Regression Hypnotherapy
What is Regression Therapy?
Regression in hypnotherapy is using hypnosis to go back and revisit events from our past. Doing this enables us to gain new useful insights or different perspectives and most importantly helps prevent the effects of those memories from continuing to negatively impact our adult lives.
Sometimes the memories we visit during therapy are ones we have no conscious awareness of. This is why hypnosis can be a useful way of accessing these memories, as it can help us bring things that are outside our conscious awareness into consciousness. And this can be an important first step to processing those events and making positive changes to our lives.
So if the idea of exploring the past to resolve your problem today resonates with you, then you may wish to explore regression therapy.
However, if you do plan to look further into regression then there are some important things about memories to be aware of before you take the next step.
Our memory is not like a continuous, uninterrupted, recorded film of our life
When choosing a therapist to work with to do some regression work it is important the therapist explains to you that whilst we can revisit memories and change the way we feel about those memories, what we can’t guarantee is that the memories we recall in hypnosis are accurate.
Our memories aren't like a really long film or video recording of our lives. The laying down and recall of memories is a much more complex process than that.
What this means
This means that when we explore the past in this way, the memory we go back to may well be a real event or a consolidated memory of a combination of events; equally it may be a mixture of real things, childhood imaginings, what we’ve seen on TV or what we’ve been told about something we did or didn’t do.
But what’s important to remember is that the level of accuracy doesn’t matter. Because the purpose of revisiting memories in the first place is not to prove anything, not to show who’s right, who’s wrong – it’s merely to make us feel better.
Does having few childhood memories mean I'm blocking something bad?
From time to time a client will tell me they have few childhood memories and they ask me whether this mean they are blocking something bad.
It's important to remember that many, many people have few memories of childhood. This can be frustrating, especially when other people can comfortably reminisce about their school days, the friends they had and what they did, when you can barely remember anything at all.
Regression Therapy can help you move on
If there are memories that are holding us back then regression therapy can help us move on. It helps change the way we hold those memories and the conclusions we make about ourselves as a consequence of those memories. The purpose isn’t to erase them, it’s to process them and allow them to take their place in our memory bank, just like all of our other memories.
Regression Therapy with me is safe
I way I practice Regression Therapy is both ethical and safe. You may be aware that many years ago it was thought that with regression therapy it was imperative for the client to relive any negative past memories ensuring they go through all the feelings, thoughts, images and emotions related to that event again as if they were "back there".
Perhaps unsurprisingly, therapists have learnt since then that working that way potentially be re-traumatising and sometimes does more harm than good. In addition, re-living the memories isn’t always enough, you have to do more than just replay the past to feel better today. Perhaps you know someone who has great insight into why they feel the way they do and recalls the events that contributed to it, but they still don't feel any better?
Fortunately we have better options today and we know how to re-visit past memories safely and in ways that allow us to re-frame those events, learning from them whatever is left to learn and then finally leaving those events in the past where they belong. All this is done without the need to risk re-traumatisation.
Please do get in touch if you'd like to find out more about whether regression therapy is the right approach for you or to find out about other hypnotherapy approaches I use.
