted that my body was weak. That’s it, end of story. But that was not it. My body is not weak. My body was not betraying me, it was speaking to me, and I didn’t understand the language.

So, here’s the beauty I’m finding about healing: When we get to the bottom of our PTSD, when we root it out at the core, other suprising healings spontaneously take place because our bodies and minds want to be free. They want to be healthy and they will, with the proper support and guidance, do the work.They will strive toward joy. All we need to be free is the right attitude on our part – the full commitment to wellness even when we don’t believe it can be achieved – combined with guidance from some hand who’s either been there or knows how to do that.

PTSD & Hypnotherapy, Part 4: Afterward

I drive straight from Laura’s office to Rich and Carol’s house for dinner. Rich and Carol are my surrogate big sister and brother-in-law. They moved to Florida from New Jersey the same week I got here and we met on the beach. A few years ago Rich had a stroke from which he fully recovered but kept having mini-episodes. He used hypnotherapy to cure what turned out to be panic attacks after his recuperation. Rich claims hypnotherapy released him from a post-stroke induced fear. Rich and Carol have invited me to dinner after my session so they can hear how it went.

“It was nothing! I can’t be hypnotized,” I conclude as Rich spoons homemade chicken and turkey meatball soup into my bowl. We are sitting in the lanai that overlooks the pool behind their house. The October evening air is cool and slightly stirring so that the pool water gently ripples. Baylee, plus their Maltese and Morkie, lays stretched out beneath the table. “I didn’t feel anything. It was a complete waste of time.”

Rich affects a dubious expression. A retired cop from New York City’s canine unit, he’s a strange combination of the best cook I’ve ever known, the most sensitive man I’ve ever met, and your typical bald-headed muscle man. He looks tough and sour, but he talks a lot and is comfortable with revealing himself and his emotions. On this topic, however, he’s uncharacteristically quiet.

“Tell her what you told me,” Carol prompts. She is the perfect pea in Rich’s pod. If ever there were two people who belong together, it’s these two. Their chemistry and love are visible. They have seen each other through some very tough times and are totally devoted to, in love with, and trusting of each other. When Carol suggests something, Rich listens.

“When I went for hypnotherapy,” he begins, “I didn’t feel some big shift either. The hypnosis itself seemed unexceptional. But I never did have another panic attack. I went once, and I never had a panic attack again.”

“Maybe it just takes a while for things to settle in,” Carol offers. “This woman is a professional, Michele. Trust that she’s done a good job.”

Carol is one of those people who are always optimistic. I don’t know how she does it. She knows suffering, and she knows tragedy and while I have become immersed in them, Carol rises above them despite these facts: When she was forty-two she lost her first husband (her high school sweetheart) to the long demise of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Two years later her fiancé died in 9/11. Her mother succumbed to Alzheimer’s a year after that. Then Carol met and married Rich, who had a stroke in the first few months of their marriage. All of this tragedy was in the space of five years.

“Don’t be too quick to judge,” Carol says. “Have faith. Wait and see.” Carol might possibly be the only person who can say this to me and I will acquiesce.

“Maybe,” I say. “OK.”

Of course, my submission might also have to do with Rich bringing out one of my favorite dishes that he makes: a baked, nut-crusted tilapia with mashed sweet potatoes in a sweet pepper sauce. I’ve already glimpsed the parfaits in the refrigerator for dessert. As I break off a piece of steaming, right-from-the-oven cornbread and slather it with butter, it’s pretty easy to set any doubts aside.


That night I crawl my overly stuffed self into bed with the usual resignation. I accept that the nightmare will come; I only hope I’ll be able to fall back to sleep afterward. Oddly though, I sleep deeply and undisturbed for seven hours straight and awaken the next morning feeling completely rested, as if I’ve just slept for a century. This strangeness continues for five nights. On the sixth morning I wake with an extreme feeling of profound mental and physical peace. I hasten myself to full awareness and take stock, trying to recall what would cause this feeling, but I can’t identify a specific fact. I have, it seems, just woken up feeling incredibly safe and secure. Unlike my usual immediate morning self, I am not already scanning my environment for what could go wrong, will go wrong, has gone wrong. I am not immediately surveying possible dangers, bolting shut the door to the past because something keeps pressuring the hinges, threatening to push through. I am not tense and anxious. I feel….. good. And also, optimistic in a vague, non-specific way. It has never occurred to me that everyone doesn’t wake up feeling the ominous fear I usually do. I’ve been waking that way for so many years I’ve accepted it as universal fact. But here I am after a single hypnotherapy session and suddenly all of that junk is gone. I am not afraid. I am not already feeling driven to produce something of meaning. The day begins; I am awake. That is production enough. I have the sense that everything is OK. More than that: it is OK for me to be OK. What the hell is going on?

I’m so peaceful that I spend the day walking around in a weird state of bliss. It’s occurring to me that my perceptions of what is normal are really, horribly off. There must be people everywhere who wake up this at peace on a daily basis. I could really start to groove on this new kind of existence.

Except that almost immediately this strange state of being makes me incredibly, exceedingly anxious. I feel like I’ve forgotten something very important and I’m going to remember it too late. Each morning I get out of bed slowly and go through my strength training workout waiting for the familiar rush of tension, but it doesn’t arrive. Instead, I spend the day in a state of suspended calm that continues into the following day and the day following that until all of this incredible calmness begins to really freak me out. I call Laura on her cell phone.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m feeling very strange.”

“Define strange.”

“This is going to sound crazy, but I’m feeling very, in my body, I mean, in my limbs – at peace. I feel more present in myself. I feel more comfortable in my own skin. As if I am who I should be.
As if I’m doing exactly what I should be doing. As if I don’t have a past that matters.”

“And this is bad?”

“Well, I’ve never felt this kind of serenity before.”

“That’s not strange, that’s good!”

“But I never feel at peace. I never feel as if everything’s all right. And now, somewhere deep
inside, this weird sensation of peace is radiating. I feel calmer than I can ever remember.”

“That was the goal.”

“I know, but all of this tranquility, it’s making me nervous.”

Laura laughs.

“How long will this feeling last?”

“It’s permanent!”

“I’m afraid it’s going to go away, so I don’t want to get too used to it.”

“Michele, everything you’re saying is completely normal. Hypnosis causes some immediate and some slower changes. We’re restructuring the 88% of your brain. You are going to begin noticing alterations in your behavior and your attitudes, in your beliefs and actions. Everything is all right! You should feel at peace! How are the nightmares?”

“I haven’t had a single one since I saw you.”

“Then relax and enjoy this new state of being! Get used to it; this is the new you.”

I tread carefully in my new self. I don’t trust it. I wait for it to abandon me at any moment. I am suspicious and disbelieving. I don’t imagine that you can be one person for twenty-five years and become another overnight. That defies the laws of sameness – or does it? Am I not a different person, but just a freer one? Am I the same person as I always was, only after 1981 I was carrying a lot of baggage and now I’ve relinquished some of it? All these years have I been the same self only hidden in trauma’s disguise?

This new sensation of calm stirs up a bunch of questions and possibilities. To begin formulating some answers I take my own pulse. While I feel completely different, I am not unfamiliar to myself. A quick run down of my likes and dislikes reveals no stark changes. A quick overview of my hopes and fears reveals they are all intact as well, although some of those fears have changed. I am still afraid of what the next medical mistake will be, but now it is a hypothetical fear, not one that I feel physically. So, maybe I am the exact same person, just with a different point of view. Maybe that’s all I’ve ever been. Maybe trauma causes a break in the narrative and when it resumes, the protagonist sees herself in a different way although her characteristics are still essentially the same. Or, maybe in my case, she sees herself for the first time and, having nothing to compare it to, gets lost in the fear of that perception when really, what she is seeing is only more of whom she was going to develop into had the plot not hiccupped along the way.

As Laura promised, it seems that hypnotherapy has already changed the perceptions and beliefs housed in my subconscious. It has, in effect, realigned me with my authentic self, the self I was before experience caused my perceptions to get muddled up. Maybe Laura has put me on the path to reclaim the essence of who I am – not a Before or After self, but an Always self that was never gone, only trapped behind, beneath, beyond, between the impressions of trauma.

Maybe all this time I’ve been searching too superficially for who I am. I have been evaluating physical signs and intellectual thought patterns, but the real evidence lies in some realm beyond the quantifiable. If the subconscious is the seat of the self, and if its natural state is a sort of omniscience, then all of these years I’ve been making a horrible mistake. I’ve been seeking myself in the entirely wrong place. I’ve been trying to get back to who I was before I was aware of myself, or trying to untangle the nervous self that resulted after trauma. Perhaps both of these are constructs of the good old ego voice romanticizing the girl who was vaporized in the hospital, and promoting the insanity of the woman who got lost in the mechanisms of how to cope. Perhaps a real identity is only found in the moment – the ever-changing moment responded to by a pristine, fundamental emotional cache housed in the subconscious mind. A cache that is instinctual; therefore primal; therefore everlasting.

Despite severe trauma, then, some untouched part of us always exists, locked up and shivering in the subconscious mind. The trick is to remove the chains and bars of experience so that the original, enduring self can come forward; so that we can supersede the warped self and reclaim whom we always have been.

Two weeks go by and I see Laura again. We continue rewriting my scripts, reprogramming the subconscious to stop protecting me and instead allow me to live wholly and fully, believing that I am healthy both physically and mentally. I begin to feel strange rushes of emotion. I am going about my business when all of a sudden I feel a surge of what I can only describe as happiness times ten, accompanied by a chaser of gratefulness for this new life I’ve carved out: for my house, for my family, for dance, for John, for my own determination to put an end to my suffering. As often as in the past I have been on the verge of spontaneous tears, now I’m on the verge of skipping and singing a psalm of praise for the sun, the beach, Baylee, Laura. It’s ridiculous and over the top, but I can’t help myself. What has Laura done to me? If this is who I am when the 88% is released from trauma, then identity really isn’t about finding some quality of sameness or a throughline but rather, getting back to basics; removing the shroud of experience and choosing who to be in any moment because the fundamental self remains constant and intact.

Two months pass. By Christmas I have seen Laura six times. The effects of her work deepen each week. After the initial settling of calm I began shedding, not exactly the past, but bits and pieces of armor I donned to protect myself from it. To remain unchanged by trauma is impossible, but hypnotherapy teaches me it is entirely possible to live without the effects. I am starting over, unifying the essence of who I was Before with whoever I might choose to become Now. I see myself as the human version of a tel, every persona building upon the one that came before, all unified through geography. Inside this dedication to joy I have excavated a buried self who so deeply believes in freedom and the possibility of its attainment that she is finally emerging and taking control. The war is ending. I feel my survivor self beginning to back down. I sense her retreat into the shadows. She is at peace. She will remain with me, but she has relinquished control to another self who desires to feel and experience and create joy.

In life as in dance, there is a lead and a follow. Since 1981 I have refused to respond to any lead at all. Every action requires a reaction, but my only action has been acceptance, which is really no action at all.

“You are responsible for yourself!” my dance instructor has been telling me lately. “Regardless of the lead, whether you like it or not, whether it is good or not, you must perform to the best of your ability.”

I have long known that I am responsible for my own healing, but the overwhelming pain sapped me of the strength it would take to perform the ritual of letting go. Joy has given me back my strength. That strength is finally setting me free.

PTSD & Hypnotherapy, Part 3: Going Under

Laura goes on, giving me a primer in hypnosis by explaining a few more facts about how the conscious and subconscious work together, and how hypnosis bypasses the critical factor of the mind. Finally satisfied that she’s given me enough of a foundation, she moves me to the recliner. She turns off the overhead light, switches on a small lamp, and pulls her swivel chair beside me.

In a different, low and throaty voice, she says, “Close your eyes and listen to the sound of my voice.”

Laura hypnotizes me the same way that TA did in college.

“Move your body into a comfortable position and, Relax. In a moment I’m going to tell you to open your eyes, and then close your eyes. This will be a sign to your body to let go and relax. OK. Now. Open your eyes. And close your eyes. Feel your body letting go. Release all tension from your muscles. Feel your toes relax. And your ankles relax. Your shins relax. And your knees relax.”

Slowly Laura relaxes everything up through my scalp to the top of my head before she counts backward from 100 to 93. In my head, I am to repeat the numbers as she says them.

Next she says, “I want you to picture a room with an open roof. Place two chairs in the room. I want you to sit in one. In the chair facing you, place a repository box that has a red helium balloon attached to it. In the box I want you to put, one by one, all of your fear related to your illness, all of your anger, all of your sadness, all of your negative and disturbing emotions relating to 1981 and any health problems you’ve had since then. Put your pain in the box. Put your terror in the box. Put anxiety in the box. Put suffering in the box. Put all of those feelings you’ve had over the years into the box. When the box is full, close it and then let it lift up, through the open roof and watch it float away.

“Now, see you in the chair opposite. You are facing yourself and I want you to look at you and forgive yourself for all of the negative emotions you have felt about your illness. Forgive yourself for the pain and terror and fear. Forgive yourself for the sadness and illness and all other sicknesses. Forgive yourself for not being able to find a way to let it go. And I want you to tell yourself that it is OK to forgive anyone and everyone who has ever participated in causing these negative things that you have felt. Forgive your mother and your father. Forgive the doctors and the nurses. Forgive everyone who has knowingly or unwittingly contributed to your suffering. Now, I want you to hug yourself real tight, and then let yourself shrink up to an inch and land in your heart.” When Laura says the word ‘heart’ she touches two of her fingertips to my upper arm.

This whole time my eyes are closed and I am lying back in the recliner. I am disappointingly awake. While I did not expect to be asleep, I thought I would be at least in some state of altered consciousness. Instead, my mind’s critical factor seems hard at work. With every new image I work hard to create in my mind, the whole time I’m thinking this all seems like a childish and ridiculous exercise. My conscious mind is not at all fooled. This is all very nice, but I am still fully alert in a very critical way. In fact, I’m so critically aware that I’m thinking this is all some hoax; hypnosis is a sham. How can Laura effect anything when I am so totally and critically conscious? What happened to all that stuff about setting aside the conscious mind? I thought I’d be, as Laura informed me, awake and alert, but also, I thought I’d feel different somehow. Instead, my mind is still its usual busy self, coding and decoding all the information of every second. It is still focused enough to know that I’m listening and critiquing everything Laura says. It is still alert enough to conclude that this is not working. Shrink up to an inch? Put emotions in a repository box? Come on, lady, I want to say, bring on the good stuff! And then it dawns on me that maybe this is the good stuff and the problem is that I really am, as the TA decided all those years ago, unhypnotizable.


Laura, however, doesn’t seem to notice that things have gone astray. She continues to guide me into one visualization after another. Between each instruction she advises me to “Go deeper, and deeper, Relaxed.” She chants for a little while “attitude of gratitude, attitude of gratitude” and touches my arm. I find myself wondering what that’s supposed to mean. I’m on the verge of opening my eyes and saying, “Hey, we didn’t discuss this attitude of gratitude. What’s it about?” But I keep my eyes and mouth shut. This is all turning out to be a lot like the guided meditations we had in the playwriting course I once took where we laid all over the floor of a room, eyes closed, body relaxed, and invented characters based on the guided visualizations provided by the instructor. “Your character has a scar,” he would say, and we baby playwrights would dutifully imagine a scar somewhere on this hypothetical character’s body. So, I’m just in another guided meditation. I decide to accept it for what it is and resign myself to the role of simple observer. I’m disappointed, but I’ll just let Laura do her thing

Eventually Laura says, “The color for today’s program is the color red. Every time you see the color red in any shape or form today’s program is revitalized and reinforced. And any time you see the color red the effects of today’s program are doubled in your subconscious mind. In a moment I’m going to count to the number three. When I reach the number three and not before you will open your eyes and feel awake and alert and wonderful in every way. One. Feel the energy return to your body, moving up from the soles of your feet. Two. Your eyes feel as if they’re being bathed beneath the water of a cool mountain stream. Get ready now. Three. Open your eyes. Feel your body refill with a wonderful energy. You are awake and alert and feeling wonderful and marvelous in every way.”

By the time it’s all over hypnosis has been a very pleasant and (forgive me) relaxing, experience. Since I’ve been so conscious the whole time, I’m surprised, as I open my eyes, to I feel as if I’m waking up from a nap. My eyelids are heavy and I feel a little disoriented in the room. I feel the urge to stretch. I look at Laura. She smiles.

“That was very good,” she says, patting my hand.

“It was?”

“It was. We did some good work.”

“I thought I’d feel something that would make me know we’d done such good work.”

“How do you feel?”

I shrug. “A little groggy.”

“How long do you think that hypnosis session lasted?”

I check my infallible internal clock. “About fifteen minutes, maybe less.”

Laura’s smile gets wider. “It was almost forty minutes. Under hypnosis your usual critical faculties don’t function normally. Your sense of time, for example, is impaired.”

But I’m not convinced. Maybe I was just tired and drifted off a little while, although I’m pretty sure I remember everything Laura said. Anticipating this meeting I imagined there would be some physical, mental or emotional experience that would signal a huge turning point in my healing process. I want a sign. At the very least, I thought I would feel like I’d been hypnotized. But I don’t. Laura has turned on the overhead light now and I am pretty sure I feel exactly the same.

Laura, however, seems pleased. As she walks me out of the building she is full of cheery support and encouragement. When we say good-bye she envelopes me in a huge embrace, hugging me with sincere affection.

PTSD & Hypnotherapy, Part 2: My First Session

Laura continues my hypnotherapy initiation with further explanation of hypno and the process.

“Now," she says, "the second thing I need you to understand is this: Imagination is as strong as knowledge. What we’re going to do in here will engage your creative mind. The suggestions I give under hypnosis will stimulate your imagination so that it uses its power to reinform your subconscious mind about the beliefs you hold. Beliefs such as,” and here Laura refers to her notes. She reads back my statements in direct quotes. “‘I can’t let it go.’ ‘I don’t feel safe.’ ‘I’m so afraid.’ ‘I feel powerless.’ ‘There’s always something wrong with me.’ We’re going to change all of those thoughts by engaging your imagination. I’m going to give you what’s called a fake frame. I hate that word, ‘fake,’ but it will be fake right now because you don’t yet believe in it yourself. However, the frame will become real through the process of hypnosis. In this way, we’ll re-frame your ideas and beliefs so that they are more positive and harmonious for your well-being. It’s important to know that in the same way the imagination can help you reach your goals, it can prevent you from reaching them, too. Many of the difficulties we experience in life usually originate in our imagination; beliefs are so powerful that our minds transform them into reality. The 88% overrides the 12%.

“We’re also going to rewrite the scripts you’ve been using. You have thought patterns that have been going on for years. In hypnosis the suggestions will be geared toward rewriting these thought patterns and forming new ones that will bring you a feeling of peace and safety. It’s not only your subconscious mind that we’ll be tapping here. Your conscious mind will need to participate, too. All the hypnotherapy in the world won’t work if you don’t want it to. You must actively want to engage in this process. Also, you need to carefully monitor your thoughts. If you fill your subconscious with negative thoughts, feelings and images you will soon begin to experience all of those things. What you put your energy on is what is created. Any time you have a negative thought – for example, any time that you think, ‘I am powerless’ – I want you to say to yourself, ‘Cancel.’ As in, ‘Cancel that negative thought.’ For myself, I use the image of a purple elephant. It is so ridiculous and out of the ordinary that it immediately takes my mind off whatever negative thought I’m having. When I think something negative, I say, ‘Purple elephant!’”

Laura’s eyes get big and excited. She’s pulls a stuffed purple elephant off one of the book shelves. “Take this image home with you. You must only allow and reinforce positive thoughts. Cancel the negative statement and replace it with its opposite. For example: ‘I am powerless’ becomes ‘I am powerful.’ Will you be able to do this?”

I nod, “Yes.”

“Great, then you won’t be working against yourself. The mental attitude you hold when you hear a suggestion determines whether or not it is accepted into your internal computer for change, or flat out rejected. There are three mental attitudes that affect the hypnotic state. The first is one of complete embrace; you passionately want and trust the suggestion. Because of this, the suggestion goes into your subconscious and change occurs. The other two attitudes will cause you to reject the suggestion and no change will occur. That is, if you’re uncomfortable with the suggestion, or if you don’t care about it at all. You have to really want the suggestions to come to life in order that they will. So, it’s important that you whole-heartedly embrace them.

“The last thing I need to explain is that hypnotherapy is not like talking therapy. In here we will not focus on the past. There’s no need to do that. We don’t need to keep going over and over what happened. Going back isn’t what heals us; going forward does. With hypnotherapy we focus on the future so that you can see where you’re walking toward rather than constantly looking back at what you’re running from. By activating your subconscious we’re going to create and liberate the new you from the authentic self that is submerged beneath all this other stuff. That’s what we’ll be doing together, you and me.”

Oh, God. I’m melting into this couch. I’m fervently wishing this hour would never end. I’m plotting how to make it last forever. Laura’s energetic attitude transforms everything into something simple and manageable. All this time I’ve felt controlled by the past, but Laura’s outlook makes it seem like she and I control a future where the past is inconsequential. Why didn’t anyone ever turn me on to hypnotherapy years ago?

PTSD & Hypnotherapy, Part 1: My First Session

I make a list of hypnotherapists in my geographic area and systematically begin making phone calls. Unlike all other healthcare providers, I immediately like this group: they advocate speaking with you before you even make an appointment. You could never call an internist and say, I’d like a few moments before I commit, but hypnotherapists welcome that chance to connect. What’s more, they’ll spend over thirty minutes doing it.

I have a list of questions I put to each one. The first, Can you cure post-traumatic stress disorder?, gets the same reply from everyone, Yes. Right off the bat I can see I’m going to have to revise my technique. Instead, I begin asking each therapist to outline his or her background and some personal examples of PTSD results. I weed out the woman who says her success is due to her devotion to the Unitarian Church. I quickly end the call with the West Palm Beach woman who is so hyper and frazzled I don’t think I could relax anywhere in her near vicinity. I cross off the list the man in Fort Lauderdale who will chat with me about himself and hypnotherapy, but evades answering any of my specific questions.

I narrow down the field to two therapists less than ten miles from my house. I spend a long time on the phone with each. One is a male in his sixties; the other a female in her fifties. One heads a large PTSD healing center; one directs a hypnotherapy center. One looks a little like a cross between George Plimpton and Ichibod Crane while the other looks like the next door neighbor who always baked us cookies when I was a kid. One travels all over the world making speeches and one has developed a wide range of self-hypnosis CDs and a couple of books because mostly she stays close to home. The man says he’ll cure me in one day for $1,500 no matter how long it takes. It could take two hours, he says, or it could take nine, he isn’t sure.

“We’ll just keep working until we’ve resolved all of your issues,” he says.

But this guy hasn’t met me. I’m afraid that, as I did with Henry my former therapist, every time we uncover one issue we’ll uncover a whole host more and the day with this guy will never end. I don’t think I could take such a marathon session. It sounds a little too pressured. Also, I can’t imagine, no matter how good this guy might be, that we can cure twenty-five years of issues in one single day.

The woman, on the other hand, says we’ll need to take it one $125/hour at a time. This final fact is ultimately how I make my decision. Also, the female candidate shares some of her own story with me. In a chirpy southern drawl she explains how she, too, had a severe trauma that she needed to overcome and how she did it through hypnotherapy. I realize this convenient example could be part of her sales pitch, but she’s the only hypnotherapist I’ve spoken to who has related her own deep belief in the success of this bizarre process. I decide Laura Boynton King is the hypnotherapist for me.

The day of my first appointment I obsess about what to wear. This is a little worrisome because in my whole life I have never cared about my clothes. To meet Laura, however, I want to wear something that makes me not look as pitiful as I feel. I want to wear something that projects who I want to feel like instead. I choose a white flowing pair of low rise pants and an equally flowing long sleeved white button-down shirt. I feel like an artsy hippy, but the outfit forecasts what I intend to be: a comfortable, confident and relaxed woman.

I breeze into Laura’s office acting happy and chipper and nonchalant. In other words, a complete fake. I chat and laugh and joke around and do everything I can to hide the pain I’m in because I want Laura to like me. I want her to enjoy helping me. I want to be not a pitiful patient but just some woman who wants to find a better balance in her life. Laura’s professional and business oriented demeanor, however, isn’t the type to let you get away with this charade. A few inches over five feet, she has a cap of close cropped wavy gray hair and warm, soft brown eyes. She’s got a perfect ski slope nose and a generous mouth; she wears no makeup. Her warm, smiling, kind and utterly genuine expression makes faking it seem an insult.

Laura’s small office contains a single window, a desk, two bookshelves, a beige suede couch and a cream colored leather recliner. She motions me to the couch where I curl up and tuck my feet beneath my legs. Laura sits with perfect posture opposite me on a small swivel chair. She dons a pair of ruby red reading glasses and picks up a pen and clipboard.

“Tell me everything,” she says.

As I tell her the condensed version of 1981 to the present 2007, Laura writes all over the pad, every which way. Sometimes, she doesn’t even look at the paper; she keeps her eyes on me with unwavering attention and writes and writes and writes. It doesn’t take long for me to drop my guard. By the end of the tale I am in a tearful puddle of self-pity and desolation.

When the final sentence ends Laura deliberately looks at me and says, as if making a promise, “I’m going to help you with this.”

A physical wave of relief washes over me. No healthcare professional has ever said those words.

“We are going to get rid of this trauma once and for all,” Laura continues. “I guarantee it. I told you, hypnosis saved me from suicide. So, I know that it works. But first, there are some things I need to tell you.” She pauses to adjust the height of her seat and then leans forward toward me.

“The first thing I have to tell you, and the most important thing for you to understand, is that 88% of your brain is your subconscious; 12% is your rational mind. The 12% that functions logically makes you feel like you’re in control, but it’s the 88% – where you feel – that’s really guiding and informing everything you do. That 88% is who you really are. The other 12% is merely a construct designed to get you through the day to day. When a trauma occurs, the magnitude of the experience is absorbed into your subconscious. It’s like a hand leaving an imprint in the sand: even when the hand is removed, the sand retains the shape. The actual experience of the hand in the sand no longer exists, but the sand continues to behave as if it does. Trauma and the subconscious are like this. The 88% holds the imprint long after an experience ends. That imprint – both immediate and visceral – is like a ghost following you around. So, we’re going to perform a little exorcism. Are you with me so far?”

I nod.

“Good. The role of hypnosis is to revise, relieve or erase those impressions that are not serving you. When you do the same thing in the same way with enough repetition the subconscious mind makes it a habit. A habit is an automatic response to a certain situation in a specific way. You don’t think, you just react. Ninety-seven percent of what you do every day is by habit. When you get up and get dressed in the morning, that’s a habit. You don’t think about it, you just automatically do it. Our subconscious develops habit patterns that can either help or haunt us. Luckily, any habit can be changed by working with the subconscious mind through hypnosis.

“The subconscious mind stores the memory of not only everything you experience, but also everything you think, feel, fantasize, day or night dream about. The reason for this is because your subconscious mind cannot tell the different between something that’s actually happening to you and something that you are imagining. The subconscious records everything equally and responds to both the real and the imagined with the same intensity both during an event and also afterward. Hypnosis uses this concept to help you reprogram your behavior by using the imagination to help you change what your subconscious thinks and feels.

“Most of what the subconscious remembers is inaccurate. We can never trust what we recall under hypnosis even though the feelings housed in the subconscious are completely real. I don’t care what you think you remember from 1981, or whether or not it’s true. If your subconscious believes it, that’s true enough for us. Our job here is to change your attitude toward those perceptions and beliefs that are causing you pain. You’ve already outlined several of them in the thirty minutes you’ve been here. The goal of hypnosis is to change behavior through direct suggestion and the reprogramming of the brain. Reaching the subconscious requires no effort, no concentration. It’s simply a matter of allowing, not forcing. When you allow yourself to relax, you’re in the most receptive state of consciousness.”

PTSD Introduction to Hypnotherapy, Part 2

To continue the discussion about PTSD, hypnotherapy, you and me.....

The reason hypnosis works so well has to do with the way it transforms the subconscious mind’s perceptions and beliefs. To begin with, hypnosis works from the assumption that the subconscious mind (the veritable source of all of our internal power) is the storage space of all our past experiences and emotions. In this incredibly vast warehouse, traumatic experiences are filed away on both physical and emotional levels, the stimulus of which can affect our immune system and health. Processing old traumas and the emotional charges attached to them allows a patient to find internal resources that begin the healing process.

In all of this research I come across an article by Michelle Baudry, a board certified clinical hypnotist. In ‘Hypnosis and the Mind’ she explains how the mind subdivides into three parts: the unconscious, the subconscious and the conscious. We can, she says, break down the mind into a computer analogy: the unconscious mind operates automatic body systems in the same way as a computer’s operating system; the subconscious operates like a hard drive by storing information; the conscious mind functions like RAM choosing what information is to be acted on moment by moment. Immediately, the supreme importance of the subconscious mind becomes apparent. In order to update any files, the subconscious must be engaged. We cannot change memories, but we can update how we feel about them. In order to do this, the critical factor of the conscious mind must be bypassed. This is achieved through hypnosis when the conscious mind is set aside during the so-called trance state.

The Baudry article goes on to describe how the subconscious is the part of your mind burdened with the job of protecting you. It will do anything – even adopt negative behaviors – in order to keep you safe. The subconscious mind is a mighty advocate but sometimes can be a little too earnest and excitable. “Misdirection is one highly effective way your subconscious protects you by keeping a lid on overwhelming emotions. Ergo the addict,” Baudry writes. She explains that when these protective measures no longer serve us we feel the need to change. This change is difficult to bring about because the subconscious mind is devoted to its imprinted perceptions. In its bypass of the conscious mind, hypnosis brings the subconscious to the forefront so that changes can be made via suggestions. Hypnotherapy helps change perceptions of memories, which in turn helps change perceptions of the self and hence, behavior. It’s all a very neat little package. The past cannot be changed or escaped, but our emotional and intellectual attitudes toward it can be radically altered. “Talking happens in the conscious mind,” Baudry explains. “Change happens in the subconscious.” Since emotions play a large role in our activity, thoughts and actions, they are an intuitive seat of transformation.

Though we don’t delve into it on a daily basis, the subconscious mind is much greater and stronger than the conscious mind in which we dwell. So, while the conscious mind whips us around all day, the subconscious mind calmly waits at the bottom of some vast personal ocean, ready to rise up like a great watery beast and devour conscious opinion. It just needs the right bait and atmosphere.

At the time I was learning all of this, I thought it was all very interesting and new agey. I had uncovered some tantalizing data about the ability of hypnosis to cure PTSD, but I was only half-heartedly compiling all of this research because I didn’t, in fact, believe in hypnotism. I had in my mind a memory of a hypnosis session in the fall of 1986. My freshman year of college I took the ubiquitous Psychology 101 class with about 150 other students. Halfway through the semester, the professor and his teaching assistants asked for volunteers for a hypnosis research project. My friends and I could use some extra cash, so we signed up for the $25 sessions. The point of the study was to see how easily hypnotizable random subjects were. We were told not to try to give in to hypnosis, but just to allow it to happen naturally. I was, by the age of eighteen (5 years after my trauma), already incredibly hyperaroused and hypervigilant. I never gave up an iota of conscious control and I wasn’t about to start. I went into the project with the idea that I would be The One Who Would Not Give In.

I entered the TA’s office on the basement floor of the Psych building. The small rectangular room was dimly lit with an orange glow. There was only enough space for a desk and two desk chairs. The TA, a guy with long, shaggy hair, corduroy pants and a rugby shirt, told me to make myself comfortable. I sat bolt upright. He told me to close my eyes and listen to his voice. This was not the kind of hypnosis I expected. Where was the shiny metal object swung before my eyes? Where was the creepy voice saying, You are get-ting sleee-py? Instead, he counted backward from 100 to 93 and talked softly and gently. But no matter what he said or how he said it, I remained completely conscious and alert – was working hard at it, so determined was I to prove how strong and resistant my mind could be. The session lasted about twenty minutes. I was smug when the TA gave up. I walked out of his office so very proud of myself. Another self-designed test and I had passed.

But now I was actively seeking, as the U.S. Government puts it, to find someone who’d help me achieve “hypnosis… the bypass of the critical factor of the conscious mind combined with the establishment of selective thinking” so that I could finally be completely healed. I didn’t have much faith in the process. I was not expecting nirvana. But I was at the end of my proverbial rope and so while I didn’t believe in this cure, I soaked up the information hoping that something would lead me to an emotional aha! moment.

Baudry defines hypnosis as a blend of physical relaxation and extreme mental alertness; a state of focused concentration. Some of the other literature explains that under hypnosis the patient is generally aware of her surroundings and can choose to come out of hypnosis whenever she chooses. This will not be a mind control session. I would remain in control while choosing to relax to such a degree that the conscious mind will let down its defenses. When I read all of this I thought perhaps I could get into it, maybe fake it for a little while, see what happens. At least, this time I wouldn’t fight the process. The only obstacle now was that I had no idea how to find or choose a hypnotherapist. I wanted a blueprint or an outline to follow; some procedure or vetting process. I want a bunch of hypnotherapists to submit resumes and schedule interviews in which I lie on a couch and see how I feel about this particular person pecking around in my subconscious. Lacking any of these tools, I decided to wing it.

Are You Ready To Let Go Of Your Trauma/PTSD Identity?

We all want to be healed, right? We all would do just about anything to live more happy, PTSD-free lives, wouldn't we? .... Or would we?

I'll tell you a little secret: For a long time, even while I felt controlled, manipulated and devastated by my extreme PTSD symptoms, I wouldn't have given them up, not for anything in the world. Here are a few reasons why I loved my PTSD:

#1 PTSD made me feel safe.

a) The illnesses, emergencies, depression, symptoms, anxieties, all of it made me feel as if I was involved, as if I was connected to the moment and myself, even if it was in a negative way. I existed so dissociated from everyone and everything that the minor traumas that kept occurring bridged the gap between me and everyone else.

b) The symptoms made me feel awake and aware. If I was already always feeling in danger that meant I was paying attention. No new trauma could rise up and surprise me. If I was constantly feeling threatened then I would not be caught off guard when a new, cataclysmic trauma presented itself.

c) The symptoms made me feel powerful. In the moment of my original trauma, I had been completely powerless, and in the wake of PTSD symptoms I was powerless again. But in my management of those symptoms, I regained some sort of power. I could decide or not decide to pursue a treatment, a therapy, a practioner. (I'll get back to this idea of power in another post because I believe that as trauma survivors it is critically important to regain a sense of our own power.)

d) The symptoms made me feel stoic. I was constantly suffering and enduring, as I had throughout my original truama. The continued extension of that act guaranteed that I was keeping up my strength and my ability to endure again. If another major trauma occurred I would be ready. I would not have gotten soft, I would be primed like an athlete for an event.

#2 PTSD gave me an identity.

a) After the original trauma I lost a sense of myself. I split into selves (I'm not talking personalities here, just sensibilities). Where there had been one united entity, now there were three, a self for each phase: Before, During, After. Each self had strong opinions and experiences and wanted to run the show. I was completely at the mercy of the motivations of them all as they fought for control, which only made me dissociate more, which only made me feel even more lost. Galvanized by PTSD symptoms, however, I could muster a single, overarching identity: patient; trauma survivor; PTSD sufferer, take your pick. I could choose to be someone instead of a plethora of people all at once.

b) The original trauma so decimated the real me that I became someone else. I was a new person. That original self, the one who had not suffered, was dead (or so I thought). This new identity, Survivor, was very much alive and living a life that celebrated not survival of the truama, but survival of every moment afterward. I no longer saw myself as a regular person, but a 'special' person. In her book, Faith, Sharon Salzberg writes that “sometimes… I secretly build a monument to [my distress], as though I am really very special in [it].” Ring a bell? That was me, and I'd be damned if I was going to give it up. If I had suffered this life-altering trauma, it damn well better be good for something.

#3 PTSD reinforced how I had come to see the world and my experience of it.

a) Every minute holds the potential for trauma. Oh, yes, it does, especially when you've got a bad case of PTSD!

b) The original trauma stunned me and changed my entire outlook on life. Afterward, I made some startling life decisions (i.e, about my purpose, philosophy, religion) and set about living accordingly.

I decided the world was not a safe place and I must guard against it in every minute.

I decided it was not possible to enjoy life because that was distracting. How could I prepare for another trauma - how could I be sure I would be ready to survive again - if I was off having a good time? I couldn't, so better make sure my focus was on trauma all the time. It was not OK to be OK. How nice of my debilitating PTSD symptoms to comply!

So there I was with many reasons why, for all that I railed against it, on another level PTSD was really working for me. It was not until I took a really good look at who I was, what my identity had evolved to be, that I recognized the fact that it was not at all whom I wanted to be. I did not want to only be a survivor. There is so much more to me than that! I did not want to be a PTSD sufferer. I can be so much bigger than that!

At the nadir of my PTSD struggle I sat myself down and looked at who I was Before, During and After, and then I decided that I wanted to be someone else Now. This is what brought me to the pursuit of joy, which gave me the courage to bridge the gap between who I had become as a result of my trauma, and who I really wanted to be. I wanted to be well. I wanted to be healed. I wanted to cured and PTSD-free. I wanted to be happy and adventuresome and unafraid. There were so many ways that PTSD was preventing me from becoming a post-trauma person. My Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was really Prevalent-Traumatic Stress Disorder and it was time for it to end.

I decided to pursue joy to eliminate the dark psychological stasis in which I lived. The resulting flood of joy gave me the courage to imagine a life that was both trauma and PTSD-free. The more joy I felt, the more close and attainable that new life felt. Joy gave me the courage, too, to feel I would survive if I left my trauma behind. I would be able to define a new identity for myself, even if I let go of what had defined me up until then. I would be able to carve out a new philosophy, purpose, etc. even if I released my grip on what had formed me up until then.

The constant experience of joy brought me to a place in myself where I was ready, truly ready, to bridge the gap between trauma and a happy life. And that's when I discovered I didn't know how to make that final leap. If I wasn't so entrenched in this trauma life, I might have been able to do it myself. If the PTSD habit hadn't spent so many years digging its way deeper and deeper into my pysche the joy alone might have formed a new joy habit that freed me. Indeed, I almost did achieve the conversion on my own. But then I hit a wall, and that's where hypnotherapy came in.

I meant to post more about hypno today (I will tomorrow), but it seemed important to note one thing: We can only be healed if we want to be. Before hypno is approached as a panacea, it is important for us to do the internal work that smoothes the land in which hypno is going to work. We must accept that we have suffered, and commit to moving beyond it. We must love who we were Before, celebrate who we were During, and respect who we became After. We must want to choose who we can become Now.

The degree of success of any hypno experience relies on the strength with which we want to be free. I wanted it desperately. Do you?

PTSD Introduction to Hypnotherapy, Part 1

Several people have asked me lately about my experiences with hypnotherapy and its ability to cure PTSD.

First, let me say, HYPNOTHERAPY CHANGED MY LIFE. MORE THAN THAT, IT GAVE ME MY LIFE BACK; IT GAVE ME ME BACK.

Before I tried it, I did a lot of research and found that it actually has a great track record to help PTSD sufferers. I also came across a lot of interesting background that brings its potentially "you are getting sleepy" creepiness down to the basis of facts and science (and no one says that phrase anyway).

Over the next couple of posts I'll be giving some background about hypnosis, and also my experience with it. I'll also try to find some links that might be helpful so you can do more of your own research. For now, you can visit the link for my hypnotherapist to read some background and see how absolutely normal she is, as it the practice itself! Many of her clients are business and sports related. It's not just us unfortunate PTSD sufferers who can benefit from hypnotherapy. Tiger Woods uses it. As does Kevin Costner (OK, maybe it's not really helping him, but still...), so do Fergie, Matt Damon, Samuel Jackson, Ellen Degeneres, Drew Barrymore and Ben Affleck to name a few. So you see, we're in good company.

My goal here is to give a complete 360 degree look at hypnotherapy, so today I'll begin with some background and in the next few days move on to my own experience....

In the beginning I didn’t know anything about hypnotherapy. I heard an ad that it could stop a nicotine craving and I thought, If it can cure that strong an addiction, maybe it can cure another kind. (Because, doesn’t PTSD feel like an addiction sometimes??) So I turned to the literature and discovered that hypnosis is actually a pretty antique practice, traceable all the way back to Hindus in ancient India who took their sick to sleep temples to be cured by suggestion. Egypt in 3000 B.C. employed the same practice in dream temples. So did the Greeks (in their Shrines of Healing) and Romans whose motto was, Mens sana in corpore sano; healthy mind in healthy body. A common element was creating a suggestion to be used by the patient’s power of belief. Believing that they were healed, many patients could put their own mind power to work to heal themselves. Group hypnosis was also very popular in antediluvian civilizations; several religious ceremonies included rituals such as mass rhythmic chanting, strained fixation, and meditation. Before Newtonian science divided the mind and body in 1750, the ancients seemed to know that the health of the two is connected.

The first hypnosis to be accepted and experimented with in modern society, however, had to do with chickens. That’s right, last night’s dinner represents the evolution of hypnosis into genteel circles. In the 1600s people discovered they could calm chickens through various hypnotic means, including balancing wood shavings on their beaks. Not long afterward, French farmers learned to hypnotize hens to sit on eggs that were not their own. In Germany, traveling shows hypnotized birds, rabbits, frogs, and salamanders to name a few. In England a man hypnotized a lion. In Hungary a man hypnotized all of the animals in the Budapest Zoo. In 1904 even Pavlov thought hypnosis was related to the state of his conditioned reflex dogs. Hypnosis, it was found, could be induced in a wide range of subjects.

There are several people involved in bringing hypnosis to its currently accepted status in the healing community – way too many names to mention in a brief overview. The truncated story goes like this: The man credited as the Father of Hypnotism, Franz Anton Mesmer, was born into a Swiss-German family in the Swabian town of Iznang, in 1734. Mesmer’s father was a gamekeeper and forest warden. Both parents were extreme Catholics who attempted to push their son into the clergy. After a brief stint training to be a Jesuit priest, and then studying law, the young man enrolled in and eventually graduated from the premier medical university in Vienna. As a medical student he developed a theory of the influence of heavenly bodies on people’s health, which he supposed to be through acts of ‘animal gravity’. Further to this, he developed the belief that the unobstructed flow of a quasi-magnetic fluid in our veins keeps the body free of disease. Curing illness meant correcting the flow of this fluid. The magnets put people into a sort of trance in which the fluids could be recalibrated.

In 1770, recently graduated and married to a wealthy widow ten years his senior, Mesmer began exploring, experimenting with, and validating ‘animal magnetism’ (later known as ‘Mesmerism’). For example, Mesmer found that he was able to stanch the flow of bleeding from a patient’s wound simply by passing magnets over the incision. He also found he could cure a patient’s convulsions by placing magnets on her thighs and stomach. Gradually, Mesmer’s curing abilities encompassed a wide range of physical and psychological ailments. He became famous for his diverse magnet cures and moved to Paris where he was wildly embraced by the French aristocracy. The medical community, however, disapproved of and disbelieved in his work, which prompted the French king, Louis XVI, to appoint a Board of Inquiry. Mesmer refused to cooperate with this investigation and it didn’t take long for the board (which included the French chemist Lavoisier, a medical doctor called Joseph Guillotin, and America’s own, Benjamin Franklin) to conclude that Mesmer was a fake. Mesmerism, they announced, had nothing to do with magnets and everything to do with the patient’s own act of imagination. In disgrace, Mesmer retired to a Swiss forest where he continued to believe in Mesmerism and administer his cures to the poor until his death in 1815.

After Mesmer, the hypnosis pool gets a little crowded. Mesmerism itself continued to flourish in the arenas of research, studies, demonstration and investigation. But it was one of Mesmer’s students, the Marquis de Puysegur who, in 1784, discovered how to lead a client into a deep trance state called ‘somnabulism’. De Puysegur accomplished this state by using relaxation and calming techniques. He described the state as having the following three features: concentration of the senses on the operator, acceptance of suggestion from the therapist, and amnesia for events in the trance. Over 200 years later, these theories still apply.

The definitive launch of hypnosis came sixty years later, in 1842, when James Braid, a Scottish surgeon, saw a man hypnotize a lion at the London Zoo. Convinced it was a hoax, he began his own experiments with his wife and servant. He discovered that a fixed gaze paralyzes nerve centers and destroys the balance of the nervous system, which puts a patient into a state that can be very useful when no origin can be found for a person’s disorder. Braid renamed mesmerism with the term hypnosis, deriving the word from the Greek, hypnos, meaning, ‘to sleep’. The importance of Braid and his colleagues is that his research was the first to be called scientific, and in that category raised hypnosis from the realms of mysticism and brought it into the respected medical arena.

Around the same time, James Esdaile, a surgeon in Calcutta, after placing a patient into a trance state, performed the first operation without anesthesia. His track record of over 1,300 operations – all done with hypnosis and without anesthesia – helped give hypnosis even more clout so that the leading minds of the 18th century took notice. It came to be accepted that hypnosis inhibited certain cortical activity in the brain thereby allowing suggestions to be more easily accepted. For many years suggestion was the only known method of psychotherapy. Thousands of patients were cured this way.

At the Salpetriere in Paris, Jean-Martin Charcot built on and advanced the theory of hypnosis with great success. He believed that hypnosis was not merely a psychological state but a physiologically alternate state of consciousness, one that could be affected through such means as magnets. One of his students, Sigmund Freud, used the theories of hypnosis to develop his original abreaction therapy, which utilized hypnotic methods. Unfortunately, when Charcot died his ideas were betrayed. The colleague evolving his work changed his belief about the physical affects of hypnosis and reverted to the theory of suggestibility. His attempt to prove that hysteria was the diseased manifestation of hypnosis associated hypnosis with neuroses and weakness; hypnosis completely fell out of fashion. No one wanted to be looked at as crazy.

In addition, Freud’s was some of the work that changed the approach of hypnosis from suggesting away a patient’s symptoms to eliminating the apparent causes. Freud believed that traumatic events (and patients’ failure to react to them) cause suppression. He maintained that in order to discharge those intense feelings of traumatic events it was necessary to bring them out into the light; this was the basis for what would become psychoanalysis. It was Freud’s eventual disuse of hypnosis, and his tremendous success at proliferating his ideas of a new psychotherapy, that helped push hypnosis onto the fragmented sidelines of patient care.

Then, in the 1920s, in a northeastern French province, the pharmacist Emil Coue studied the psychology of suggestion. His successes in this area brought auto-suggestion for self-benefit into vogue. Since then, hypnosis has spread from Europe to the United States. As early as the 1930s hypnotism began to be used to cure psychosomatic illnesses. In the 1930s and 1940s at places like Yale University American academics studied hypnotism and advanced it through publishing their findings. Later, the armed forces utilized the effects of hypnosis during World War II; the practice helped get soldiers back into the trenches more quickly. After the war, there were so many soldiers with psychological afflictions that hypnosis was used to allow them to relive the trauma and thereby relieve it. The success of these varied outlets regained some of hypnosis’ sullied reputation. By 1948 hypondontia (hypnotism in dentistry) became widespread and the American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry (an association of dentists trained to administer hypnotic techniques) was founded. By 1958, even the American Medical Association approved a report on the medical uses of hypnosis and encouraged further research.

Following WWII one man remains responsible for bringing hypnosis completely into the mainstream of American healthcare. A double polio sufferer, a poor kid from rural Nevada who had severe dyslexia, profound tone deafness, and color blindness, Milton Erikson became an unorthodox psychiatrist who stressed the wisdom and intelligence of the subconscious mind and promoted the view that it was not a primarily negative force. Further, Erikson’s transformative idea was that hypnosis is actually a state of mind that all of us are normally entering spontaneously and frequently. That television set you’re staring at, that movie you’re watching, that magazine you’re reading, they all put you into a sort of trance. Erikson’s creative theories and successes increased the public’s interest and belief in, plus comfort-level with and acceptance of hypnosis. These days, hypnosis is incredibly widespread. Often used in psychotherapy, it is also a tool in law enforcement, hospitals, psychiatric clinics, jails, courtrooms, sports, schools and religious institutions.