In Part 1, we looked at the following five factors that you’ll find in your hypnosis sessions when you regress into events involving abuse.
- The Child is dependent
- There’s anger.
- Abuse isn’t always bad.
- Guilt and shame get attached.
- Forgiveness is the healing.
What follows immediately after an event of abuse is emotional upheaval. There’s no one there to support the Child, or help the Child make sense of what happened. So the energy of the event doesn’t get discharged.
This leaves the Child suspended in the traumatic event. This is what German New Medicine calls a “hanging conflict.” The subconscious mind doesn’t know that the client isn’t still a Child anymore. It doesn’t know that there isn’t more pain on the way. As a result, the fears and misperceptions still trapped in the event continue to generate pain. The Child is suspended in time.
Trauma sets a person up for symptoms later in life.
Trauma theory refers to it as “kindling”. All it takes is for the right set of circumstance to arise. And it acts like a match. The kindling then bursts into flames and symptoms appear. Psychology calls it “priming.” Like priming the pump, once the emotional content has built up enough internal pressure it will begin to gush out. We call it “sensitizing.” It’s what sensitized a person to be vulnerable to a specific pattern.
Each subsequent event which, in some way, resembles the first time serves to re-stimulate the pattern established at the ISE, adding to its strength. Eventually, it erupts as symptoms. That’s when the person ends up your chair suffering from emotional or physical distress.
Physical symptoms associated with abuse include:
- Headaches
- Sleep problems
- Weight problems
- Miscarriages
- Digestive problems
- Addictions
The goal of hypnotherapy is to resolve what’s causing the symptoms. By locating the first event of abuse, you can guide the client to release the traumatic energy still trapped in the event. When the event is clear, you can then reframe the event to allow learning. This will then allow healing to occur. Reframing the ISE will change the perceptions, thoughts and feelings that are creating the problem to allow a relieving of symptoms. This is the essential function of Inner Child Work.
The aftermath of abuse is always emotional upheaval.
This is because there is always confusion. The Child cannot make sense of what happened. Then, later, the subconscious mind gets stuck ruminating in an attempt to figure things out. This just compounds the distress.
The seeds of distress lie in the confusion, guilt and shame. Watch for them in the uncovering procedure. Not being able to figure out your environment is a threat to survival. This naturally generates fear. If the Child thinks, “I must have done something wrong”, this decision seeds guilt.
The Child needs to be loved to survive. Often, the Child will take the blame to avoid losing the love. If the Child decides, “I need to change myself to prevent this from happening again,” this plants the seed of shame.
The subconscious mind’s Prime Directive is to protect. There’s always a positive purpose. The Child just needs to have a sense of control. But the underlying thought is, “there’s something wrong with me.” This is a decision that wreaks untold havoc in the Mind. It’s a misperception. The Child’s worth has nothing to do with what happens to it.
Watch for this during the uncovering procedure. When the client is telling you about what happened in the event, they are in an extremely vulnerable state. They are exposing their tender emotional underbelly. You’re dealing with a wounded Child. And they are trusting you with their deepest, darkest, most shameful truths. Often, they are revealing something that they have never shared with another living soul. So listen. Provide safety and support. That’s what the Child needed.
Prove to them that there’s nothing wrong with them. You can model this through your tone of voice. Be matter of fact. Let them know that they’re not the first person to ever have this experience. Sadly, they probably won’t be the last. But their Subconscious Mind is showing them where their healing lies. This is where their miracle lies.
Educate their Adult self to be a loving support to the Child. The Grownup Part of the client takes on the responsible of providing what was missing the first time. This is the purpose of the uncovering procedure – to find out what the Child needs. Find out what was missing. What did the Child want or need in that situation?
Encourage the client to feel the feelings. Release the feelings trapped inside the event. That’s what’s generating the symptoms. The pocket of pain will be comprised of fear. But there’s also anger toward the perpetrator and anger toward self. You need to release all three. Healing occurs when the emotional energy of the event has been released. The Mind then becomes highly receptive to suggestions. This is when you can install new understandings.
Guilt is a misperception, a false belief that says, “I did something wrong.” The Child did nothing wrong. The person who hurt them had the problem. The Child was not the problem.
Shame is a misperception, a false belief that says, “There’s something wrong with me.” There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the Child. The Child is innocent and nothing could ever change this.
Change these misperceptions. Then, encourage the subconscious mind to integrate them, fully. Integration occurs when you connect all the aspects of the event. Then, generalize all the changes throughout all time, space and dimensions. You can do this by flowing all the changes forward and backward along the client’s timeline.
Saturate the Mind with love and forgiveness. Then, sit back and witness transformation as it happens.
Tips for Using the 4 Universal Healing Steps
The client needs to formulate a new decision. That decision will decide what’s going to happen next in their life. And that all depends on what you discover during the uncovering process. The following 4 Universal Healing Steps can help you to guide your client to their healing.
1. Find it.
Healing begins by uncovering what was missing the first time. Then you can find a way to provide it. What was missing? What understanding or resources did the Child lack? What was most wanted or needed? Who wasn’t there to support the Child? Remember, we’re not here to change what happened. We’re only here to change how it feels. That’s where the healing lies.
2. Feel it.
John Gray wrote, “If you can feel it – you can heal it.” It’s true. Help the client to release the feelings that got trapped inside before they were old enough to know how to cope. This sets the client free from the past.
The client’s “pain packet” will contain unresolved emotions such as:
- Confusion
- Fear
- Isolation
- Anger toward the Perpetrator
- Love toward the Perpetrator (if not a stranger)
- Anger toward self (blame turned inward becomes guilt and shame)
3. Heal it
Validate every change. Install new learnings. Celebrate insights. Recognize better feelings. Reclaim freedom of choice. Build resource states out of old grievances.
Guilt is a misperception. It’s not a feeling. It’s a thought that says, “I have done something wrong.” That thought always generates fear. Even if the Child did something “wrong” it’s because they didn’t know any better. But the Child is innocent. The Child certainly did nothing to invite or deserve getting hurt. The person who hurt them was the Grownup. They had the problem. Not the Child.
Shame is a misperception. It’s not a feeling. It’s a thought that says, “There’s something wrong with me.” That thought generates fear. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the Child. The Child is good. The Child didn’t deserve to get hurt. But it happened. This does not change who and what the Child is at her Core. Remind her that she is – and she remains – as she was created. Whole and complete. And completely love-able. This restores the client’s sense of security.
Love heals. If the client has a spiritual view on life you have a greater Source of Love you can call upon. Even without a spiritual belief most clients are open to a higher perspective. Just frame your suggestions to fit with the client’s belief system. For example . . .
The Creator/Universe/Life/God doesn’t make mistakes. Everything works. Just not always the way we think. Science is still discovering deeper and deeper layers to the mystery of Creation/Universe/Life. We just haven’t got it all figured out yet. Fortunately, we don’t have to figure it all out because it all works - beautifully.
The Client could never be “broken.” Broken translates to “unforgiveable.” But being vulnerable isn’t a crime. The client is always forgivable. If the Child made a mistake, that's okay. Mistakes are learning opportunities that help us to grow stronger and wiser.
Human beings have free will. This proves out in the regression work. Even before birth the Child is making decisions about themselves. They’re forming opinions about how life works. The truth is, the client made some decisions as a Child. These decisions were not based in truth or fact. They were simply based on the knowledge of the Child at that time. If those decisions are no longer appropriate to the client’s adult life, they need to be changed. With greater awareness, the client can choose differently, from a place of maturity.
Healing is a self-empowerment process. The client can choose to continue to hold onto the patterns from the past. In which case they will stay stuck in the pain. Or they can choose to change. They can choose to let go of the past and move forward. In doing so, they can allow those experiences to become a source of strength and wisdom for them in adult life. A source of empowerment.
4. Seal it.
To “seal” is to make adamant. Guide the Adult client to connect all the dots. How did those events in the past contribute to the problem? What makes change now reasonable? How do they know they’ve already changed? How are they different NOW? How does changing this pattern change everything from now on? How are the changes that are occurring inside of them right now benefiting them? How does changing how they think and feel change their future? What are the benefits of having made this change?
Trauma shuts down the hippocampus. The hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for moving present experiences into past memory. When the hippocampus doesn’t complete this function, the memory stays stuck as a present event. That’s the basic problem. Subconsciously, the client is still stuck in the event. Their subconscious doesn’t realize that it’s over, that they survived. Integration occurs when the Child is able to place all the aspects of the event in the past.
Brain research shows that traumatic memory is healed when all the aspects of a traumatic event are linked together and then moved from present memory to past memory. Integrating all changes seals them permanently into the client’s mind-body system.
So, that’s it. What follows an event of abuse is emotional upheaval because the Child doesn’t know how to make sense of what happened. You can change the Story of that event by following the four universal healing steps of regression to cause therapeutic hypnosis.
- Find all the contributing aspects.
- Release the emotional charge holding the event in place.
- Fill the void created by releasing with Child’s inherent goodness.
- Link all the aspects together into a new Story – one of Empowerment.
Human beings are meaning makers. This ability to assign meaning to experience is at the root of the problem. It’s also the key to resolution. The client simply needs to change the meaning of the Story. So, make it a Story about overcoming. A growth Story – where the client is the hero.
