Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (PTSD)
Despite the severity of the symptoms and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles PTSD sufferers have to face, the solution is surprisingly easy and not unlike the method I use for helping clients who suffer from fears and phobias.
Using hypnotherapy and relaxation techniques, the part of our brain that stores the trauma template, (which incidentally, is connected to the part of our brain that is most resistant to change), is calmed and pacified, allowing the trauma to be processed, the emotional content to be removed from it and then you replace it with a new and reassuring template that allows the trauma to feel now, like a distant memory; and one in which you have control over.
The brain creates and uses templates all the time. It’s an energy efficient way of responding to familiar situations with familiar, known outcomes and it has its roots in primitive survival. When speed of action was demanded, it was far quicker for the brain to trigger an off the peg, tried and tested, successful-enough, survival response, than it would have been to assess the situation calmly and rationally and then eventually come up with a possibly more appropriate response to that situation. Nowadays, when the brain is working healthily and efficiently it will usually be able to process all the events of the day during the REM state of sleep.
Sometimes however, when a trauma is so severe, its template never gets a chance to be processed, it gets stuck and it cannot be transferred to the part of the brain that makes cool, rational sense of things. It’s like the primitive part of the brain wants to hold onto it, as it needs to refer to it when the same situation happens again. And so you are kept on high-alert, responding inappropriately to any vaguely similar situation that reminds you of the original traumatic one.
If you would like help with your Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, our time together will be spread over just a few sessions and by the time we finish the final session, the trauma should feel much more like a distant memory; with you better able to respond to situations appropriately again. And this, – plus the removal of some other negative thought-patterns during hypnosis, will have freed up so much spare capacity in your brain that the knock-on effect should be a wonderful increase in optimism, energy and focus.
*Results may vary from person to person.
