I was just reading an article on salon.com (http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2009/11/19/trust/index.html?source=rss) in which a person was talking about their years of mistrust, anger and resentment. They had been in talk therapy for 18 months and had not made much progress. As a matter of fact, they even felt betrayed by their therapist because of something the therapist said and it simply made the issue worse. The upshot was that they were going through untold years of grief over events in the past that were imprinted deeply into their subconscious.
Just about everyone I know of has, at sometime or another, benefited from some kind of counseling, talk therapy, etc. Talk therapy can be extremely effective if the therapy client is willing to let it work, and if the therapist is the right one for the client. But it takes a lot of patience. It's also a long process, sometimes longer than the duration of the client's insurance, so the process often stops (and hopefully re-starts as the new plan year begins) short of its goal.
But there are quite a few ways to make talk therapy more efficient. NLP, EMDR, Hypnotherapy, Meditation, EFT, just to name a few. My own background is in hypnotherapy, certified through the National Guild of Hypnotists, and I offer hypnosis as service not in place of, but as an adjunct to the client's regular therapist. If someone describes an issue such as that in the salon.com article, a lifetime of anger and depression, I usually insist that they be seeing a therapist, and that the therapist give them a referral to see me as a hypnotist. But having said that, I believe that hypnosis work, such as the path methodologies pioneered by Calvin R. Banyan, could be of boundless help to that particular correspondent.
If one is willing to get out of their own way, to let go and allow the process to work, one can accomplish amazing things while in hypnosis. The healing possibilities are endless; I've seen people do amazing feats of healing while in hypnotic trance. And the beauty is that I'm just the guide, the clients do the work, themselves.
Typically, in a multiphase hypnotherapy sequence such as the path methodologies, the client begins with short term suggestion work to help alleviate the initial pain and to get them used to working with the hypnotist. You get to realize that being in trance is really nothing more than focused concentration and bypassing of the critical faculty, i.e. letting go and letting the process work.
The next step is to work backward in hypnotic regression to the original event that began the subconscious imprint - the Initial Sensitizing Event (or ISE). In the case of this correspondent, there is probably one lurking back in childhood that is at the center of the issue. Finding that would greatly help in healing - and that is the key, healing the hurt. In the first regression session(s) we can bring the adult resources and perspective - from those times when the client feels strong - back to assist that hurt little child. To the inner mind (often manifest in subconscious memories living somewhere in the Amygdula) this is emotionally indistinguishable from being physically held by a caring adult. Knowing that somebody cares is the greatest thing in the world to that little inner child. Again, the result of this on a client's face can be a joy to behold.
In most hypnotherapy work, the core of healing is forgiveness. In nearly every case, I've noted the client going back to some time when they have been hurt by someone. Many times, the person doing the hurting doesn't even know they've done it. But it happens, and to a little child it can be catastrophic. Thus, using some healing method like chair therapy can have truly amazing results.
In chair therapy, I invite the client to imagine the offender sitting in a chair across my studio from the client - safely far away, yet close enough for the client to let'em have it.... The client usually does just that and sometimes the air can get a bit blue in my studio. But the end result is nearly always a degree of forgiveness, far more than the person ever imagined was possible. The result is clearly visible in the client's bearing. Right in the chair in my studio, I can see their shoulders square up. Metaphorically, it is the weight of their anger and hatred, a heavy burden they have carried for years, being lifted off.
In many cases, that's all that's needed. But in others, there are possibilities such as putting a version of one's self in the chair and repeating the process - forgiving one's self just like forgiving anyone else. And the results can be similar, especially when a person feels a lot of guilt. There are lots of other techniques as well, but those above can really help. For more on this, I invite you to check out my Hypnotherapy Homepage.
The most critical thing is to allow the process to work. When the client is willing to set their resistance and disbelief aside, just as if they were reading a good book, amazing feats of emotional healing are possible. And when this happens, hypnosis as an adjunct to the person's normal therapy can help accelerate their healing in ways they may never have thought possible.
If you feel like that person in to Salon.com, please seek some kind of help. You deserve better than to live with a burden like that on your shoulders. If appropriate, please feel free to look for a therapist, a hypnotherapist if you and your therapist feel the situation warrants. Above all, please seek the healing you deserve - because you deserve it.
