Summary Clinical Hypnotherapy in the Treatment of PTSD ... · Trial to test the eﬃcacy of...

Clinical Hypnotherapy in the Treatment of PTSD: Case Studies 2019

By Sarah Yuen Gilliat RCH

A Word From The Clinician

After my return from Afghanistan, following Op Herrick 13, having spent nearly two years in the country, working firstly with the British Army and then NATO forces, much of my time on the ground with troops in combat situations, I felt a huge need to do something to help people.

I had spent 25 years covering disasters and civil wars worldwide, armed with only a camera and curiosity, and I went to Afghanistan the same way. But I did not return the same. Like so many British soldiers who fought in that conflict, I came home a different person. Coverage of subsequent news events, including numerous bombings and the tsunami in Tacloban, only reinforced that feeling, as I watched people, including tiny children, try to cope with inexplicable events and crushing loss.

I began a year-long diploma course in clinical hypnotherapy with ARCH Canada in Montreal, because they had the most extensive clinical training programme. It was during that course that I realised the numerous military applications of clinical hypnotherapy for pain and mental distress, documented back to the American Civil War, when it was used to perform surgery instead of laudanum.

Further research revealed the applications by British doctors during WW1 for victims of shell shock; by British and Dutch doctors for operations in military prisoner of war camps in Singapore; by military doctors in Korea and Vietnam for surgery, pain and combat fatigue, as PTSD was known then.

Then I learned of John G. Watkins, an American military psychiatrist in WW2, who was given the very worst cases returning from the European front; men who had failed to respond to any known treatments for their ailments which ranged from severe depression to psychoses, paralysis, and even loss of the ability to speak or eat.

Watkins and his fellow doctors tried every psychiatric method and drug possible before turning to clinical hypnotherapy as a last resort, in the hope it would at least stabilise their patients, and bring them some relief. But what it actually did was cure many of them, and in a stunningly short space of time! Watkins began to call it “The Original Brief Therapy” as he and his colleagues became the pioneers of many modern day psychological therapies, and began to understand the huge impact of early trauma on the psyche of American servicemen, when compounded by trauma suffered in combat.

With 400 hours of practical application of clinical hypnosis behind me, I decided to help modern-day serving soldiers and veterans overcome their most crippling PTSD symptoms, and show the British military that there is a fast, effective and cost-effective way to counter the spiralling suicide numbers, and massive compensation payouts.

Every single one of the British soldiers, whose cases are documented in this handbook, took part in a six-week trial and saw their lives changed. They saw not only psychological but physical symptoms eliminated, sometimes after decades of suffering. Each of the men in this book is ready to discuss their experience with military and government officials or politicians and their contact details are included to that end.

It goes without saying that I have never met a braver, stronger, more honourable, set of people.

- Sarah Yuen Gilliat RCH - Association of Registered Clinical Hypnotherapists Canada.

Trial to test the efficacy of clinical hypnotherapy on PTSD symptoms

Selection of participants

For the purposes of this trial an advertisement was placed on a number of Facebook group pages frequented by British military veterans in November 2018, asking for volunteers for a clinical hypnotherapy trial beginning immediately. The only criteria was to have served, or be serving, in the British military; have a British military number, and to have a PTSD diagnosis from a doctor or mental health professional, or an organisation specialising in the support of British servicemen with PTSD. They were required to be available for six weeks, for 90 minutes a week, and the trial was unpaid.

There were no exclusion clauses for anyone on medication, using addictive substances, feeling suicidal or suffering extreme anger or psychoses, and no participants were asked to disclose this before being accepted on the trial.

This was the decision of the clinician. Some clinical hypnotherapists and mental health professionals believe psychotic or suicidal patients should not be treated with clinical hypnosis, or that the use of medication or addictive substances can affect the outcome of treatment. However clinical hypnosis is effectively an extremely deep state of relaxation, in which the body slows down enormously, and the person appears to gain insight into how memories and experiences may be affecting their physical body. It does not interfere with any medication schedule, except to potentially reduce the perception of any side effects, and the generated relaxed state appears to be of huge benefit to those who have the feeling their mind is unbalanced.

In terms of extreme anger, that is a common symptom of PTSD, and is often a cover emotion for fear or guilt, stemming from the root cause of the symptoms, which can be discovered and dissipated during hypnotherapy. To exclude PTSD sufferers with extreme anger would be defeating the reason for the clinical hypnotherapy treatment in the first place.

Dozens of responses were received to the advertisement, all equally deserving, and it was decided to allocate places on a first-come-first served basis so there could be no influence on the outcome of the trial by the clinician. The dossiers of ten servicemen and former-servicemen were chosen for inclusion (no women came forward to take part in the trial) and the clinician had no prior contact with, or knowledge of, any of the men who participated. Those selected came from different geographical regions and did not know each other. There was no communication between any of the participants at any time during the trial.

Initially it was thought that the trial should involve 30 sufferers of PTSD, but as this trial was unfunded, and these clients needed to be treated at the same time as paying clients, it was decided to limit the number to ten. After the first week’s session, one of the participants asked to leave the trial because he had been offered a new job which was going to require a huge amount of his time. This participant was not replaced as the trial had already started, and it was deemed better to have each serviceman or veteran receiving the same therapeutic processes at the same time.

Trial Methodology

Sessions:

All sessions were carried out online, for 90 minutes each time, using Zoom video conferencing or Facebook messenger. This allowed participants to have their treatment at home, at a time which suited them, even late in the evening or at bedtime, and gave them maximum flexibility for

cancelling and rescheduling sessions as required around their other commitments and health conditions. Many of the participants had found difficulty in the past with attending health appointments, however important to them, because of childcare duties, or feelings of pain or anxiety. This way they didn’t need to motivate themselves to leave the house to receive the hypnotherapy treatment, and it was carried out in the comfort of their own surroundings. For clients suffering from frequent flashbacks or intrusive memories this was deemed a huge comfort.

At no point was any participant forced to attend a session. Attendance was voluntary and participants were told that cancellations and postponements were perfectly acceptable, and without consequence, even one minute before. They could simply reschedule for another time or stop treatment altogether if they wanted to. Participants were told all treatment was in their control, on their time scale, and they were under no obligations. This seemed to reap huge dividends as the trial progressed, in terms of servicemen and veterans taking responsibility for their own recovery.

The reason for choosing to deliver these sessions online was to discover whether clinical hypnotherapy treatment was as effective if the client and the clinical hypnotherapist were not geographically located together. With so many PTSD sufferers in the UK, and a limit on the number of expert clinical hypnotherapists with combat or first responder experience, it was important to know if the treatment could be delivered remotely.

It was planned that the sessions would be conducted over six weeks, with one session per week. While some participants did manage to keep to this timetable, a few had to postpone appointments and their sessions were eventually spread over eight weeks.

Between each session the participant was given a hypnotherapy recording to be listened to daily, or every other day, to reinforce the benefits of the individual sessions. These were generic recordings to boost calm and relaxation, or combat insomnia, or increase confidence, or to help reduce pain or anxiety - whatever the client felt he needed more help with as the sessions went on. These recordings, which the participants were free to choose between, were available online. This is an example of one of the tracks they could choose:

https://soundcloud.com/sarah-yuen-2/clinical-hypnotherapy-recording-to-boost-serotonin-for-happiness-and-melotonin-for-sleep

Clinical Hypnotherapy Content

Clinical hypnotherapy is normally a very tailored therapy. Therapists talk in depth with clients about their thoughts and feelings, and the notes compiled are used to create the contents of the hypnotherapy sessions, in which the clients own use of language, and perception of emotions, are reflected back at them for maximum acceptance by the subconscious.

But for the purposes of this trial each man received the same type of hypnotherapy treatment, in the same order, with the same ‘scripts’ being read to them by the clinical hypnotherapist. (see below).

The length of hypnotherapy sessions normally varies by practitioner from 30 minutes to 90 minutes. Because of the severity of PTSD symptoms of the participants, it was decided to allocate 90 minutes per session, so that participants would have the opportunity to talk for 45 minutes of each session if they wanted to, about their difficulties, and feelings, and anything which was bothering them, in much the same way as they would for any psychological or psychiatric “talk” therapy. They then received 45 minutes of clinical hypnotherapy.

After the hypnotherapy session they were allowed to talk for as long as they felt they needed to, about what they had seen, heard or felt during the hypnotherapy. There was no time restraint. No participants were required to talk about anything. It was totally up to them if they chose to speak about their issues or memories. For clinical hypnotherapy it is not actually necessary to disclose anything to a therapist. The therapist is simply a guide to take a person into a hypnotic state.

Some clinical hypnotherapists like to work by maintaining a conversation with their client during actual hypnotherapy, asking them questions about what they are feeling, or hearing or seeing. But this clinician worked by allowing the clients to maintain total privacy at all times. It was felt that this was particularly important for clients who had been involved in events they might not wish to disclose to anyone, or felt they couldn’t or shouldn’t, and by knowing that no demands would be made of them, they were able to relax in the knowledge that everything they were experiencing was for their eyes only. It was then up to them, when they were back in the conscious state, if they wished to share it.

Most clinical hypnotherapy sessions consist of four main parts: the induction, where a client is invited to allow themselves to relax as much as possible; the deepening, where a client is led through a series of visualisation exercises to make their body and their mind even more deeply relaxed; the therapy, where the clinical hypnotherapist will help the client interrogate their own sub-conscious, to ascertain the root cause of their “symptoms”, and the exit, where the client is invited to come out of their deeply relaxed state and return to the fully conscious state.

This was the method employed in all the sessions for this trial. Identical scripts were used and only altered slightly where participants had revealed a phobia of heights or water, or the dark for instance, and then a substitute visualisation exercise was inserted where the original one might trigger an innate fear. As sessions progressed participants often found an antipathy to one or more or the visualisation exercises, saying it triggered a bad memory, sensation or fear, and then that visualisation exercise was replaced by another similar one or simply left out. While standard treatment was desired, the comfort of the participant was of the utmost important.

Following is a detailed description of the sequence of each session. The full scripts for these sessions can be found in Annex A at the back of this report.

Deep Breathing Exercise Chalk Board Breathing Exercise Seven Plus Or Minus Two InductionBody Scan InductionStairway DeepenerSafe Place VisualisationDavid Elman’s Forgetting NumbersSession Therapy* - see belowAny Additional Specifically Required Therapy** - see below Exit

*The Session Therapy changed week by week and was as follows:

Week 1 - Ego Strengthening and Negativity Clearance Protocol Week 2 - Ego Parts TherapyWeek 3 - Forgiveness of Others TherapyWeek 4 - Regression to Cause Therapy Week 5 - Forgiveness of Self Therapy Week 6 - Future Progression Timeline Therapy or WildCard*

*The Wildcard therapy gave the clinician the opportunity to return to a specific problem or event in the final session of the trial if it was felt the participant might benefit from a further review of what had happened, as evidenced by the ongoing feelings they were experiencing. Otherwise that sixth session was used to help participants visualise a happy, bright, future with all their problems left behind them.

Any additional specifically required therapy was interjected at the end of each session, if the participant was suffering a particular pain, or was keen to give up cigarettes or alcohol, or was feeling particularly anxious about an upcoming event or relationship. The content of those portions of the session was not specific to any PTSD symptom but the clinician was simply using the relaxed state of the participant to help reinforce any particular desires to quit a bad habit, ease pain or feel more confident.

Each participant was told that they were not obliged to complete all six sessions if they felt they had resolved their symptoms ahead of session number six. But they were asked to participate in

all six sessions even if relief was not felt as a result of the first few, to give the hypnotherapy time to work with their subconscious.

The rest of this report is organised as follows. For each participant who participated in the trial there is a profile, and a treatment overview and summary, and then the transcripts of each hypnotherapy session are included for readers who would like to know exactly what was said by the participant in more detail. At the end of the trial transcripts there is a short conclusion.

The clinician believes the reader will draw their own conclusions as they read the outcome of this trial, so has simply added her own conclusions.

In Annex A at the end of the report, the reader can read the scripts which were used in this trial. This may be particularly interesting to people working in a medical field.

Glen

Client Personal Profile:

Glen is 39 and still serving in the Army. He is married with three children and a baby due in Spring 2018.

Client Military Profile:

Glen completed six tours of Northern Ireland, one of Iraq and one of Afghanistan. His best friend died on tour. Glen will soon be leaving the Army and he is very keen to “sort out his life" so he can go forward in his second career, without carrying the stigma and weight of the PTSD diagnosis.

PTSD Diagnosis:

Glen was diagnosed with PTSD in January 2015 by DCMH.

Medical History:

Glen has received five CBT treatments from DCMH but says it didn’t work to relieve his symptoms. He first saw a military psychiatrist in 2010 for his aggressive tendencies and he was given Sertraline anti-depressant medication, but he says it didn’t agree with him. He has since been put back on Sertraline, but doesn’t want to be taking it. “The medication makes me feel more in control and stops me from getting too depressed, but it doesn’t get rid of the anxiety or feelings of severe stress.” Glen has since consulted a military psychiatrist again, after feeling extreme anger a month before this trial, and has been told he has Acute Stress Disorder, but months later he is still waiting to see a psychologist. He now has an appointment for February.

Presenting Symptoms:

- Severe headaches - Nightmares from which he wakes up screaming but has no memory of the dream - Easily stressed over the smallest things.- Anxiety leading to aggression- Sweaty palms - Unspecified pains

Summary And Outcome Of Clinical Hypnotherapy Treatment

When Glen first presented for clinical hypnotherapy he was finding it very difficult to function, especially at work, because he was so exhausted, anxious and irritable. He had also just had a road rage incident where he had become so angry he had frightened himself. As well as replying to this trial, he consulted a military psychiatrist at Brize Norton. Glen said he was becoming afraid of his own anger levels. When asked if he had ever been that angry before, he said that incident had been extreme but he had been angry ever since he could remember. He described a childhood where his father left when he was two years old, and he became ‘the ginger step-child’ with dyslexia, which culminated in him being sent to a Young Offenders’ Institution in his teens, before joining the Army. From the very first session Glen’s anger at his childhood, and his perceived exclusion even by his mother, was extremely strong.

Glen’s first hypnotherapy session gave him no real insight into that anger, but left him feeling extremely relaxed into the next day, which he described as a “marked shift”. He was advised to listen to a hypnotherapy visualisation recording every day to help him sleep, and boost his Serotonin and Melatonin levels, which he did. However, after three days Glen experienced a severe headache, so bad that he said it “felt like my head was going to explode.” But he said he was sure his brain was “processing something”. When the headache stopped suddenly he noted that his energy levels rocketed, and all his stress had dissipated.

During the second session of hypnotherapy, aimed at finding the part inside Glen which was causing his symptoms, Glen said he saw only vague images of his parents house when he was a child. Then he described flying like a bird above a terrain he didn’t recognise, and feeling freed.

Arriving at the third hypnotherapy session Glen reported setbacks. He had experienced a huge pain in his right shoulder, as if he had broken it. He was concerned he had really hurt himself but then it suddenly stopped. He was not sleeping well and his mind was racing. He felt like there were hundreds of unspecified thoughts racing around in his head. He had not been using the recordings regularly, but when he did go back to the one to boost Melatonin and Serotonin he came back to consciousness in the middle of it, feeling pinned to the bed by a heavy weight, with a ‘rushing’ through his veins, and with a rigid sensation throughout his body which he described like a “very uncomfortable orgasm.” However he said he knew he was getting better, because he had been passed over for a promotion board and had not reacted with rage like the year before, but rather with logical understanding and positivity. Glen also described an incident in Iraq which had bothered him all week: an Iraqi man left outside Basra prison with a gunshot wound to the head. He said it was the first dead body he had ever seen.

During the session, which was aimed at clearing any anger towards any specific person in his life, Glen saw his step father, but was amazed to find he didn’t want to be angry with him, or accuse him. He said the session made him realise that maybe he had isolated himself as a child rather than him being excluded. He said: “There was a lot of man love going on and we were hugging a lot and it was really nice.” He said he felt like he was being told ‘It didn’t need to be that way’ and ‘It wasn’t meant to get to that stage.’ Glen also realised that his psychological problems had begun when he had stopped getting promoted so easily in the Army, from 2009 onwards. He said he had never tied the two together before but essentially, from then on, he was “back outside the circle.

Glen came to the fourth hypnotherapy session saying he had again reacted calmly and logically to being passed over for an RQMS position this time. He was feeling a lot more positive and in control, and was sleeping “like a baby”. He had been back to Brize Norton to see the military psychiatrist there. His appointment had only been 15 minutes long and no one had asked him any questions about his condition. He was given more medication. During the week between sessions Glen said he had come to the conclusion that his biggest problem was fear, and not anger, because he was fearful of so much, and he was also afraid of the angry part of himself. He said he was still afraid of “losing the plot and really hurting someone.” He described the road rage incident in more detail, where he said he had systematically visualised severely hurting the other driver. But he noted that he had not experienced that level of anger since he had started hypnotherapy.

Glen experienced a ‘lightbulb moment’ during this session in which he was taken back to the very first time he ever felt anger. While in hypnosis his physical reaction to this instruction was marked, as his whole body stiffened, his face reddened and his fingers dug into the bedding. Glen was apparently remembering being at primary school at age 7 and being unable to read or write properly, and flying into a violent rage in the class. He was experiencing all those painful emotions through a child’s viewpoint, at the same time as seeing himself the same age as his son, being told by the teacher he would never amount to anything. When he recounted this in the conscious state Glen was highly emotional. He said he had then been taken up into the atmosphere and shown his path forward, to a new life, with the younger Glen at his side. “Me and my younger self seemed to be like two people made of lego, and then all of a sudden we were swopping parts of our bodies around. I felt his emotions so clearly. He had had such a struggle and he had masked it. Or rather I had masked it for him.” Glen said he realised his anger came from that battle he had been fighting all his life, and the anxiety came from his dyslexia, because throughout his military career he was always terrified he would be found out.

When Glen presented for the fifth session of hypnotherapy he was still talking about his “lightbulb moment” and was also smiling, relaxed and confident. He reported feeling no pain at all in any part of his body. He said he had cut his anti-depressant dosage in half, from 100 to 50 mg, and was feeling no ill effects: indeed all the effects were only positive, in that he felt alert and full of energy. He intended to stop taking the drugs completely within a week or so.

Glen said he was sleeping so well he no longer felt exhausted, just pleasantly tired at the end of the day.

The fifth session was due to focus on forgiving oneself, but Glen insisted he had already done that. “I had never pinpointed my anger to my dyslexia - but once I had absorbed it, I felt more in control of it. I have spent the whole of this past week congratulating myself for achieving what I did, against the obstacles. I am truly proud of me.” Glen asked instead for a calming hypnotherapy session to round off his treatment, focussing on all the exciting possibilities for his future. He experienced no extra insight during the session, just an overwhelming warm and comfortable feeling.

Glen said: “I have been through everything DCMH had to offer, and the NHS Mental Health services, but I am here in just four sessions of hypnotherapy. It beggars belief.”

John


John is separated from his wife. The couple have four children aged 11, 8, 7 and 1. He is working as a self-employed welder but does not enjoy it and wants to re-start his life. He wants to be a teacher.


John was forced to leave the Army in 2012, after almost 12 years service, as a result of a medical discharge. He was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and 2005 and Afghanistan in 2009.

PTSD Diagnosis:

John was given his PTSD diagnosis in 2014 by his doctor.

Medical History:

John stopped his NHS CBT sessions because he said it was making him worse. He also found EMDR very stressful. It made him anxious in the lead up to his appointment, which also made his symptoms worse. He asked his therapist if they could do it every two weeks instead of every week, so that he had at least one good week every two weeks. He said in the end they told him he wasn’t getting anywhere and referred him to a veteran’s charity instead. He didn’t go.


- Flashbacks- Nightmares- Hypertension- Racing Mind - Anger and aggression - Depression

Summary And Outcome of Clinical Hypnotherapy Treatment

John’s PTSD symptoms began after his return from a particularly kinetic tour of Afghanistan, and after he was medically discharged from the Army for hearing loss, suffered in Iraq, which had not prevented him being deployed to Afghanistan. Indeed he had been promised promotion if he agreed to go to Afghanistan. He was medically discharged just before his 12 year point, losing his half pension rights. John said he became extremely aggressive and destructive at home; had a pronounced startle reflex, started suffering flashbacks and was drinking heavily. John’s father served in Northern Ireland and the first Gulf War and he believes he also suffers from PTSD. John’s mother died suddenly when he was 11, just after his father had left the Army, and the family moved to a very rough part of Dundee. John said he went from a relatively sheltered childhood in army accommodation, to the “ganglands”. He was threatened with knives and frequently mugged and his older brother became a drug addict.

Recently John was involved in a road rage incident which he says was started by another driver. He punched the wing mirror off the other person’s car and was convicted of vandalism, ruining his chances of working in embassy security. He is still resentful about it: “It was alright to drop a bomb on a village and kill everyone but not alright to knock off someone’s wing mirror.”

He started contracting in Iraq but found the situation there still too insecure so he gave it up. John says his mind is not functioning properly. He says he can recognise words but cannot understand their meaning anymore, even unable to read cooking instructions on a ready-meal.

John had a bad experience when listening to a hypnotherapy recording on his own, when he started to see many disturbing images from Afghanistan. He was concerned it would happen again. In his first clinical hypnotherapy session he was very restless throughout, his arms and legs constantly moving as if he was trying to get comfortable. But when he came back to the conscious state he said it had been extremely relaxing and not upsetting at all. He said he had felt liquid coming out of his ears.

John arrived for his second session of clinical hypnotherapy saying he still felt stressed and run down, mainly because of family problems, but he also felt as though ‘a lid had come off’ after the previous session. He felt as if everything was open and exposed. He had had one flashback where he found himself in a familiar street in Iraq, feeling very vulnerable, “feeling like I was searching for IEDs.” John feels there are two sides to his PTSD. He feels one element of his PTSD has been created by a specific intense trauma, but he is not sure which one, and another element has been created by the long, drawn out, hour after hour fear. John acknowledged he also felt the same fear in Dundee as a child because there were many similarities.

John said that he knew he had done his job well in Iraq and Afghanistan but he questioned the whole purpose of both wars. He saw them as futile. He was particularly affected by the death of two Iraqi teenagers in a firefight outside their base. He said: “I feel so guilty. It felt like we pinned them down and then executed them.” When he went into hypnosis John became agitated and started to sob deeply. He then sobbed all the way through the session. Afterwards he said he had seen his mother. She didn’t talk to him, and seemed angry, and he had felt all the abandonment and vulnerability he had felt as a child. John said he realised his anger was a cover emotion for fear, sadness and guilt. He said he felt like there was a very angry part screaming deep inside of him, telling him to stay away from the root cause. He said he had had a flashback to one incident during hypnosis when an IED went off in a compound in Afghanistan and a colleague lost his legs. He said it was playing on a loop before his eyes. He went to the victim with the female medic but he was so scared there was another device that he hesitated, and essentially accused his friend of not clearing

the area properly. He feels intense guilt for making that accusation, and also for hesitating. John said the whole time he was working on the guy he was terrified of being blown up, and he thinks the memory of that is what is causing his hypertension now.

Returning for the third clinical hypnotherapy session John said he had realised that he never grieved for his mother. He had had some flashbacks that week but of far less intensity than before. John cried again throughout hypnosis, but afterwards he said he didn’t know why he was crying. However he had seen a series of expressions of agony, all screaming at him to “back off.” He said that the part inside him had refused to come forward but he had seen one desert boot come around a door. He had then gone to the door and shouted inside: “If you don’t come out I am coming in next time. I want to know.” He said that when he was asked to picture someone he was angry with, he realised he was angry with himself. John said he felt like he was comforting a “broken me” telling himself it was time to start feeling better. He said one of the ghoulish faces was from Iraq, when he was afraid an insurgent was going to jump up out of a ditch and kill him. He eventually kicked the guy in the head to make sure he was dead, but it was the same face. He said all the other faces he saw always had the same expression. In this session he also remembered calculatedly getting himself into position to shoot an Iraqi sniper. He said he realised he essentially “planned a murder” which made him feel very guilty. “I am not sorry for what we did but it wasn’t right. I am not sorry but personally, I am sorry.”

John said he was beginning to see the connection between all the times he was alone and vulnerable and scared. “That part is trying to scare me away from knowing everything. But it is me. Not something else. It is saying no, no, no. It is so dark. It is a part of me but it is also evil and separate. I was scared of him but now I am not scared.”

At the fourth hypnotherapy session John said he was feeling more optimistic, but when he went into hypnosis he immediately began struggling with his emotions again. He cried for most of the session and took several minutes to compose himself when he returned to the conscious state. He finally said he did not feel upset but “it was horrible.” John had re-experienced two distressing events - the IED explosion in Afghanistan, and being threatened and beaten by a gang as a child.

In the Afghanistan memory he was recalling the intense fear as he waited for a controlled explosion to blow up secondary devices in the compound, while he lay next to the guy who had lost his legs. He said as his colleague counted down he “felt a fuse blow in my head. The fear was just too great and I wanted to get up and run. I knew I was going to die. I could taste his blood in my mouth. I was physically screaming inside. It was like I had thrown myself onto a grenade and I knew I had seconds to live. I wanted to be rescued, like a child. It was pathetic.”

The second incident was one he had totally forgotten, when he was surrounded by a rival gang as a child and they hit him with a piece of wood and threatened to slash him. All his friends had left him to face the gang alone and he had to make a run for it, while they gave chase threatening to kill him. He relived the whole incident in hypnosis. He only just escaped. But John said the feeling was just the same, knowing he was going to die. He also remembered a knife being pulled on him on the way to the shops and also believing he was going to die.

After recounting everything in great detail John said: “I have this feeling that things will become apparent and will make themselves known and will be sorted in days. It’s just a feeling. It is like being tethered. Like a tether which keeps pulling you back. You can’t get to where you need too go. You need to unclip the tether.”

By the fifth hypnotherapy session John recognised he was calmer and less stressed. He said everything he had recalled in the previous session was sitting on the fringes of his mind. He said

now he knew the cause of his symptoms everything felt easier. John did not experience any upsetting emotions in this session. He said he just felt overwhelming calm and a feeling of being at peace with himself. “It was just making sure what I already know. To let it go. Slow down. Look forward and not back. And you know I think I can now. I want to write. This session made me realise the way I want to go forward. It has given me the path.”

John said he did not want any more hypnotherapy sessions for the time being, as he wanted to start writing down all his experiences and see where that took him.

Darren


Darren is a single father of a seven year-old boy who he sees every other weekend and for holidays. His wife left him while he was in Afghanistan. He is unemployed but has been accepted to work with abused and orphaned children and is waiting for a start date.


Darren completed three tours of Iraq and two tours of Afghanistan. He was a sniper.

PTSD Diagnosis:

He was diagnosed with PTSD in 2015 by DCMH but DCMH believes he has had symptoms since 2005.

Medical History:

Darren started noticing PTSD symptoms himself in 2012. His Colour Sergeant Major realised he was drinking too much; he was very irritable and not sleeping. He said that after his diagnosis DCMH kept giving him different types of anti-depressants, one after the other, until he had seven or eight different types. “They kept trying different brands to see what might work, but nothing did. Then they tried CBT but it was pointless and the psychiatrist was scared of me and refused to work with me.”

Darren had several sessions of EMDR but he said it made him worse, and would massively trigger his anger and flashbacks: “They used to give me the EMDR, make me recall everything, and then just send me out into the street, but nothing was resolved and I was dangerously angry.”


- Flashbacks and memory intrusions - Exaggerated startle effect - Nightmares and insomnia- Racing heartbeat


When Darren presented for the first clinical hypnotherapy session he said he had been suffering nightmares, insomnia and flashbacks related to Iraq and Afghanistan. He couldn’t sleep more than three hours at night. He harboured a lot of guilt about the women and children he had killed while on tour. He was particularly bothered by a seven year-old child he had killed on his last tour of Afghanistan, who was the same age as his son now. He was excited to be starting a new job working with abused and orphaned children, but frustrated that he didn’t know when it would begin. Darren explained that he had been beaten and used a a “rent boy” by his father when he was small, hired out to his father’s friends for sexual services. After the first session Darren said he felt “amazing” and was very enthused about future sessions. He had shown signs of going into a deep trance and remained relaxed throughout the session.

Before the second hypnotherapy session Darren informed me that he could not continue the trial as he was being made homeless due to rent arrears due to the council. Darren seemed desperate but resigned. Darren was encouraged to reassess his finances and offer the council a repayment plan to avoid eviction. The council agreed and when he presented for the second session he was extremely relieved. He said the calming effects of hypnosis had been destroyed by worry about not having a home, just before Christmas, but that he had slept through the night immediately afterwards and was so amazed that he had, and now knew he could. He said his family had noticed a difference in him despite the stress of the previous week, and he didn’t think he would have been able to negotiate with the council without that new sense of calm.

In hypnosis, to search out the part of him causing the symptoms, Darren said he saw himself at the age of six in the cupboard under the stairs at his father’s house and he felt immense fear. He said he knew that when he came out of the cupboard his father’s friends “would be ready for him”. Darren said he knew instinctively it was that which was causing his symptoms and recounted how, between the age of six and eleven, his father would collect him at the weekend, keep him in the cupboard unless he was being beaten or used for sex, and “hose him down” before taking him back to his mother, who was a heroin addict. When his mother died when he was 11, he was put into care and the abuse ended. He said he had trained to be a sniper so he could kill his father. Darren said that when he was looking at himself in the cupboard, and could clearly feel the pain of the younger Darren, he had realised he couldn’t change the past but he could let it go. He said he had returned to the conscious state without any feelings any anger.

Later that week Darren said he didn’t need the third session of hypnotherapy as his symptoms had vanished, he was in charge of his emotions, and he was sleeping well every night. He said his life had changed completely.

When contacted one week, two weeks and one month later Darren said the same. He had not had any nightmares or flashbacks and was totally calm.

Sam


Sam is married with three daughters aged 16, 14 and 10; two of his own and one step-daughter he has raised since she was a baby. His wife is ex-forces and a student nurse. He had twin baby daughters who died in a house fire. He lives in Scarborough and is unemployed but looking for work and trying to start his own business as a blacksmith making replica weapons.


Sam was in the army for 20 years, initially as a chef, but then transferring to numerous roles within the RLC. He was also deployed to active theatre as a reservist. He says he served “everywhere apart from Afghanistan”.

PTSD Diagnosis:

Sam was diagnosed with PTSD in 2015 by his doctor, but he says he feels so let down by the NHS, as they have told him they have no idea how to handle him. He says they have told him he is “too damaged”. He was not offered counselling because the doctor felt medication was the best path. Sam insists there are hundreds of veterans in his area being equally let down. “No one wants to help us beat PTSD; they just give us drugs.”

Medical History:

Sam first noticed his PTSD symptoms in 2006. He said they crept up on him, and then he snapped in 2015: “I was a broken man. I tried to commit suicide. I was a monster towards everyone. I was truly evil. I dissociated and saw myself as two people. The other entity took over my body and was drinking and stealing: I stole from my own children. I was planning the murders of anyone who annoyed me. I planned to murder my neighbours. I couldn’t brush off anything. Even if I just didn’t like someone’s voice I planned to kill them. I had a whole list of people I intended to execute. I had worked out how to get into their homes. I had gathered all the materials I would need. Basically, someone had taken over my body and I was just watching it happen. I was sitting there screaming at myself but it wasn’t listening. I drink huge amounts of alcohol just to try to shut it up. In the end I decided I had to kill myself to save all these people. But something happened and I didn’t do it, and since then everything has been simmering.”

He has suffered flashbacks. He has severe back pain and doctors have told him he has collapsed vertebrae due to carrying extremely heavy weights, and nerve damage. He developed skin cancer two years ago and was successfully operated upon.

Sam said he had sessions of EMDR for two months but it didn’t work. “It did bring up all sorts of memories, and dissipated some anger, but it didn’t last. Everything came back just as strongly.”


- Extreme anger- Insomnia and lack of concentration - Pain in back and knees - Rollercoaster emotions - Memory intrusions


Sam came to his first clinical hypnotherapy session saying that he had managed to “get a lid”on the worst of his PTSD feelings, but everything was still simmering below the surface and ten per cent of the time it spilled over. He was plagued by guilt and ongoing anger. When he was suffering dissociative episodes he said he felt he was moments from killing and he had to shut himself away from others to protect them. He did not commit suicide because he received a phone call about his daughter and realised he couldn’t leave his family. He finds it difficult to contain distressing memories, particularly of the friends he lost; of an IED explosion in Northern Ireland and numerous explosions in Kosovo. He also killed a ‘sniper’ in Kosovo who had shot some of his friends. But it turned out to be a small boy who thought they were Serbian soldiers coming to kill his family. Sam is suffering from severe pain in his back and his knees which makes it difficult to walk. He described an extremely violent childhood where his mother tried to kill him in his cot, and his father was involved in gangland violence and terrorised his children. The children were often forced to find food in dustbins. Sam said: “I am 42 now and I have had 38 years of pain.” Sam says he doesn’t feel happiness.

His first hypnotherapy session was uneventful, even though Sam was worried it would spark unwelcome memories. He said he only felt a wave of relaxation which continued for hours.

However by the second clinical hypnotherapy session Sam was very depressed, not eating or sleeping and suffering mood swings. He said he had discovered his 16 year-old step daughter was taking Class A drugs and they had had to banish her from the house. This appeared to be a huge blow to a man who had come from a family of criminals and intended to raise his own children very differently. In addition to the problems with his daughter, his wife had been bullied into leaving her final NHS placement before qualifying as a nurse, which had financial as well as emotional implications. The renewed troubles had made him think about other times of hardship in his life. He had recalled the emotional turmoil of being sexually abused at four years old by a very religious foster father. The second session of hypnosis passed uneventfully. Sam did not recall identifying the part responsible for his symptoms, but felt a deep sense of calm.

Sam presented for the third hypnotherapy session saying he felt completely different. The pain in his knees had dissipated and he was walking faster; so fast people were struggling to keep up with him. He was still taking medication for his back pain, but whereas it had made hardly any difference before, now he could feel the difference. Sam said he had realised that week that the strongest emotion in him was guilt, creating an anger directed at himself “like a demon inside, which is so strong it can make you jump under a bus.” He also acknowledged fear. Under hypnosis, aimed at encouraging him to forgive someone he felt anger at, he was also given the suggestion that his back was repairing and healing.

When he returned to the conscious state he said his back felt very warm and all pain had gone. He had seen his mother while in hypnosis and felt extreme anger towards her. He remembered taking a pair of scissors and cutting his own umbilical cord to separate her from him.

By the fourth hypnotherapy session Sam said he was feeling extremely relaxed and sleeping very well. He had two job interviews on the horizon and was enjoying his blacksmith work. He talked about the things he had enjoyed in the military - such as being a personal chef to Princess Diana and the Queen Mother when he was assigned to Royal service. He said he was starting to look forward to going back to work full-time after years of being on sick leave. Sam talked about working with schoolchildren in Bosnia while he was a reservist, and how much he had enjoyed it, but he said he had also been dwelling that week on his work to break up a sex-trade smuggling ring, which saw young girls taken from Eastern Europe and put in brothels in Bosnia. He said he had felt disgusted because it was discovered British officials and soldiers were involved in the trafficking and frequenting the brothel. He also felt disgust at himself for what he had had to do to infiltrate the ring. He didn’t explain what. He said he had reasoned that he had no choice, and that at least he personally was responsible for getting 20 of the trafficked girls home, but he said “Yugoslavia was depraved and evil and British officials were involved.”

In this session Sam also talked about the loss of his twin baby girls in 1997, in a house fire while he was on exercise and his wife was having an affair with another soldier. The girls had been home with a baby-sitter when the house caught fire. He said that he “snapped” when that happened and stole a weapon intent on committing suicide. He was prevented from doing so by colleagues and sent on another exercise to help him get over it. He said he never had any counselling. He also revealed that as a child he was drafted into the Red Hand Commando paramilitary organisation hunting down IRA targets in Glasgow. In the hypnosis session aimed at going back to the root cause of his symptoms, Sam’s breathing became rapid and his limbs were moving involuntarily. At one point his arm flew up in the air. When he was brought back to the conscious state he sat bolt upright and said he had seen something he had totally forgotten. He said he was being chased by a gang of youths when he was a seven year-old child, and they had caught him and ripped all his clothes off and beaten him badly. His friend had run off and not tried to help him, and women standing nearby had not helped him either. He was more angry about the adults than the gang. He said he had felt overwhelming helplessness and fear, and a need for revenge. But Sam said even as he had watched what had happened, through the eyes of himself as a child, the anger had been leaving.

“Whilst I was in hypnosis I was taking to myself, at that age, while it was happening, and telling myself - my younger self - what he would achieve; what he would do; what the world would do. So when I came to I was smiling. I heard you talking about forgiveness but I was already talking to my younger self. I felt this feeling, in my gut and my chest, like everything was tightening up. It felt like the start of a heart attack might feel. But it was actually rage and fear pushing through me. And then it just dissolved away and disappeared. I was playing it back and forth with the remote control which you told me to hold until all the anger disappeared.”

By the fifth hypnotherapy session Sam said he felt no need for any more sessions and that he had no doubt that incident was the root of his problems. He said he felt more relaxed than he had ever felt before, that all his anger had gone and he could finally see a future.

“The feeling that raged through me was so strong, and then I actually felt it draining out of me. It’s all gone.” Sam also said he had hardly any pain any more.

Several weeks on Sam says he still feels exactly the same calm and acceptance.

Steve


Steve lives in Weymouth with his wife of 46 years, Sylvia. He has a son and a daughter, and grandchildren whom he adores. He is a shotgun coach.


Steve retired from the army in 1995. He is now 66. He made sergeant in 6 years and became a tank commander. He served three tours of Northern Ireland.

PTSD Diagnosis:

He was diagnosed with PTSD in 2014 by Combat Stress.

Medical History:

Steve was diagnosed by a Combat Stress psychiatrist, but the doctor told him he couldn’t deal with his many issues and he needed life-long medication. He has now been on enormous amounts of medication for four years and attends a Combat Stress peer support group. He was invited on the six-week Combat Stress residential course but he is so demoralised by the psychiatrist telling him he is beyond help that he won’t consider it. He also says he doesn’t know anyone who benefitted from it.

Steve is in considerable pain in his back and his knees. He has been told he has arthritis in his knees, and spondylitis in his back. He saw a chiropractor who told him his back was so inflamed that he should have sought help a lot earlier.

He has been taking the following medication every four hours: 2 Paracetamol, 2 Ibruprofen and 3 Codeine; 40 mg of Statins and 40mg of Citalopram anti-depressant, plus vitamins and castor oil.

Despite all these pain killers, Steve is still in pain and self-medicates with alcohol. He has been told he is pre-diabetic.


- Extreme anger - Dizzy spells - Blackouts- Drinking excessively to numb pain and emotional turmoil - Severe pain in back and knees


Steve came to the first session of hypnotherapy saying that even though he and his wife were still together, there was an enormous amount of tension in his household caused by his anger, and he now understood his daughter’s anxiety and depression was a result of his behaviour, which upset him greatly. He had also discovered that his wife had had an affair many years before and the betrayal made him angry. Steve had been suffering blackouts and dizzy spells, one of which had made him feel as though his body had shut down. He admitted to feeling isolated “on the inside and out.”

Steve said he believed his own extremely distressing childhood in foster and children’s homes had not given him the foundation to be a good father, although Steve had been a fierce protector of his younger brother during their years in care together. His brother was murdered in 1994, 10 years after Steve has last seen him. The boys had eventually been returned to their father in their teens when he married again to a woman who didn’t want them. As well as recounting a number of very distressing incidents in his childhood, Steve said many more had happened while he was in the military but he had never shared them with anybody. Steve was doubtful he could be hypnotised or that hypnotherapy could help him, but when he went into a very deep state of hypnosis very quickly, and felt like the session lasted a few minutes rather than 45, he was amazed.

At the second session of hypnotherapy Steve said he had been feeling considerably better, however he described one incident between sessions when he had flown into a rage with his wife for hurting herself, when he couldn’t get to her fast enough to prevent it. He admitted there had been many times in his life when people had been hurt or killed and he had been unable to prevent it, including his brother. He said that his drinking had got far worse after the loss of his brother. During hypnosis Steve had visions of four people standing together but he couldn’t see who they were because it was blurred. When he went back to sleep later he had the same vision and this time he could see himself with his mother, father and brother. He knew it was his mother even though he had no pictures of her, as his father tore them all up. He said he realised the loss of his mother had been the most destabilising thing in his life, and admitted that he had been told she had lived just a few minutes away from them when they were in their teens, and other members of the family had known but not told the boys, including his step-mother. Steve said: “I don’t remember being happy, ever, after she left.”

By the third session of hypnotherapy Steve said he had been calmer all week and felt so different. He said he had spent most of the week thinking about his family, and recalling how he and his brother had lost both parents in such quick succession. He recalled how his father didn’t visit them for 18 months, and no one told them he was in prison, so they just felt betrayed. He also recalled finally being reunited with his father, and the horror of dealing with the death of his brother. He said he felt immense guilt about his brother, and his daughter. He said he had only begun to try to tackle his rage because of his daughter. During this session, where Steve was asked to have a conversation with someone he was particularly angry with, he said he recalled a succession of people and incidents at the children’s home, where he was treated badly or unjustly. Steve said he hadn’t remembered any of these incidents before.

Steve came for his fourth hypnotherapy session feeling extremely calm, having had no angry incidents all week and having slept very well. Steve had taken the decision on his own to reduce his pain medication as he was feeling far less pain. He was no longer feeling any pain in his knees even though he had stopped taking one each of the Paracetamol, Ibuprofen and Codeine tablets every four hours. He also said he was now drinking socially rather than to excess as self-medication. The focus of the fourth session was regression to cause, taking Steve back to the very first time he felt the emotion that troubled him the most. Steve chose not to reveal anything he saw or felt in hypnosis from that session, but at the next session he recounted a number of military-related dreams.

When Steve presented for the fifth hypnotherapy session he had a surprise. He had shaved off his big bushy beard which his wife had hated and he admitted he had been hiding behind for years. He said as everything in his life had changed during hypnotherapy he wanted to change his appearance too. He had also dropped another pain killer from his drugs schedule, as he still had

no pain in his knees; he was no longer taking any Ibuprofen and intended to drop another four-hourly Paracetamol within a week. Steve was thrilled that his relationship with his son and daughter seemed to be vastly improving too.

Between sessions he had had a dream about one of his experiences during a helicopter insertion in Northern Ireland which went wrong, and he was trapped under fire without enough ammunition. Recalling this dream led him to recall many distressing military incidents in his life, including seeing a young private run over by a tank; being in the cookhouse in Northern Ireland when a soldier started firing wildly inside; being in a locked RUC police station with just eight other soldiers with an angry mob of thousands trying to storm the gates during the internment marches; dealing with firebombs in shopping centres and having rocks and bricks thrown at him by an angry catholic mob. When he finished talking Steve seemed very surprised he had related all these incidents and said he had never talked about them to anyone else, not even his wife.

The fifth session was aimed at helping Steve to forgive himself for anything that was troubling him. He claimed that he did not see or feel anything while in hypnosis, but that he came back to consciousness feeling “awful, rattled and unsettled” and had been grumpy for three days. The return to his earlier state of irritation frightened his wife, and disappointed him. But after those three days Steve said he woke one morning feeling “totally different” inside, and still did, four days later. He had reduced his pain medication still further, this time by a third. He is no longer wearing his knee brace. He said he felt like he had left the past completely behind; he understood what had happened and why and now he had “closed the book”.

Steve said hypnotherapy had turned his life around. “Something wanted to come out and it did.” Steve asked not to do the sixth hypnotherapy session because he didn’t want to risk “reversing anything”.

During a follow-up call three weeks later Steve was just as relaxed, just as happy. He said: “Since the end of the treatment I have continued to improve massively. I have much less to nil anger; less pain; I sleep much better and I have considerably less stress and tension.I haven’t felt this good in years. I feel so positive every morning and I look forward to getting up. I have also halved the depression medication. I hope to be free of all meds by the summer after having been on them for 30+ years. I am so grateful. Things are just brilliant.”

He did ask to continue relaxation sessions once a week, as he continues to cut his medication, just to ensure he stays relaxed and stress free until he can be medication free by this summer.

Daniel


Daniel is 32 years old. He has 2 children with his current partner, aged four and one, and 2 more with his ex. He says he has had 14 jobs in 6 years. He says the PTSD symptoms kill all his job opportunities, making it impossible to work when it flares up. He is now working for himself, trying to be a stock trader and buying and selling cars.


Daniel joined the military at 17 in the Royal Logistics Corps with the intention of being a driver. He became a battlefield ambulance driver in Afghanistan and recalls watching many people die in front of him. He was based in Camp Bastion in 2006 during an extremely kinetic tour.

PTSD Diagnosis:

Daniel was diagnosed with Complex PTSD in 2008, but he says no one ever told him the difference between PTSD and Complex PTSD. He says his symptoms have been getting worse and worse for 10 years. He describes experiencing every symptom of PTSD.

Medical History:

Daniel appears to have tried almost every therapy available for PTSD including CBT, EMDR, Acupuncture etc, but none have worked, he says. When all the other treatments didn’t help him he tried Mindfulness and said that did help when he was doing it, but he stopped. He doesn’t know why. He said it “turned everything off” for a while. He said he has been trying to do exposure therapy on his own at home - making himself think about everything for 10 minutes every day, to try to break the power of the memories. He said he recalls all the smells, the textures, the sounds, the images but it hasn’t helped at all.


- Flashbacks - Hyper Vigilance- Anger - Phobia of Water- Lack of emotion - Intrusive memories


At the first clinical hypnotherapy session, Daniel was obviously harbouring a lot of anger towards his experiences in Afghanistan, and he said he felt overwhelmed by life. He feels he was not trained for the role he ended up doing in the Army, and was not expecting to have to handle so much death and mutilation. He said he saw so many things happen in Afghanistan which were just not right in his opinion, including the way the injured and dead were handled; the treatment of the Afghans, and the reason why British troops were there in the first place. He has found it hard to live with himself, for not standing up for certain principles. He worries about one particular baby whose entire family was killed by British grenades and she was handed over to a village elder. He worries about her still, but also fears she might come to the UK as a terrorist and try to find the soldiers who killed her family.

Daniel recounted endless macabre stories of swollen and grotesque bodies, as he said he doesn’t feel any emotion any more at all. He was made to match up hundreds of Afghan body parts in an ISO container. He has developed a problem with authority and won’t take orders, or back down in any argument. He has developed a phobia of water.

He laments that no one would talk about anything with him while he was in Afghanistan, despite him begging for help and even demanding to be sent home. His father made him join the army and Daniel feels resentment about that too. He said he wasn’t a bad teenager, just a young lad mixing with the wrong crowd, but his “punishment” has ended up being huge.

Daniel very much enjoyed the first session of hypnotherapy. He said he felt more relaxed than he had in years, and felt like everything was bathed in a golden glow. He recalled going into a control room in his brain and dialling down unwanted emotions, and dialling up calm and happiness, and actually feeling those emotions levelling in his body. He was encouraged to spend the week listening to a recording to boost Serotonin and Melatonin in the body.

Daniel came to the second session of clinical hypnotherapy saying he had already noticed changes. He was now able to go into shops without being afraid of the risks, and he was able to head off arguments without his own anger getting out of hand.

Returning to his phobia of water he said he had isolated it to feeling suicidal when taking a shower. The feeling started four years ago. He thinks this is because he once considered taking his own life in a shower block in Bastion. He took his weapon into the shower to shoot himself because his commanding officer wouldn’t let him go home. Showers also give him vertigo. He also can’t dunk his head under water in a bath as he starts to shake. He doesn’t get the same feeling in the sea or a lake.

Daniel said he was experiencing relationship issues. He described it as a “ticking time bomb.” As he described a recent row between himself and his partner he started to go into a hyper-vigilant state. He was suddenly afraid there was an intruder downstairs and he went down to check every door and every window. He looked agitated and anxious. He said he has feared so many more things since Afghanistan

During hypnosis this second time Daniel said he didn’t have any visions or insight, but did feel an overwhelming sense of calm which he welcomed.

At the third session of clinical hypnotherapy Daniel said he felt very good. Events that would normally create panic or anxiety in him were no longer having that effect. He had managed to go into a bingo hall to collect his Grandmother, without any fear at all. He said, as he had walked in, he immediately felt swathed in a protective bubble which kept all anxiety at bay. He said it was like waking hypnosis and a very weird, but lovely, safe, feeling. He said ever since starting hypnosis all intrusive memories had stopped.

The third hypnosis session added to the level of calm Daniel already felt. He did not feel or hear or see anything in particular, but he said he got the sensation that time was meaningless while in hypnosis.

Daniel asked to stop further clinical hypnotherapy sessions for a while, as he was so enjoying the feeling of calm, he did not want to do any further analysis which might jeopardise it. He said he just wanted to use the clinical hypnotherapy recordings at night and allow his body to relax more and more. It was agreed that he could return for more sessions if his symptoms returned, or he felt it would be useful to investigate the causes further.

Simon


Simon is divorced and living close to his mother in Spain, working as an academic tutor and book editor. Simon says his anger and emotional distance wrecked his marriage.


Simon joined the Army in 1988 and served in Northern Ireland and Bosnia. He had to leave the Army in 1997 after Bosnia because of roller-coaster emotions and anger. Simon was in the Signals and spent 26 consecutive months in Northern Ireland, and was then posted directly to Bosnia for a 6-month tour.

PTSD Diagnosis:

Simon was diagnosed with PTSD by his doctor in 2015 but he knows he has been suffering from PTSD since 1997.

Medical History:

Simon is not taking any anti-depressants or pain killers. He has not had any counselling. He said: “No one offered me any counselling. One military doctor said I could be sectioned if I liked, but I had just got married and she was waiting in the car.”


- Insomnia and nightmares - Fear - Alcohol abuse - No sex drive - Flashbacks - Hyper-vigilance- Body weaknesses, tremors and pain- Dissociation - Blurry vision


Simon said he was desperate when he presented for his first session of hypnotherapy. He was suffering body tremors, body pain and weakness, which meant his legs sometimes went out from under him. He was having flashbacks and nightmares and drinking to numb. Feelings of overwhelming fear and dissociation meant he sometimes didn’t know where he was, or he didn’t feel like he was in his own body.

He said he had been fighting PTSD symptoms for 20 years but now something was possessing him. He said he feels like he is shutting down. He had had two recent ‘episodes’, in an airport and a shopping centre, when all his surroundings has suddenly turned into a threatening video game. At a Remembrance ceremony his body froze and he felt paralysed and in spasm. He remembered having a similar feeling in Bosnia during an ambush by Serbs on Mount Igman. Now he feels stifled in the mountains where he lives and is making plans to move to the coast.

Simon went into hypnosis quickly and was very emotional almost immediately. His breathing was rapid and he was crying. It was possible to soothe him but only for a short time, and then the anxiety would start again. When he returned to the conscious state he put his hands over his eyes and took some minutes to compose himself. He said he had felt as if he had been grabbed by a demonic entity and he was so frightened. He said he recognised it as a separate part of him which was so angry. When he finally sat up Simon started to retch, and then he stared at his hands and said there was blood all over them, until he realised there wasn’t. The next night Simon said he felt compelled to start retching again and it went on for several minutes until he felt he had “expelled something”. The night after that Simon woke to a three-hour panic attack. He said he was shaking and crying and consumed by fear. But then a few days later he wrote to say he had felt a tangible shift and he had no tremors at all and felt mostly calm. He was still feeling that same calm when he came for his second session of hypnotherapy. He said he was sleeping more hours every night and thinking more rationally about his time in the military. He realised he felt “morally wounded” by Bosnia and was trying to make up for what he didn’t do there by overly protecting and helping people now. “The UN tied our hands and made us watch them rape and kill children,” he said. He also said that when he left the army he felt like a failure, and he self-harmed to release pressure from his body. He wasn’t scared to go back into hypnosis, despite the previous events. But Simon was breathing as if terrified within minutes of starting hypnosis again, before the induction was finished. His body was very agitated and he began to hyperventilate. In the end he began to scream: “For fucks sake, leave it alone” repeatedly. When asked if he wanted to come out of hypnosis he said yes, and then related what had happened.

Simon said “it” was waiting for him as he walked down a stairway, and threatening to blind him if he came any closer. But the safe place he had created in his mind had been razed as if in a forest fire, so he kept going. He said he knew it was a part of him and despite the violent hostility he invited it to talk to him. However instead of talking it lunged at him, making him so terrified he “thought his heart would stop”, but then started screaming: “I need you” as it clung to him. Then Simon said the emotion and pain had transferred into him and he was so angry that I was demanding it communicate when it was so scared. That was when he began to scream. Simon said: “I need to protect this demonic thing. It is so vulnerable. It is controlling me.” Then he began to cry and said he was so ashamed.

By the third session of hypnotherapy Simon was struggling to concentrate on anything; feeling extremely angry and as if he was being observed by the “part”. He had met a new girlfriend and was afraid of looking weak or cowardly to her. He had been listening to the hypnotherapy recordings but was just seeing vague shapes and images. He had had one incident where his legs suddenly failed to

support him. Simon said he had come to understand the root cause of his problem was fear and not anger. Simon was calmer in hypnosis this time, but with frequent REM. When he returned to the conscious state he said he had seen a lot but he didn’t want to share it. He seemed disorientated but not upset.

Before the fourth session of hypnotherapy Simon sent several angry messages, claiming hypnotherapy was not working and was “a load of bollocks.” The tone of his messages was uncharacteristic for Simon, who was a very gentle, polite man. He did arrive though for the session, saying he was hardly sleeping, and when he did sleep he was having nightmares, and he was retching frequently. But paradoxically he was feeling positive and was being successful in using hypnotherapy techniques to stop his panic attacks. He was again relatively calm during hypnosis but with frequent REM. He returned to consciousness clutching his hands and saying he had felt intense heat and pain in them. He said he had gone back to not one incident, but many, from his childhood and his military years, but as he started to relate them to me the pain and heat returned to his hands so he stopped explaining. He said that Bosnia had rocked his belief in humanity and was “evil”. But as the session ended Simon said he felt lighter.

The week leading up to the fifth hypnotherapy session saw many messages from Simon and his mother, indicating that Simon was experiencing severe PTSD symptoms. He refused to come back to hypnosis early, saying he could deal with it himself. But at one point his mother said he was locked in a restaurant bathroom banging his head against the wall. Simon said he was feeling anger, fear, guilt and shame all at once, and was being “assailed by an evil force” which was actually him.

But then, suddenly, Simon sent a message saying: “Something remarkable happened this morning. I feel like I have been set free. Incredible. I think I reached my limit last night and this morning I felt destroyed. I went and lay down and listened to a recording, and completely surrendered. I had no fight left in me. When I woke up I felt amazingly well. Now I feel great.”

He was still feeling great when he arrived for his fifth session of hypnotherapy. He said he felt no anger and no fear, was not experiencing any tremors, and he felt perfectly calm and happy and was sleeping. He said after the previous session he had run through every memory it had brought up again and again, but now felt no emotion about them.

Simon did not want to do any more hypnotherapy. He was so pleased to have had five days without any symptoms and he was afraid to “ruin it”. He asked for a calming recording to consolidate what he was feeling now. He said he had had two dreams in two days, one in which he recalled standing over a dead body, telling a fellow soldier: ‘Look mate, that’s just the way it is, you just have to accept it.’ In another a doctor figure said to him: “Once the process is finished we can heal your body.”

Several weeks on Simon was still feeling calm and relaxed and happy, and he was symptom free. He complained about his low sex drive, but believed that would change when he had had enough sleep.

Mick


Mick is 53, married, with an 11 year-old son whom he shares joint custody of with his ex-wife. He also has three estranged children and three step-children. Mick has started his own mobile encryption, anti-counterfeit and anti-fraud business with a couple of friends and is hoping it will become profitable sometime in the future.


Mick was a medic in the 1st Gulf War, and in The Balkans in 1993. He left the Army in 1998 and joined the police.

PTSD Diagnosis:

Mick was diagnosed with PTSD and Adjustment Disorder by his doctor in 2000 initially. He sought help from Combat Stress but said nothing they offered worked. He was placed on medication.

Medical History:

Mick has tried CBT and has had two sessions of EMDR but he says neither worked. He is taking 300mg of Lyrica twice a day, but sometimes he increases it to 1000mg a day. He has been taking it for nearly 10 years. Before he took Thorazine.


- Insomnia, nightmares and night sweats - Flashbacks - Pins and needles in extremities - Pain in shoulder and head- Anger - Hyper Vigilance - Racing thoughts and rollercoaster emotions - Memory loss and poor concentration


Mick was very despondent at his first clinical hypnotherapy session. He talked about everything that had happened to him since the first Gulf War onwards. He said his nightmares began after picking up bodies from a friendly fire incident in Iraq, and clearing body parts from the Basra Road. He said he started drinking heavily, and when he got home he was a “nutter”, digging graves in his back garden in the middle of the night. From there he went to Bosnia, which he described as “carnage”. He and 13 others were detailed to help at a mental asylum, but ended up having to shoot their way in as the patients were unmedicated and frightened to death from months in the crossfire. 14 British soldiers had to clear five floors of a building and help more than 700 crazed inmates. 200 had already died. Mick said to this day he is afraid of being tried for war crimes because they had to kill to save themselves. Inside the asylum were dozens of mentally ill and dying children. The medics tried to save them but they were dying too quickly. In the end they received orders to leave the building, and they had to leave the children, including Muslims, to the advancing Serbs. Mick had tried especially hard to save the life of a five year-old Muslim boy whom he had to abandon.

Mick left the army and joined the police but hated it. Other officers demanded he lie to cover up the death of an informant, and when he refused he was blackballed by his colleagues. He was posted away from that station, far from home, and endlessly harassed and arrested by other officers. In the end he left the force, but even after he had left, Mick said he was constantly stopped and searched and once had drugs planted on him. Mick feels angry from that; angry at what the Army made him do, and angry at all the vaccinations he had in the Gulf which he believes poisoned three of his four children. Two have Aspergers and one needed a liver transplant as a baby.

Mick said he is no longer drinking but he is taking very high dosage anti-depressants. He talked about his childhood with an alcoholic father, who used to beat his mother, and he was used by his mother as a shield to stop the beatings. He believes his father had PTSD from witnessing the fall of Singapore. Mick said he was also beaten at school by a Jesuit priest, who he is convinced was a paedophile. He said the priest “scared him to death.” He says he feels like a failure in life and a loser.

After his first hypnotherapy session Mick said he felt more relaxed than he had felt in a very long time. He started to see certain things while in hypnosis but just turned it off. He didn’t say what he saw. A few days after the session he reported he was having headaches, which can be a sign of negatively clearing after hypnosis. When he returned for his second hypnotherapy session Mick said his mind was racing with thoughts from the past. He had had one nightmare he didn’t remember. But he said he felt more driven to succeed in life. He said he had been using the recordings and they calmed him. When he went into hypnosis this time, to try to find the part inside of him which was causing his symptoms, Mick appeared to be in almost constant REM and his body made frequent involuntary movements. When he returned to full consciousness he said: “There is something there. Something spiked and made me judder. But I don’t remember what.” He was given the post-hypnotic suggestion that he would remember what he saw in the coming days and it would give him the insight he needed to diminish his symptoms.

When Mick arrived for his third hypnotherapy session he said he had had a flashback from Bosnia. He wasn’t sure if it was sparked by the post hypnotic suggestion after the previous session, or a row with his wife, but he had suddenly found himself back in Bosnia, with everything playing out around him like in a film, with a lot of screaming and shouting, including his. He said he doesn’t know if it was a nightmare as he didn’t remember going to bed. But he found himself in the bathroom screaming.

He said he also thought it could have been sparked by the mental health services and Combat Stress trying to get him to attend a review of his condition. He said the last time he did that, and actually made it to the meeting, after two hours of walking around trying to force himself to go in, they cut his financial support. He also understands Combat Stress want him to go on a six week course but he desperately doesn’t want to as he said it was useless. He said just sitting and talking about the past didn’t work.

Mick said he had gone back to the clinical hypnotherapy recordings and his calm had been restored. He said he had had some more dreams, but not nightmares, and he couldn’t remember the dreams. He only remembered a white cloud and knew something was inside it. During the hypnotherapy session, aimed at communicating with someone he was angry with, Mick said he saw no images and didn’t experience anything upsetting, but when he came back he felt like he was “bouncing on air”.

Afterwards Mick made arrangements for a fourth session, saying he had more rest during the sessions than from actual sleep. He later asked if he could try the hypnotherapy recordings alone for a few weeks, because he felt like things were decompressing fast, but given everything he needed to do for his new project, and the mental health meetings he needed to attend, he didn’t want everything “spilling out at once”, as he could feel doors opening.

We agreed that we would halt the trial, with him feeling much more positive, and pick it up again in three or four weeks when he felt more able to continue the hypnoanalysis.

Richard


Richard is 49 years old and a contractor for NATO in Brussels. He is married.


Richard enlisted twice in the Army, serving for a total of 26 years. In between his two enlistments, he was a police officer for six years. He came out of the Army in January 2018. He served in Iraq and Bosnia.

PTSD Diagnosis:

Richard was diagnosed as having PTSD by DCMH in 2015. He said his last contact with the mental health services was two years ago when he was assigned to an IAPT programme. He said he saw a therapist once a week but she loved giving him her opinion. He said that when she repeatedly told him he harboured a desire to kill his mother he stopped going to see her.

Medical History:

Richard has been battling extreme anger, depression and anxiety for a long time before his diagnosis. Two years ago he developed an infection which led to a heart attack. He suffers from high blood pressure.

Richard tried to commit suicide in 1998 and spent several months on a psychiatric ward.


- High blood pressure - Feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing- Apathy- Inability to sleep - insomnia


Richard came to his first session of clinical hypnotherapy saying he felt there was no point in life, or himself. He felt worthless, and also as if he was always running away from something. His high blood pressure was bothering him because he had already had a heart attack after an infection, and the doctors didn’t know the cause of his racing heart. He feared it was damage he had done to himself when he tried to commit suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in 1998. He said he tried to commit suicide because he had failed at life, professionally and personally, after getting divorced and hating serving in the police. He was sent to a psychiatric ward for 3 months on medication after his suicide attempt. Ever since then he has felt guilty. Richard recounted a very unhappy childhood in which he was regularly humiliated and beaten by his step father. He said his mother did nothing to stop the humiliation but probably didn’t know about the beatings. When his siblings denied it had happened it made him very angry. Richard believes his feelings of worthlessness did not start with his divorce, because he worked in close protection in the police and distinctly remembers not minding dying for the ‘principal.’ He said he was still quite happy to die.

His first hypnotherapy session was without incident. Richard said he was amazed how relaxed his body had become, and that he had been aware of what I was saying but also feeling a long way away. After that session he said he slept through the night for the first time in years. But the sleeplessness crept back, and by the second hypnotherapy session he said the effect had worn off, but he admitted he had not been listening to the clinical hypnotherapy recordings as he had been advised.

Richard’s blood pressure was still the same, and he said he could feel it rising as he recounted the circumstances of a row with his then-wife, which led to him slapping her, which led to his suicide attempt. He said he felt guilty for slapping his wife, and felt like he had become his step-father.

He felt cheated when he failed in his suicide attempt, and was full of self-loathing.

Richard said his father had played a very small role in his life. It was just him and his mother for the first ten years, before she married his step father. He has full recall of his early childhood but remembers almost nothing from 10 to 16. He has an unexplained aversion to Christmas and Christmas presents, and he rarely shows any emotion, unless it is towards an animal. He said he had seen such awful things in the military but felt nothing, but if a dog was hurt he would go to pieces. Richard mentioned that when he was in the police he was assigned to the paedophile unit and frequently had to watch child snuff movies. It upset him, which surprises him as he says he “hates children.”

Richard has a memory from childhood which ‘plays on a loop’ in his mind, of being with his Dad and stopping at a telephone box, then going home and finding an ambulance taking his mother away as she had overdosed. He doesn’t understand why they stopped at the telephone box and it bothers him but he has no one to ask.

The Ego Parts hypnosis session did not unearth any part of him responsible for his symptoms; he said he just saw two alternating snapshots of a desert and a forest, and felt a huge anger rising up through him.

Richard came to the third hypnotherapy session saying he had been sleeping well and was no longer feeling depressed, but he was still anxious. He said he felt like he was in a field full of snipers, trying to dodge the bullets. He said he sensed a door was unlocking but he wasn’t doing it; he wasn’t in control. He started crying when talking about his mother being ill when he was young and him being too small to help her. During hypnosis, when he was asked to identify someone he was very angry with, Richard said there was a queue of people. When asked if he had “given them both barrels” he said “No, maybe a cap gun. I walked away.” He said he had cut a chain link cord between them all. He did not say if his mother was present but he kept saying

the sentence: “I thought she was aware.” He came back to consciousness tasting blood in his mouth.

Arriving at the fourth hypnotherapy session Richard was still feeling out of control. He had not used any recording all week. He said he felt like his brain was in a constant state of processing and he wanted it to stop. His body was very agitated as he went into hypnosis, all the way through the induction and deepening. Then he became emotional as he was asked to go back to the very first time he had felt his symptoms. When he returned to the conscious state he sat up abruptly and said: “Now everything makes sense.” His subconscious had taken him back again to the overdose incident. He had felt a massive sense of helplessness and failure. He said there were so many other occasions in his life when these feelings of helplessness and failure had been reinforced. He said he felt like he had spent his whole life trying to prove himself to his mother. He said he felt like the floodgates had opened inside him but he still didn’t know how to help ‘little Rich’.

Returning for the fifth hypnotherapy session Richard said he had had a nightmare where he was screaming, his blood pressure was up and he felt so unsettled. He hadn’t listened to any recordings. He was still ruminating on the phone box incident. He said the week before he had been shown so many incidents, many from his military and police days, and each one had seemed like THE reason but had floated away. Only the overdose images stayed. “It was a lightbulb moment. I am programmed not to believe in me,” said Richard. He went into hypnosis for the Forgiveness of Self session, but said he didn’t see himself but a big white blob. He felt a huge indifference towards this blob, told it it was not worth the trouble of a conversation, and then picked up a Samurai sword and cut off its head, feeling anger and contempt!

Richard’s reaction made it obvious that he was some way from resolution, and the sixth hypnotherapy session needed to be used to force the subconscious to release the information which Richard required. When he arrived for the session he was not sleeping well, dreading Christmas and struggling with the feeling “it’s still there.” He said that he had been feeling a real hatred for himself, but at the same time had started to laugh more. He didn’t understand the paradox, but he said he was determined to solve the puzzle, however long it took.

As he went into hypnosis Richard was breathing very fast, his thumbs were circling, and he began to cry. When he emerged from hypnosis Richard said he had experienced two parts of himself and not one! One was four years old and defenceless - scared as if in a minefield - and the other was a seriously angry teenager, furious with his step father. He kept hearing the word ‘stuck’. Richard said that he had planned to kill his step father when he was big enough, but he had been denied the chance when the man suddenly died when Richard was 18. “I wanted to stab the bastard,” said Richard. “I was almost big enough to take him on. But when he died the real me stepped in and put a lid on the teenager, which was also me, so I didn’t explode. I just told it to ‘shut up.’ I shut off all emotion. But at some point that anger turned on me, for not standing up, because that teenager was livid. And he was still livid when I was in the military and the police. And then I became a senior NCO and I became a bully, like my step dad, just because of my job. And I am still trying to prove myself, to me, all these years later.”

Richard said he now understood why he didn’t remember his life after ten years old. He said he spent all his time isolated in his room with his anger; he lost his mother’s attention and protection, and he lost his grandparents who wouldn’t visit his step father’s house.

Despite the emotional roller coaster of this session, Richard wrote a week later to say he was feeling happier and calmer than ever before and had even laughed as he opened presents at Christmas.

In January Richard sent another letter, to say his anxiety level and blood pressure had settled down; the feeling of failure was dissipating; his anger seemed to be disappearing; he no longer wanted to die and previously impossible small tasks were now possible. He was still constantly alert in public places, and still felt a lack of self worth. He was exhausted and not sleeping unless he used the recordings, and his emotions had come back with a vengeance as his armour fell, but not always in a good way. He was feeling vulnerable. He asked to continue hypnotherapy sessions to see if any more trigger points could be uncovered.

He added an extra note re PTSD and combat veterans:

“I would recommend this therapy to ALL veterans with PTSD; it is very evident that it is easier with a therapist who has been there….. all clinical ‘experts’ previously encountered, both NHS and private/charities do not listen and cannot understand… verging on not believing.

NHS mental health services get stumped when we do not fit into their stereotypes or box labels and come across as very condescending, and they only want to TELL you how you are feeling and not listen to what you are saying. At the end of the day the only ones who can help in this situation is ourselves. This therapy allows you to do that in a controlled way.”

Summary Conclusions of Clinical Hypnotherapy Trial for PTSD

This limited online trial for combat veterans suffering from PTSD has proven that clinical hypnotherapy is effective as a method to help sufferers diminish their symptoms, and understand the root causes of how they feel, allowing each person to investigate their own memories and emotions, to get a greater understanding of the impact of incidents upon them. Every man who volunteered to take part in this trial achieved significant relief from PTSD symptoms by the end of the maximum six hypnotherapy sessions, even if they only participated in a few.

It was clear that those who had maintained a regular schedule of clinical hypnotherapy sessions, and who used clinical hypnotherapy recordings between those sessions, gained the most benefit more quickly.

But even those who did not use the recordings between sessions achieved greater insight and relief from their symptoms than they had enjoyed from any other therapeutic method they had tried so far.

It is also clear that for the majority of these men, stress and trauma suffered in combat was related to stress and trauma suffered in childhood. That relation was often direct, through a similar emotion or similar incident. When asked to go back to the very first time they ever felt their most troubling emotion, every man recalled a highly emotional incident in childhood.

This clinical hypnotherapy trial was inspired by the work of American military psychiatrist, John G. Watkins, who used clinical hypnotherapy to try to heal American soldiers returning from the European front in World War 2. The results of this trial mirror his results, as detailed in his book “Clinical Hypnotherapy for War Neuroses”, which would indicate that there is a predisposition to PTSD as a result of traumatic events experienced in childhood. As a result of Watkins’ work, one million Americans were ruled out of the draft during WW2.

Clinical hypnotherapy is a sub-conscious modality, highly effective at unearthing repressed memories and allowing a person to work out for themselves why they feel the way they do, and why the body responds the way it does.

Some clinical hypnotherapists claim only one session of hypnotherapy is needed to put a permanent end to PTSD symptoms. For the purposes of this trial, PTSD sufferers were offered six sessions of clinical hypnotherapy, but only two required all six sessions, and some needed far fewer.

The limitations of this trial are obvious. It represents a very small sample of sufferers, albeit a random selection and involving servicemen who fought in all conflicts from Northern Ireland onwards. It was not possible to establish any form of control group, although all the veterans and serving personnel dealing with PTSD symptoms without any treatment would constitute that control. In the interests of delivering this trial expediently to the MOD, time has not been allowed for any remission on the part of those who underwent hypnotherapy. Most participants only finished hypnotherapy a month ago at most. But there is a precedent to show that clinical hypnotherapy provides for longevity of relief from symptoms. Details of more than a dozen former military and first responder PTSD sufferers, who saw all their own symptoms permanently eliminated as a result of clinical hypnotherapy, and who later trained as clinical hypnotherapists to help others, have already been provided to the Ministry of Defence.

The participants of this trial are being offered long-term support, should they need more hypnotherapy in the future, and the couple of veterans who chose to pause sessions to deal with personal matters will resume.

There are a few outcomes of this trial which are felt to be highly significant. One is that it has proven that clinical hypnotherapy can be effectively delivered remotely, over the internet, by a

trained and qualified clinical hypnotherapist. Also, it is possible to standardise the treatment protocol, by providing six sessions using the same scripts, even when each serviceman or veteran has different symptoms, experiences and requirements. This would essentially confirm that the body knows where the problems are, and can take a sufferer to the root of their individual personal problem while in hypnosis. Evidence for this is apparent in the full transcripts of these sessions, where sufferers state in early sessions exactly what their problem is, but it takes them several weeks to realise it themselves.

In clinical hypnotherapy, as for any therapy for PTSD sufferers, there is always a potential obstacle to success in the form of “secondary gain”. Some sufferers will see the advantages of prolonging their condition, such as continuation of financial support, avoidance of responsibility, validation of hero status, an excuse to use alcohol or recreational drugs, or to validate a dislike and distrust of the government, military or politicians.

In every session the clinical hypnotherapist has attempted to mitigate that secondary gain but it cannot be eliminated completely. In this trial there may have been some feelings of secondary gain by some participants, but not in the majority of participants. The reader of this trial is left to peruse the full transcripts to see where secondary gain may be a factor.

Given the results of this trial, this clinician believes clinical hypnotherapy could considerably help the British military understand and reinforce resilience among its serving personnel, by tackling the root causes of childhood trauma prior to combat combat deployment, rather than post-combat deployment, through group sessions, individual sessions, and self-hypnotherapy ego strengthening techniques.

This clinician also believes there should be a wider trial, involving far more PTSD sufferers, to assess the benefits of clinical hypnotherapy in the treatment of PTSD symptoms. The clinician understands that at the present moment, the NHS only recommends, and funds, clinical hypnotherapy for Irritable Bowel Syndrome sufferers. However numerous studies have shown that IBS has exactly the same effect on the limbic system in a human body as PTSD, given both are stress-related conditions, therefore clinical hypnotherapy would be just as effective for PTSD as for IBS.

Annex A:

Clinical hypnotherapy scripts used in this trial:

Chalkboard Breathing

As you relax there so comfortably, imagine a blackboard, like the one you had at school - a big blackboard at the end of the classroom. Imagine picking up a piece of chalk and drawing a huge circle on that blackboard, taking the chalk all the way around and back to the start point. The next time you breathe in, imagine being at the number 6 position on that circle and breathing in slowly all the way up to the number 12. Then as you breathe out, imagine sliding all the way down the other side back to the number 6 position again. Allow yourself to go around that circle several more times in your mind. With every revolution of that circle, allow your breathing to become slower and slower …. Going around the circle more and more slowly. Imagine yourself actually making that circular motion…….with your body and in your mind. Such a soothing, relaxing, sensation. The more times you go around the circle, the heavier your body feels - the heavier your legs feel, the heavier your arms feel, the heavier your head feels on the pillow/cushion. Feeling that weight in your body. Sinking lower and lower…deeper and deeper…..into the chair/sofa/bed. And as your body sinks deeper, allow your mind to spiral downwards too….. spiralling down into the deepest depths of your subconscious, knowing the more times you breathe around the circle, the more your mind descends deeper and deeper………knowing the deeper you go, the lower you go, the more insight your subconscious mind can bring you…..

Seven Plus or Minus Two Induction

Just allow yourself to be as lazy as you want to be... listening quietly to the sound of my voice... and while you're listening quietly to the sound of my voice concentrating for a few moments on your breathing... breathing slowly and steadily, just as though you were sound asleep, or pretending to be sound asleep... and imagining, perhaps, just how comfortable you might look while you're relaxing there in the chair... using the power of your mind to see yourself in your mind's eye... and then using the power of your mind to do whatever has to happen to make you look even more relaxed... and still thinking about your breathing, making quite sure that each breath in lasts the same length of time as the last breath in... and each breath outwards lasts the same length of time as the last breath out... even though each breath in will probably be slightly shorter than each breath out... and while you're thinking about your breathing, noticing, perhaps, the weight of your head against the back of the chair... and still listening quietly to the sound of my voice... And while you're listening quietly to the sound of my voice, it maybe that you'll become aware that you've forgotten to think about your breathing... but that's all right, you can just simply start thinking about your breathing again while you're listening quietly to the sound of my voice and what I'm saying to you here... and in psychology, there's a rule called... seven plus or minus two... and that means that most people can think of seven things all at once... plus or minus two... so

you should be able to think of at least five things all at the same time... the sound of my voice... the steadiness of your breathing... the weight of your head against the back of the chair... and how you might look from the outside... and that's four things... so you can think of those four things while you're listening to the sound of the music I'm playing in the background... so that's five things, now... and I wonder if you can think about those five things and then at the same time notice the way your feet feel on the footrest of the chair... and perhaps how your arms feel... and that's seven things now... the sound of my voice... the weight of your head against the back of the chair... the music playing in the background... they way you look while you're relaxing... and your breathing... and your arms... and your feet on the footrest... and I wonder if you can now add an eighth thing into all of that... I wonder if your mind is powerful enough to think of seven plus one things... adding in, perhaps, an awareness of the temperature of the room... and then just testing to see whether you can add yet another input to your senses... so that you're thinking of NINE things all at once... that's seven plus two... thinking about all those eight inputs to your senses and then maybe adding an awareness of the way your eyes feel while you're thinking about all those other things... the weight of your head... your breathing... the music in the background... how you look from the outside... the temperature of the room... your feet on the footrest... your arms... the sound of my voice... and how your eyes feel... The weight of your head... your breathing... the music in the background... how you look from the outside... the temperature of the room... your feet on the footrest... your arms... the sound of my voice... and how your eyes feel... and of course, when anybody thinks of all these things, what they are really doing is scanning round them one after the other... very quickly... so quickly, it feels as if you're thinking of them all at once... and in the world of computers, that would be called timesharing... sharing your available resources between the different tasks you are attempting to perform all at once... and that's why some people can think of only five things... because it's the limit of their memory... while others can actually think of nine things... and I wonder how well your memory is working as you struggle to remember those nine things... the weight of your head... your breathing... the music in the background... how you look from the outside... the temperature of the room... your feet on the footrest... your arms... the sound of my voice... and how your eyes feel... And now you can think how good it will feel... when you simply allow yourself to think of only the most important thing of all... concentrating all your energies onto that one most important thing of all... which is going to be so easy to think of, now that you are going to allow yourself to think of only one thing instead of nine... and that one thing is how good it feels to think of only one thing... thinking how relaxed you can be now... that you're only thinking of how relaxed you might like to be... relaxing in your mind... and in your body... no need to think anything at all, really... no need to do anything... nobody wanting anything and nobody expecting anything... and absolutely nothing whatsoever for you to do except to... relax. Body Scan

Turn all your attention to your toes……imagine your toes becoming completely relaxed…….hanging like a windsock on a windless day……..imagine a tingling comfortable numbness filling your toes ……spilling over into the balls of your feet …….turning off all the muscles of your feet as it travels to your ankles……..then up to your knees ……..knowing this is the power of your subconscious mind…..turning off all sensation just as it can create sensations…….you have the power to turn on nice sensations and turn off unpleasant sensations……feel the numbness moving from your knees to your hips…..turning your thighs 2D from 3D…..sinking…….until the whole lower half of your body is completely numb……then let that relaxation spread across your abdomen…….all the essential organs drinking in that relaxation….just stopping for a while. As it moves into your chest feel your heart beating at just the right rate……..and your lungs inflating and deflating at just the right pace …. As the relaxation moves into your shoulders …..then rolls down your arms ….to your elbows…..to your wrists……to your finger trips. Then up into your forehead, down across the forehead to your cheeks - to your jaw - releasing pulsating waves of relaxation from your amygdala which you can imagine as any colour you please……

Stairway Deepener

I wonder if you can imagine a stairway leading downwards. That stairway can look like anything you wish. It may be a stairway that you are familiar with, or it may be one created from your imagination.

As you approach the top of that stairway, you look downwards, noticing that there are 10 steps to the bottom...to the deepest levels. Relaxing and feeling so curious. And as you continue to observe these stairs, you know, you can sense, that with each step downwards, you, too, will relax deeper and deeper. Each step going down...more relaxed...deeper in trance.

So, as you step onto that 10th step...downwards...going deeper...you may find it interesting how easy it is to allow yourself to go deeper into relaxation. Deeper...more comfortable...that's right.

Going to the next step, nine...going even deeper. Doubling your relaxation. That's right...just letting go.

And taking the eighth step, you may discover yourself going even deeper...and deeper. So relaxed...and feeling so good.

And on the seventh step...just letting go. That's right...deeper and deeper.

Sixth step. Doubling your relaxation once again. Finding it so curious just how deeply relaxed you can allow yourself to go.

Fifth step. That's right. Relaxing even deeper. Very good. Just allowing it to happen.

Fourth step. Going deeper and deeper. Knowing only you can allow yourself to relax so well.

Third step. Letting it happened. And I wonder if you will go deeper into trance than you have ever experienced. That's right...very good...

Second step. Almost there. Doubling your trance once again. Going all the way down now.

First step. So relaxed. All the way down. That's right. And as you find yourself at the final level, you begin to realise that when you take the final step, you will be on the bottom floor. All the way down. Arriving there now

Safe Place

I want you to imagine a place where you feel most safe - somewhere you feel most comforted. Perhaps a place in nature…..a beach or a forest or a lake …..or somewhere within your own home….

I want you to imagine that place now and imagine yourself in that place. Maybe this is a place you know well …. Or maybe it is a fantasy conjured out of your own imagination,….it doesn’t matter…..as long as it makes you feel safe and protected and content.

This place is private …. A safe place private within your own mind…..a place you can come and go from….whenever you are here you feel totally safe. Imagine eery little detail of it…..what you can see…. What you can hear….how it makes you feel….. are you alone or within someone…..whatever you need to feel safe…..

No one can come here without you inviting them. This is a place of peace, serenity, harmony…..a place of balance. Feel that balance in your bones, your blood stream, your tissues, your nerves, in every cell of your body….In your DNA

The longer you spend here the more relaxed you are.

Forgetting the Numbers

Now, let's relax your mind. Really allow your mind to relax, like your body is relaxed. In a moment,

I'm going to have you slowly and softly begin to count, starting with the number one. After each

number, let your mind double its relaxation. After a few numbers and it doesn't take long, you will

be able to relax your mind so nicely that the numbers will fade away to nothing, nothing, nothing

and disappear. Want that -- and you can have it very easily. When the numbers are gone, raise

your right index finger to let me know how well you are doing. »

Ego Strengthening and Negativity Clearing

I wonder if you can find yourself on a beach - big wide beach - so beautiful - lovely breeze - sea coming and going out - every time it goes out it is pulling all the stress from your body - as it comes in it brings calm and happiness - look around you - notice there are stones around your feet with something written on them - look closely - reach down - pick one up - see what it says - noticing it is something you no longer want in your life - something which makes your life difficult - something you want to eliminate with hypnosis. feel that stone in your hand. feel how heavy it is. how annoying. how it holds you back.

right now, because you are so deeply in hypnosis, your subconscious is watching what you are

doing. it is watching you holding that stone. and the subconscious understands images and

symbols far better than it understands words. so it is waiting to see what you do with that stone.

are you going to hold on to that thing which causes you so much trouble or are you going to

throw it away? are you going to show your subconscious what you want in your life - clearly and

permanently. because your sub conscious is the part of your brain which makes things happen for

you. you don’t even have to decide how it will happen. it can do that by itself. you just have to tell

your subconscious what you want. clearly and definitely. so i wonder if you can take that stone

over to the sea and looking at what it says again, tell yourself you do not want that in your life, and

throw it out into the water.

watch it fly out across the water - hit the water - sink beneath the waves - watch the sea wash

those words off that stone - taking them back into the universe - far away from you. that is gone

from your life now. go back to the beach, see if there is another stone with something written on it

- if there is another stone pick it up. read it. tell yourself you don't want that in your life any more.

and take it to the water and throw it in. you are telling your subconscious to eliminate it. to

eliminate everything you don't want. be clear. be firm. make sure you don't forget anything. this is

your chance to clear everything, every person, every feeling you don't want in your life right now.

when you have picked up every stone with something written on it and thrown it into the water

raise this finger so I will know you are finished.

well done. i wonder if you can look back at that beach and now see a bucket and spade on the

beach. go to the bucket and spade. pick up the spade and start filling the bucket with sand. fill it

to the top. then keep adding more sand until you have a pyramid of sand on top of your bucket.

then take the spade and start banging the top of the sand, pushing it down into the bucket.

compacting all the sand into the bucket. keep hitting it until the sand is level with the top of the

bucket. then pick up the bucket. note how heavy it is. every grain of sand in that bucket

represents every time you have been hurt, or upset or angry, or annoyed. all the negative energy

you have had lodged in your body for so long. every negative event in your life is in that bucket. all

that weight has been inside your body for so long. but now you can throw it away. eliminate it

from your body. just by throwing the contents of that bucket out into the sea.

so imagine yourself walking over to the water and lifting your bucket to shoulder height. on the

count of 3 i am going to ask you to throw the contents of your bucket into the sea. Get ready.

counting now. 1, 2, 3. throw that sand out into the sea. see it fall into the water like a curtain of

sand. watch it dissolve into the waves and back into the universe, far away from you. the bucket

is empty now and so are you. no more negative feelings. no more hurt. no more anger. no more

consequences of all that negativity. you are light. you are free. free to fill your bucket with nothing

but positivity. with health and happiness and joy.

now you have emptied all that negativity from your body, walk back onto the beach and take a

moment to sit down. take a moment to watch the waves. enjoy the view. feel all that calm filling

your body. this is your calm place. nothing to bother you here. you are protected here. no

negativity can reach you here. i wonder if you can imagine a big circle around you as you sit on

the sand. a big wide circle. this is your barrier. Your barrier to negativity. You can imagine this

barrier as a fence, or a wall, or even an electric force field. just imagine that barrier all around you

now. you can erect this barrier whenever anything negative is happening around you, insulating

yourself with positivity. when you are positive you are happy, you are confident, you are healthy,

your whole body works perfectly, no illness, no aches, no pains. when you insulate your body with

positivity everything is as you want it to be. everything you need in your life you just have to think

about it and it happens. this is your space. your positive space. and when i bring you back to the

conscious state in a moment you will return with this positivity, this calm, this insulation all around

you, with full health, all bad habits eliminated and your body working perfectly. Just take a

moment to think what a difference that will make in your life.

Ego Parts Therapy

And as you relax there in the chair …….listening to the sound of my voice….feeling so comfortable and yet so alert…..your subconscious mind ready to absorb any information, any commands, any images that you give it……and your subconscious mind ready to give you the insight you require to solve any of your problems….the insight you need…….allow your conscious mind to just wander away ………..let your conscious mind wander….. as you instruct your subconscious mind to take over your thoughts now…….take over your imagination……. allow your imagination to follow my voice…….imagining what is being said…….seeing it in your minds eye……...imagining…..if you can……that you…..(name)…..are not one person but many people………many personalities…..created by the experiences that you have lived…….personalities created to help you in life……the ambitious (name)……the diligent (name)……the determined (name) (alter as per pre-induction session)……….and created by the roles you have assumed in your life……..(use as appropriate - the father; the mother; the daughter; the son; the employee; the friend. Sometimes I am sure you can sense these different personalities inside you……do you sometimes sense them? Nod your head for yes. You can hear them telling you the best thing to do …….or telling you something is not a good idea……that you shouldn’t act a certain way…..that you should do things differently. All these personalities are products of the situations and roles which formed them……… The sub conscious mind creates these ego states naturally as we go through life, and these ego states all live on within our body once they are created …..ideally getting on well together……

bringing their experience of life to the others …….pretty happily……and when one of the ego states develops a problem, the others will bring their knowledge to help solve it……… So we really are not one just person….but many many different personalities all within one package….. But sometimes, when we have major incidents in our life, difficult incidents, our body creates new ego states as a result of the different emotions we experience… disappointment……anger……helplessness……….pain……trauma….. Maybe one or some of these resonate with you. Sometimes we get scared……. we are abused…… we feel neglected………maybe you can think now of situations like those in your life………when you have felt such negative feelings such as guilt…….fear……..a feeling of being trapped……not good enough……….. That feeling, which you projected, was picked up by your subconscious and that made it search for a solution to your feeling; a protective solution. The subconscious understood your problem as you told it to it, experienced it, and downloaded – installed – a helper in you. A friend. Someone who cared very much about you. It might have surrounded you in a protective bubble at the time to protect you ……or stood in front of you and stopped you doing something so you didn’t get hurt again…….or comforted you and protected you by sharing the experience……like an imaginary friend……..or got very angry to frighten off an attacker……or made you not care that someone was not showing you any emotion because you had this ego state to take care of you now. These ego states may have been created because of negative circumstances, but the intention was not to hurt you…..the intention was to protect you. And so you added them to the group of friends and protectors you had created, the other ego states within you ….. like a new addition to the family….sometimes a rather unwanted member of the family because they could be a bit disruptive – angry, scared, guilty and worried all the time …..but they lived in your body all the same. Unlike you though, these ego states never grew up ….like Peter Pan……they always stayed the same age……they still feel like a person of that age now…..and because the subconscious mind just lets them be ….doesn’t try to help them get over their upset….. would never expel them…….just lets them live there……in their original state…..nothing ever changes for them, unlike you who sees change every day. They are stuck. Maybe, in your minds eye, you can start to see some of those separate parts of you. Imagine if you will the various different parts inside of you right now, which have caused you to be the person you are, and act in a particular way, and what your own collection of ego states might look like. You can see them as a group…..or maybe only focus on one or two of them…..the one or two that resonate most clearly with you at this time………see their ages, their faces, their expressions…… Perhaps you might like to imagine them walking down a street…..the core ego, the group of easy going ego states in the middle – enjoying the day chatting, laughing really having a good time. all pretty easy going personalities. All they mainly want to do is get on, get ahead, have an easy life. But, also walking with them, because they are always with them, are the other ego states that make up your personality……..perhaps hanging back a bit, dragging their feet, perhaps kicking stones down the side of the road, perhaps one walking on ahead, not wanting to be part of the group, always out on their own. The loner. The one who wants to control all the rest as often as possible.Maybe you have one of those and you can picture that one now if you have. These are the negative ego states…..the angry ones…..the scared one always looking behind and clinging to someone else’s arm, perhaps a few of them are children so they don’t walk as fast as the others. Sometimes you feel like you are eternally dragging them.

In general the core ego in the middle just carry on ahead, feeling fine, not paying much attention to the stragglers, to the miserable ones. There’s things to do. Places to go. Things to take care of. That’s life. But then, every now and again one of the others will erupt in fury at being ignored and bring everyone to a halt. Maybe the hurt child will suddenly, throw an enormous tantrum. Start screaming. Shouting at the others because no one is paying attention to their hurt. Crying. Throwing stones. Accusing the others of ignoring them. Screaming that it’s not fair what happened to them. And the ego states in the happy core group have to stop, and go to the child and sympathise with the child, pick the child up, feel the child’s pain, stop everything they are doing just to feel that hurt with the child…. Perhaps there has been a time when you have felt suddenly overwhelmed by a hurt you suffered in the past, and been almost unable to function or think of anything else while you tried to rationalise that hurt. That was one of your ego states crying out for attention. Or maybe the teenager on the end of the line, kicking stones against the side of the curb, will suddenly see something that reminds him/her of the huge anger which created him/her, and suddenly feel an intense anger and start kicking stones at all the other ego states, hurting them, angering them, causing them as much pain in anyway possible – as much pain as the ego state feels right at that moment. Maybe you have had unexplained pains, illnesses, symptoms, which had no explanation, or always seemed to happen when something similar occurred in your life. Maybe you can imagine one of your ego states acting in such a way for a particular reason – out of anger, guilt, fear. Or maybe the ego state walking ahead of everyone else suddenly senses a danger which reminds him/her of how he/she was created and feels an immense fear as crippling as this ego state felt when it was first made. A fear so overwhelming that he/she has to stop everyone else to protect them from the threat. So he/she stands in front of the others, arms out, blocking them, refusing to let them go on, eyes terrified, shouting at them to go back, not take any risks, and when they won’t he/she will do anything to stop them. Scare them, disable them, freak them out. Scream that it is too dangerous, that they don’t have the tools to tackle the huge, great fear that he/she sees. The core ego will try to reassure him/her that everything is fine but he/she won’t listen. And perhaps he/she scares some of the other ego states so much that they agree with him/her, and support him/her, and then it is even harder to push him/her aside and get past. Maybe you can see that ego state within you now – the one that holds you back, disables you, scares you, makes your doubt yourself. Maybe you know his/her history. Perhaps you know why he/she is acting that way. Or perhaps you need that ego state to tell you. In a moment you are going to be able to talk to your ego states, listen to them, understand them, because they need to have the chance to speak. Because these different ego states inside of you, these avatars if you like, which have been created inside of you for whatever reason, which have downloaded directly into your psyche, cannot be simply switched off or deleted, not even the annoying ones, the difficult ones, the ones who just plain act badly. Because they have become a permanent part of you. Once they have become a part of you they are your responsibility. The responsibility of the core ego in you. They depend on you for their survival. So you really only have two choices where they are concerned. Go along with them, agree with them, do what they say and live the same way they do –buffeted by their demands and their needs all the time even if it damages your life. You could make that choice. Do you think you want to do that? Nod your head for yes, or shake your head for no. So the other choice is you can negotiate with them – encourage them to dial down their reaction to things that happen now in your life and allow you to take charge of them now, because you do not need them to take charge of you anymore.

You’ve grown up….. …the core ego state has become far stronger…..doesn’t need to be scared any more…..can physically deal with situations ….. can’t be hurt by bad situations or bad people anymore…….and doesn’t need the mental protection which they were created to give you. But you still want them to stay. Because they are a part of you. And you love them. Because they went through scary and difficult things with you. But now you can all be free. Because nothing in the past can hurt you any more. The past doesn’t exist. It is just a memory. Only the present exists. And you control the present. I am going to touch your hand now and when I touch your hand I want you to imagine something for me…. Touching your hand now……and asking you to Imagine….. if you will……. all your ego states now together in one place….anywhere you like.…and as you imagine them they become clearer to you…..you can see them all around you……….every single ego state which makes up you …..(name). From now on, your subconscious mind can choose to speak to me, without it disturbing your comfortable state of hypnosis, or it can, if it prefers just answer my questions with a yes or no, or by raising the fingers on your right or left hand. Raising the fore finger – the first finger – for yes and the index finger – the second finger for no. Do you understand that? Answer me anyway you like. Good, now take a good look around that group of ego states which you are imagining all around you……..andidentify the ego state among them which gives you the most trouble. The ego state which causes the most problems in your life. Which has the strongest effect on your life. Imagine that ego state sitting in front of you now. Looking at you. Can you see that ego state?when you can see it clearly I want you to signal that to me by saying yes or no, or lifting a finger so I will know. Does your subconscious know which event in your life caused that ego state? Answer yes or no, or raise either finger so I will know. Would the ego state like to explain its purpose and how it was formed. Say yes, or no, or raise one of your fingers so I will know. It can start speaking now. It is talking only to you let me know when it is done, by saying yes, or raising your forefinger. Do you now understand why that ego state, created by that event in your life, is causing the problems you are experiencing now? It is your chance now to speak directly to that ego state and tell it how it has been causing you difficulty in your life and to explain that you need it to stop what it has been doing because you don’t need that sort of protection any more. I would like now to speak directly to the ego state inside you. So, ego state, you have heard what (name) said to you about how your behavior and reaction is damaging his life. Can you agree to stop creating this conflict/physical reaction inside (name). Can you forgive and accept what the ego state has explained to you here today and go forward with the ego state in a spirit of accommodation and collaboration, knowing that the ego state will no longer place these hurdles, and these destabilising reactions in your path, as a result of the way in which he was created. Do you agree to work together with the ego state from now on.

If not, cut the link between them and the ego state.

Forgive of Others

It is very normal and healthy to feel angry in situations where you are hurt, abused, taken for granted, or mistreated. However, anger becomes unhealthy if it is held or increased without resolving or letting go of it. If you cling to your anger instead of dealing with it in a healthy and loving manner, it will eat you up inside. Maintaining angry feelings or unhealthy grudges, especially those from the past, only hurts you. Making yourself stay angry in order to keep from experiencing the underlying hurt/pain will only serve to hold you as a prisoner inside your own body (and mind), and you will probably experience the hurt even more so. Even if you were wounded in a terrible way, holding on to the anger and/or rage only restricts you, not the other person. Releasing anger often entails forgiving another or oneself for any and all transgressions. Forgiving another does not mean the actions taken were right, acceptable, or appropriate. Nor is it necessary to "like," speak with, acknowledge, or even forgive someone in person. The purpose of forgiving those of a wrongdoing towards you is to release yourself from the negatively charged energy emotion that binds you to that particular situation or event. We need to leave our abusive memories in the past, where they belong. It doesn't serve any positive purpose and it doesn't help us in any healthy way to keep our wounds open, fresh, and painful. You may not be ready to take this step quite yet. I understand how difficult a task this can be. However, if you truly wish to be set free from the chains of the past, this is necessary. The only way we can truly be free from any oppression, self inflicted or otherwise, is to stop acting like a victim, take the appropriate steps, and free ourselves from the anger, hurt, and sadness. This is not easy, but it will work and you will finally be able to put the past behind you and move on. In taking this type of responsibility, self-leadership, and action, we are also more able and ready to forgive ourselves for whatever role we may have played in creating a particular situation or event. This doesn’t imply that it was your fault you were hurt. The role for which you may be forgiving yourself for might simply be that of continuing to remain a victim by keeping the hurt or anger alive. This is something you will no longer allow yourself to do once forgiveness sets in. It may also entail releasing yourself from any further negative thinking or hurtful self-statements. Often, victims of abuse feel responsible, as if it were their fault they were abused. This is untrue. You cannot control or be responsible for the actions of another. You are only responsible for your own actions. If, however, you allowed the abuse to take place, now is the time to forgive yourself, learn from your past, and make wiser decisions in the future. Take a nice, slow, deep breath and then let it out. (Pause five seconds.) Good. Take in another nice slow deep breath and then slowly let it out again. (Pause five seconds.) Very good. Now I want you to take a very deep breath and then let it out very quickly all at once through your mouth. (Pause five seconds.) Excellent. Now imagine walking into a medium-sized room. This room is like a conference room. However, it's divided in half by a huge piece of thick glass. This glass is special because it's indestructible. You cannot break it even if you hit it with a sledgehammer. There is a chair on the other side of the glass and there is a chair next to you if you want to sit down. Imagine that an individual with whom you are very angry or upset walks into the room on the other side of the glass, and sits down in the chair. This person may have harmed you in the past or is harming you now. There may have been emotional or physical abuse, or it may have been a less serious incident that hurt you just the same. This person may be a stranger, a relative, a spouse, or a parent. It’s important to know that while this person is sitting in the chair on the other side of the special glass, he is unable to move, talk, or make any facial or bodily gestures while you are speaking. It is impossible for him to leave,

interrupt, or even move while you are speaking. What I want you to do is tell him exactly how you feel inside. Tell him how you felt when he hurt you, how you feel now, and anything else that you want or need to say. This is a very safe and secure place to get it all off your chest, releasing it once and for all. Take your time and remember he can do nothing but listen to what you have to say. Take your time and do this now... (Pause for a couple minutes.) Well done. Now this is very important. What I want you to do now is have this person respond to what you said in the way that you would most want him or her to respond. It doesn't matter if he would do this in reality. Have him do this here and have him do it now. (Pause a couple minutes.) That's good. Now go ahead and respond to what he just said. Take your time. (Pause two minutes.) Now have him respond again in the way you would most want him to. (Pause two minutes.) If there is anything else that you would like to say to this person, please do so now. If not, then what I want you to do is tell this person you forgive them. Remember, you are freeing yourself from the past and releasing the negative energy that still holds you back from true peace and happiness. I also want you to forgive yourself for whatever needs to be forgiven, even if it's just for hanging on to the anger for so long. Do this now. (Pause for few moments.) Finally, I want you to say good-bye to this person. You can just say good-bye, shake his hand, give him a hug, or leave the room. As you do this, return back to a safe, happy place and recharge in the warmth and love this place provides for you. (Pause two minutes.)

Age Regression

There is a feeling inside of you which you don’t like…..it has to do with the problem which brought you to hypnosis……you don’t like it. It is uncomfortable for you to experience. But we just need you to experience it for a few minutes. As I am talking about it now your attention is turning to it. You may even be able to feel it somewhere in your body right now. Can you feel it somewhere in your body. Whereabouts in your body? On a scale of 1 – 10 how strong is this feeling? Take note yourself how strong it is. As I count from 1 to 5 it is growing even stronger within you. One, your attention is going to it, consciously or unconsciously. Two, you are focusing on it even more.Three it is becoming as real to you as ever before. Four, You can actually feel it growing within you – bubbling up….making you feel uncomfortable and uneasy….making you feel all those things you don’t want to feel. Five, Now the feeling is strong within you. You are aware of it. Your subconscious knows it well. I can tell you are re-experiencing it because……

How strong is that feeling within you now on a scale if 1 – 10. Now I am going to count backwards from five to one and you will go back to the first time you ever felt that way….just like playing a video tape backwards……going backwards with that feeling prominent within you…..flooding through your system……Five, Still focused on that feeling. Four, Going back to the first time that you felt that way. Three, Becoming younger and younger….feeling younger and younger……going backwards in time…..Two, almost there….One, be there now! Quickly, look around you and take note of your first impression….anything you see…..or feel……or hear……Take your time……Is it day or night? Okay, just stay focused on the feeling inside you and allow it to give you any impressions at all. Are you indoors or outside? Are you alone or with someone? How old are you? What is happening? How do you feel?

Now I would like you to re-experience that event again If this is frightening…..scary…..hurtful….painful……you can move away from it now and see it as if it is just on a television screen which you can watch from within your own protective bubble…..move away from the emotion…..leave any emotion behind and just watch from a distance….just as if it is a movie….a movie which can’t hurt you in any way…..it can only bring you insight./….information…..which is valuable to your subconscious mind and the feelings you have been experiencing……..Now wind that experience back…as if it is a movie……right back to the beginning and experience it/watch it again…..noticing every aspect of what is happening…..do you see anything you didn’t notice before…..do you feel anything different to what you felt before…..(Repeat 3 or 4 times)

Is this something you feel like you have experienced before….like it is familiar or is this a new feeling? Just to be absolutely sure that this is a new feeling….and not one you have experienced before……I want you to go back in time to one month earlier than this date you are experiencing. I am going to count from 5 to 1 and I want you to go back…back in time….(take them back) …..now you have arrived one month earlier where are you? How do you feel? Do you still have that same feeling?

Okay adult ……, now I am talking to you. Wouldn’t it be nice if your conscious mind had known what your subconscious mind knows now…..your subconscious mind now knows everything you have recalled. If your conscious mind had known all these details you wouldn’t have felt this overwhelming emotion. Adult ………: with the wisdom of your experience and your years I want you to explain to child …….. how to handle this overwhelming emotion and why it is happening. Tell her what resources she can use to deal with this event. Help her to understand it and overcome it. Help her to see it from a different perspective. Tell her now and raise a finger when you are done.

Child …….: you have heard what adult……. Has to say.Do you understand what adult….. has said.Has it helped you understand what happened and to see it with a different perspective?Has that different perspective helped to diminish the strength of your emotions? If not, what could adult….. say that would help you understand it or deal with it. Tell adult…… now what she could say to help you and then raise your little finger when it is done. Adult……..: Are you able to tell child…… what she wants to hear. Do you understand what she is asking you? Are you able to help her more? Go ahead and help her understand this situation with more clarity. Raise your finger when you are done. Child ……. Has that helped you understand the situation? Are you able to master the emotion which you have been feeling? Are you able to put it aside and reframe it to help you rather than hurt you. Child……: You are safe now…..you are secure……you are whole…….you have explained everything and in doing so you have diminished the power it may have had over you…..your feelings no longer have that power over you…..those feelings are diminished…..reduced……assuaged……

Forgiveness of Self

I would like you to imagine a big round room. There is nothing in this room except two chairs, facing each other.

One is the talking chair and one is the listening chair. Imagine yourself sitting down in the chair, and then imagining, in the other chair the part of you which gives you problems…..which causes you troubles…..which you don’t like very much. See that part of you sitting in the other chair and concentrate on what it is about that part of you which makes life so difficult. Study the other you hard. Now I want you to tell the other part of you how it has held you back.

Now let the other part of you tell you why she or he was holding you back in this way.

You can reply anyway you want.

Tell the other part of you the existing situation needs to stop for you to go forward.

Negotiate with the other part as to how to find a different way to go forward.

We need to establish a new set of guidelines now for the protective part of you – so it will move back and stop trying to protect you in this way, and allow you to even experience painful times so that you will grow, personally. These new guidelines will allow the other part of you, the protective part of you, to overcome all issues and work on change. Because change is good. Change is progressive. Sometimes we protect ourselves to the point of blocking change which would otherwise bring great joy to our lives. Or protect ourselves so much we cannot learn new things.

Very good then perhaps you can imagine yourself standing up out of your chairs….both of you….and facing each other. You have both had a hard time, and have worked so hard to navigate the problems of life, and you both deserve a huge hug ….from each other. Do you feel able to embrace the once protective side of you as just another part of you? Then step forward now and give him/her a lovely big hug and as you do so tell him/her “I forgive you and I accept you.” I forgive you and I accept you.. I forgive you and I accept you. In a few moments I will return you to the conscious state but in the full knowledge that you have conquered this battle which has been constant in side of you…….that you have reached an understanding which can allow you to go forward in the way you want most. And which can allow you to be truly successful and happy in your life.

Summary Clinical Hypnotherapy in the Treatment of PTSD ... · Trial to test the eﬃcacy of...

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Transcript of Summary Clinical Hypnotherapy in the Treatment of PTSD ... · Trial to test the eﬃcacy of...