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Hypnotherapy

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VDWngr1355

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Has anyone tried hypnotherapy along with talk therapy to help reduce the symptoms?

I am becoming more and more interested in it and was wondering what the success rate with it is.
 
I've had hypnotherapy but for insomnia/depression, before recovering trauma memories. I can speak from my own experience of trauma, healing and alternative therapies, but of course someone else may have a completely different view.

I had a very positive experience with one hypnotherapist, but I wouldn't have hypnotherapy for PTSD symptoms. I'm much too careful about what's going on with my mind. If you think about how talk therapy can be upsetting or even retraumatising, imagine the risk having a therapy that works directly with your subconscious. Even a good hypnotherapist probably wouldn't have nearly enough understanding of trauma and what sort of level of psychic safety is needed for a trauma survivor.

Your symptoms are not separate from the issues causing them, and I don't believe that you can address them on a deeper level like this without touching/uncovering/disturbing some fundamental trauma. So it's not something I would imagine would reduce your symptoms - possibly just the opposite.

What I would definitely recommend considering, though, is guided meditation/visualisation. I've needed to be very careful with these, because I'm still working with the Pandora's box that is my mind. I'm much more in control of it, though, and in fact I use these techniques mostly for psychic protection, safety and grounding. That in itself has helped me greatly with talk therapy, because I'm stronger and feel safer and have more coping resources. I've found a recorded guided meditation that's very soothing for me, so that reduces symptoms like anxiety and distress.

I do think it's good to have something alongside talk therapy which is not just me doing all the work, and I saw a somatic trauma therapist for about a year as well as having counselling. It worked really well to have the two therapies together, and both my therapists felt that too. I have to say, though, that it wasn't something that immediately reduced my symptoms, and sometimes it was hard going, but it quickly released a lot of trauma energy that otherwise I'd have been spending a long time working through in talk therapy.

I can understand wanting help reducing your symptoms, but I think finding and using your own self-soothing and strengthening techniques is the best way to do it. For trauma, the only type of therapist I'd see is a specialist trauma/somatic therapist.
 
I am becoming more and more interested in it and was wondering what the success rate with it is.
Do some research and you will find that any trauma expert will very clearly state, DO NOT have hypnotherapy for trauma, as it is a suggestive therapy at best. It is highly dangerous and extremely inaccurate, often resulting in prolonged damage when inferred around traumatic memories. This is a huge NO NO if looking at it for trauma memories.

Hypnotherapy has its uses, trauma therapy is not one of those uses, even though many hypnotherapists will claim otherwise, as it is a sale for them at the end of the day. Again... research trauma experts data on this and you will think twice before engaging it.
 
I wasn't considering it for trauma therapy. I was hoping it would help for the anxiety on a daily basis. I thought a hypnotherapist would be able to just address more of the self talk/ inanity that goes on without touching the trauma stuff. Although it does make sense if they really cannot separate it.

Michelle Rosenthal in her book, "Before the World Intruded", recommends hypnotherapy to help reduce her everyday anxiety. Granted she used a lot of other therapies as well too. But was she just lucky that hypnotherapy worked for her?

I am just confused on it and I would love to find a therapy that helps reduce the everyday anxiety.
 
I'm afraid don't know the context of Michelle Rosenthal's use of hypnotherapy. I only know that my experience of trauma - like most people's, I expect - included some really scary stuff and if I relax my mind I could be opening up to anything from my past and its effects. I've learnt that my anxiety comes from feeling unsafe, and feeling unsafe comes from what happened, so I can't work on anxiety in isolation. I found this out the hard way, and now I would never open up or relax my mind without a lot of work on safety and protection. I would never let someone else work with me in that way at all.

I think working on safety is part of the healing process itself. Trauma is characterised by feeling powerless, and learning to protect and be strong in my mind is a way of recovering my sense of power.

In the meantime, I can really sympathise with you over the anxiety. I try to follow my T's suggestion of being gentle with myself and accepting that's how things are at this stage in healing. As I said, doing my own guided meditation helps me, and so does focussing on breath (for a minimum of 20 minutes) and trying to practise mindfulness.
 
I know my anxiety as well comes from being feeling unsafe....but I know I am safe, but my body doesn't want to stop feeling that way. It is like it is addicted to that unsafe feeling because it is scared of everything bad happening again.

I still have to talk with my T about even trying hypnotherapy and see what he thinks about it.
 
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