Healing and Hypnosis II

Discovery of Cause

(and the avoidance of induced memories)

Difficulty Level: Intermediate

The notion of "regression to cause" is certainly not a new one.

My personal hypnotherapeutic theorem is "when you discover the cause of a problem (physical, mental, spiritual, emotional), you can then heal the problem."

The reason you want to get to the root cause of an illness or a problem is that they are like dandelions. If you don't pull the whole root up, the problem will re-appear at a later date. By extracting the entire dandelion from the earth, the weed will not return.

Unfortunately, many therapists attempt to guess or predict just what the cause of a presenting problem is. This is often seen in session when a therapist begins to vocalize his judgments during trance. For example:

"...and did your mother ever sexually abuse you? fondle you? touch you in ways that made you feel uncomfortable?"

This line of questioning during trance can easily create a "therapist induced memory." A useful distinction in definitions is best considered here:

1. An Induced Memory, is one that is created by another person, group, or form of media in an individual.
2. A Therapist Induced Memory, is one that is created in a client by a therapist.
3. A False Memory, is a memory that an individual remembers but in reality is fallacious. Some false memories are induced memories. At an extreme we could argue that all memory is false memory in that all information tha t is perceived is distorted and generalized by our mental and physical faculties. A false memory is more often a mis-remembering on the part of the client, often in the form of a gestalt, ie., multiple memories collapsed into one memory.
4. A Memory, is a specific or general recall of events as it is encoded in the brain by an individual.

An irresponsible therapist will load questions, during trance, for his/her clients as noted above. By asking a client during trance, if he has been abused, you may begin to install the theme into the client even if it is not true. It certainly is possible for the unconscious to reject the idea, but it is equally as likely that the client will unconsciously search for when such an event may have occurred. Not finding precisely what has been requested, the client's unconscious mind may take a real memory that has the potential story line for the memory and combine it with the therapists suggestion creating a gestalt. In this case, the gestalt will be a therapist induced memory.

Corporate America takes full advantage of this phenomenon in it's advertising and marketing of products to people of all ages and ideologies. Induced memory is not a "mental health practitioner only" - phenomenon. Anyone who bypasses the judgmental portions of the brain will be capable of creating induced memory and suggestions for future activity. (This subject will be covered in depth at a future date.)

How then, does the therapist discover the cause of a problem or illness?

The therapist begins by having the client fully associate to his current problem or illness. The client experiences the problem that he wishes to have eradicated, in trance.

(If the client has migraine headaches and wishes healing, the therapist asks the client to experience the sensations of a migraine.)

Emotions and somatic sensations become very powerful. The therapist has the client return to an earlier time when these symptoms were very powerful.

("Now, return to an incident when you experienced these sensations.")

The client describes everything in a specific event where he has chosen to return to. The therapist wants to know what the client sees, hears, feels, smells and tastes. Temperature, ambiance, pressure, internal sensation s and other sensory perceptions are all described to the therapist.

("Describe what you feel, see, hear, smell and taste in this event. Fully associate to the event. Be `in yourself', re-experiencing the event as you describe it to me.")

It is unlikely that this specific event is the cause of a person's illness or problem. The client presented you with this incident, however, and therefore you are wise to listen to the event. Subsequent events on a chain of incidents, like this one, will not yield any significant benefits for the client. The client will normally be almost as emotionally "charged" after the fourth telling as he was after the first telling, in the case o f subsequent events. After running through the event two or three times, the emotional "charge" of the event will begin to dissipate if it is the initial event. Sometimes the client will have a difficult time detailing t he event after say, the third or so telling if it is the initial event. The client will most often become bored or amused by the entire event if it is the initial event. What was painful to face is now boring or amusing.

If it is indeed, a subsequent event, it will be necessary to continue your back-tracking to the causal event with this firm but polite command to the unconscious mind:

"Return to an earlier similar incident, now."

The procedure is repeated until the causal event has been un-covered. The causal event is normally indicated by the following criteria:

1. A drastic alteration in the emotional tone of the client with each re-telling of the event. The client should move from negative emotional displays toward neutral or positive emotions with each re-telling.
2. The client sometimes begins to blank out details with third, fourth and more re-tellings of the event.
3. The client is no longer attached to the event in a negative fashion.
4. The client feels better at the end of the session.

It is common that the session will come to a point that it seems to be stalled. There may be no earlier incidents yet the person is not feeling better. The client is not improving as far as his emotional tone as he relat es what seems to be the initial cause. There are several excellent strategies for uncovering the cause in stalled sessions. These will be discussed in the next article here.

You may contact the author at kevin@kevinhogan.com.

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Go to the next article in the series: Hypnosis & Healing III

Kevin Hogan
Network 3000 Publishing
3432 Denmark #108
Eagan, MN 55123
(612) 616-0732

Photos appear under license with Stockexpert.

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