Trauma / PTSD
Trauma is the emotional response to a deeply distressing or overwhelming event, such as abuse, loss, or violence, that exceeds a person’s ability to cope. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a condition that can develop after trauma, causing symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares and anxiety that continue to disrupt daily life.
If you’re considering hypnotherapy for trauma or PTSD, do speak with your GP first, as you may benefit most from a combination of treatments, including medicinal, to ensure a safe and effective path to recovery.
‘Hypnotherapy may support trauma recovery by calming the nervous system, and allowing access to the subconscious mind to shift emotional responses.’
— British Society of Clinical Hypnosis
Releasing Trauma through Regression
Softening traumatic bonds means addressing its emotional and other programmed, subconscious effects. Hypnotherapy offers a way to gently access the mind’s deeper layers, where painful memories are stored. While it doesn’t erase these memories, it can soften their intensity and help you respond to them more gently.
Through careful use of regression therapy, hypnotherapy allows you to process past events safely, release limiting beliefs, and rebuild a sense of safety, strength, and self-worth, supporting deep and lasting emotional healing.
Regression is not suitable for all clients with trauma, and I assess first how ready and able a client is to revisit and deal with traumatic memories. Clients experiencing severe anxiety or depression, or those who are easily triggered, may need additional stabilisation (calm and safety) before engaging in work at this level of emotional intensity. Somatic techniques and NLP offer alternative regression methods.
Regression work is sensitive and needs careful handling to avoid false memory syndrome and compounding the trauma. A well-trained therapist is therefore vital; I have the essential skills and experience.
Reviewing Beliefs formed from Adverse Childhood Experiences
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) refer to ten types of traumatic events that can occur before age 18, typically grouped into domestic issues, abuse, and neglect. These early experiences can shape how a person sees themselves, relates to others, and views the world, often leading to low self-worth, emotional suppression, or a sense that the world is inherently unsafe.
Done sensitively, hypnotherapy can support healing from ACEs by working with the subconscious mind (limbic system) to reframe past experiences, release emotional pain, and shift limiting beliefs.
INNER CHILD work addresses the subconscious, where our wounded inner child lives, craving expression and emotional release through sensations, images, and from a sense of injustice it can’t understand. These insights often reach deep places that talk therapy alone cannot touch. The aim is to form a new, compassionate relationship with those early parts of one’s self. Hypnosis provides a safe space where emotional release and inner dialogue can happen with kindness and care. Hypnotherapy is very powerful for Inner Child healing.
Reducing Flashbacks and Triggering
Flashbacks are the brain replaying old stories with the same emotional force. Reducing flashbacks in hypnotherapy involves helping the client safely access and reprocess traumatic memories while creating new associations of safety and control in the subconscious mind.
Hypnotherapy helps reframe triggering memories and reduce their emotional intensity. Also, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy can really help; which I also specialise in.
Improving Bodily Symptoms
If revisiting the original experience in hypnosis feels overwhelming, a therapist may recommend somatic techniques to help release stress and emotions held in the body. These practices calm the nervous system and promote a sense of safety, and may include yoga, qigong, breathwork, body scans, and grounding exercises.
Hypnotherapy can provide somatic help as follows:-
- Body Awareness builds a mind-body connection to help process trauma stored physically.
- Regulating the Nervous System with Vagal Nerve stimulation exercises.
- Techniques like breathwork or imagery.
- Using guided imagery to support body healing, such as visualising warmth flowing to frozen parts, or energy leaving areas of tension.
