Trauma is defined as a wounding experience that interferes with an individual’s development, relationships, and coping mechanisms. The condition requires therapy that targets one’s behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. Hypnosis can be used effectively to manage trauma and help the affected individuals to invoke their innate potentials of identity and self.
Hypnotherapists aim at tuning individuals’ therapeutic language to their developmental stages that led to the traumatizing experiences. Moreover, therapists can aim at evoking innate qualities and powers to align them with the therapeutic experience, and adopt the right response to individuals’ behavioral cues in ways that cultivate trance. The successful application of these processes depends on the level of trauma a person is experiencing. Nonetheless, clinical hypnosis can be used as an adjunct therapy for evoking thought patterns that promote healthy change.
Sugarman & Linden (2020) argues that hypnosis has emerged as a multidimensional and wide discipline for inducing change in the mind. The technique has been used in various ways to assess embodied experiences as part of the therapeutic process. The therapy can be used as a communication and engagement tool that therapists adopt to connect with the mind, thereby facilitating their access to and repair of the traumatic experiences.
Conversational clinical hypnosis, either nonverbal or verbal, activates individuals’ innate powers for inducing change. This kind of hypnosis encompasses aspects such as empathy, resonance, modeling, mirroring, observation, and the disruption of old patterns to transform the embodied mind that always store traumatic injuries and memories.
The main aim of this process is to help individuals shift their minds from the unhealthy status of trauma to resiliency and internal renewal. Therapists can use principles such as relational being, systems thinking adopted for different age brackets, temporal touring, and narrative listening. This approach is highly person-centric in which individuals assess their own powers and use them to achieve healthy and adaptive tendencies. Trauma occurs in the embodied mind and can be eliminated through hypnosis skills targeted through the mind to help it embrace healthful living (Sugarman & Linden, 2020).
According to a systematic study conducted by Rotaru & Rusu (2016) to assess the efficacy of hypnosis in ameliorating the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, it was determined that hypnosis is an effective alternative therapy for the condition. All the studies reviewed showed a positive impact of hypnotherapy on PTSD symptoms. The effects of hypnosis were determined to be more promising for PTSD symptoms than desensitization and other cognitive interventions.
The researchers note that hypnosis can be used both as a value-adding technique to the conventional treatment methods and as a valuable treatment for PTSD. Thus, the efficacy of hypnosis in managing trauma has been determined through various studies. It has been determined that the therapy can be used to influence the mind and make it elicit reactions that activate individuals’ innate resources for change. This way, the therapy can help eliminate memories stored in the subconscious mind to help the individual heal from the traumatic experiences.
References
Rotaru, T. Ș., & Rusu, A. (2016). A meta-analysis for the efficacy of hypnotherapy in alleviating PTSD symptoms. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 64(1), 116-136.
Sugarman, L. I., & Linden, J. H. (2020). Hypnotic Conversations with the Embodied Mind. European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 100166.
Melvin S. Marsh is a certified hypnotherapist serving Atlanta GA, Augusta GA, Statesboro GA, and Savannah GA. He performs hypnotherapy appointments both in person and worldwide virtually. He can be reached at www.afterhourshypnotherapy.com .
