This is a draft of my upcoming article for my column The CE4 Corner, in the Minnesota MUFON Journal. Comments are always welcome.
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In recent hypnotherapy work at Explore with Hypnosis, I have observed a common, sometimes heart-wrenching theme. Whether the cases involved alien abduction or more earthly issues, the theme is there. More often than not, the person's life story involves some form of life-long abuse and the sense (whether real or not) that at any moment, it could happen again. Often, the person involved has found themselves in the role of victim. In many aspects of life, the person has lost control of their very being.
In this article, I aggregate several recent cases into one to illustrate how this particular issue shows up, and how it can be resolved. A week or two ago, a woman I will call "Eleanor" came into my studio with a significant mind-body health issue. In this case, although she was an experiencer, the issue she wanted to work on had little to do with close encounters (at least on the surface). Rather, it involved significant pain, both physical and emotional. As I interviewed her, I found she had endured a life of abuse, both at the hands of humans and of other-than-humans.
There is no predicting either UFO abduction or abuse. An event causing intense fear could occur at any moment. There is no defense against it. The result is often a victim mentality - the sense that one isn't in control of one's own life. Left unchecked, the effects can cascade into fatalism, depression, substance abuse, and the litany goes on... The result can be severe, even life-threatening, while at the very least a source of misery to the client. In Eleanor's case, she had nearly given up, deciding there was nothing she could do. As a result, instead of externally, she carried the pain and struggle within her own body - resulting in significant mind-body illness.
During hypnotherapy with close encounter experiencers, I often find this issue of loss of control. Thus one of the greatest objectives often involves keeping, regaining or reasserting control over life. This is especially true when the event could occur again at any time.
During hypnotic regression, it turned out that there had probably been several abusers - some human, some nonhuman. In each case, Eleanor found herself back in earlier moments in life when she was being tormented. In each case, we had to do significant fear and pain management using a number of powerful hypnotherapy tools (the topic of another article) to help her come to terms with what had happened.
In the face of this seemingly random peril - this sword of Damocles hanging overhead, how could I help Eleanor resolve the fear, anger and helplessness that came with her experiences? How could she resolve her fear of "Them" returning at any moment.
In hypnotherapy, there are several techniques available to help a person come to terms with past or present pain. More often than not, they involve resolution, confrontation and forgiveness. Each is powerful, moving, and sometimes painful. And almost always, they are stunningly effective.
In one of the simplest techniques, which hypnotherapists call "chair therapy" or "forgiveness of others" (FOO for short), I invite the client/experiencer to imagine that the offender is sitting in a chair some distance away from the client (whether that offender is an alien or a human abuser is largely immaterial). In this case, I will just call the offender 'the bad guy'. As the FOO session gets going, I invite the client can say whatever they wish - the bad guy has to listen - it's my studio and my rules.
Now, as Eleanor confronted her abuser, a rather powerful string of expletives (quite uncharacteristic of Eleanor) flew across the room. While most such sessions are far less colorful, regardless of the delivery the core message gets through - a message of pain and confrontation.
Then I invited Eleanor to give the bad guy an opportunity to respond to her diatribes. The ultimate intent is to foster a dialog leading to forgiveness and in some cases, this can occur relatively quickly. In Eleanor's case, one of the bad guys - a relative from the past - quickly apologized, then faded from the scene.
But often - including other bad guys in Eleanor's life - it isn't that easy. When the bad guy is particularly abusive, he often feels little remorse. He either doesn't understand or he adopts an arrogant attitude. There is almost no way he's going to apologize - at least not without a little help. At this point, I invite the client to imagine filling a bucket with the pain the bad guy caused her. She imagines ripping it out by the roots and plopping it in the bucket or some similar imagery. In this case Eleanor's bucket was chock full of some very ugly stuff - both physical and mental/emotional pain.
I then have the client give the pain back to the bad guy. Again, since it's my studio and my rules, the bad guy has to take the pain, own it, feel it. Often at this point, the bad guy displays a powerful change of tone - a shift from arrogance to regret when the bad guy realizes the extent of the pain he has caused. When he feels all that pain cascading back to him, suddenly a change occurs. Often times, the result is an apology - tearful, heartfelt regret.
This basic sequence most often occurs when the bad guy is human - an unrepentant abuser from the client's childhood (usually no longer alive). Once this transformation occurs, the client/victim can then forgive the bad guy (at least in part) and let go of the hurt carried in their mind/body/soul most of their lives. The result is like shedding a hundred-pound weight, a burden they have carried on their shoulders for years.
As I watched, Eleanor confronted the abuser in her childhood and then let him go. In an instant, she shed the burden of years, setting aside most of a lifetime burden of anger and hatred. Her shoulders relaxed. She sat taller in the chair and looked as if she had just cast off a weight equivalent to that of a canoe or an ox yoke.
But sometimes, especially when dealing with alien abduction, the bad guy digs in and becomes even more arrogant. Especially when dealing with an 'alien' persona, the bad guy sometimes takes on the air of entitlement - a 'scientist' entitled to do what it wishes with it's experimental humans. On multiple occasions, the alien persona told me, directly channeling through the experiencer, that it/he/she has the right. They are superior beings, scientists conducting research for our own good. In Eleanor's case, this 'alien' was truly an arrogant piece of work.
I often hear the 'alien' claim that the experiencer agreed to this role, perhaps in a previous life, perhaps while a soul in a life between lives, or some other metaphysical (i.e. unprovable) scenario. In this case, an 'alien leader' claimed that Eleanor had given them permission while in the inter-life.
My response was "BS" (I often spell out the expletive full form but this is a newsletter fit for the whole family). I often tell the alien persona that I don't believe them, that the person (my client) is a living, conscious, sentient being in a free-will universe. He/she has the right to self-determination, happiness and free will. And 'you' (the bad guy) have no right to interfere with that.
The 'alien' persona often challenges me at that point - who am I (a mere human) to challenge its authority? (Imagine a lab mouse standing up to the scientist). My usual response is that I am the healer/hypnotherapist that Eleanor (or whatever the experiencer's name is) has asked for help. Eleanor has asked my help to deal with the pain YOU have inflicted upon her. This gives me every right to challenge you (the bad guy - add a few !!!! points here).
Often, at that point, the client/experiencer chimes in, concurring, emboldened. All during this time, she is feeling increasingly empowered by the fact that someone has finally believed them, finally stood up to the abuser. As Eleanor broke into the conversation, I heard her increasingly strident voice telling the alien persona in no uncertain terms, to go away.
I often ask the client's spiritual side or higher self what relationship he/she actually wants to have with the phenomenon. At that point, the experiencer often asserts her own authority over her life, telling her alien tormentors, 'I forbid this' or 'I revoke permission' to do this. The result is often a surprise.
On more than one occasion, I have heard the 'alien persona' suddenly change from a heartless lab scientist to something more like a teacher. In The Cosmic Bridge, I describe the case of 'Jenny,' who had experienced a lifetime of torment at the hands of the phenomenon. During this confrontational stage of hypnotherapy, as she stood up to her alien captors, I heard the leader unexpectedly say something like 'GOOD, you finally get it...'
For Jenny and Eleanor, the lesson appears to be that each of us is a soul living a human existence. And as such, we each have the inalienable (no pun intended) right to our own sovereignty. We have the right to grant and/or revoke permission in any relationship, be it with humans or aliens.
Could that be the actual point, the reason for at least some of the negative aspects of the close encounter phenomenon? Could part of our interaction with the phenomenon, the darker, challenging side, actually be a lesson? Could the phenomenon in some sense be trying to teach us this very subject?
When this change occurs within the experiencer's subconscious, the result is nearly always a profound transformation. Fear becomes greatly reduced (or vanishes). Often, the abduction events change character - or even cease altogether.
It's a matter of individual discernment, whether the experiencer is actually talking with a real alien being. One hypothesis is that there is indeed a degree of telepathic contact going on. However another view is that, like release and forgiveness involving other human bad guys (living or deceased), the alien persona is simply a representation within the experiencer's mind. While several experiments might be possible to prove which is the case, for the healing process in my studio, the result is immaterial.
In addition, it's not clear whether an actual change occurs in the physical dynamics of the phenomenon. In my view, since we don't understand what the phenomenon actually is, the actual impact on the abduction scenario is still beyond understanding. But that's a topic for a different article - one we've covered in the past, and will again in the future. But whatever the case, nearly every experiencer has told me that their interactions with the phenomenon changed dramatically following this work.
Following forgiveness and assertion process, the fear they once felt, the dread of random kidnappings during the night, vanishes. Sometimes abductions turn into contacts - voluntary interactions. Sometimes they involve metaphysical gifts such as healing, psychic abilities, etc. Some become a religious experience - turning their soul and their experiences over to God (in whatever way they believe in God). And for still others, the interaction ceases altogether as they slam the door on their abductors.
Have we 'solved' the problem of alien abduction? No(!!!). I do not believe we even understand what the phenomenon is and what it's doing in our world. Therefore, as mentioned above, we still don't know how it has actually changed for the experiencer.
Have we found a way to help the experiencer? Yes, I believe we definitely have found a way to reduce the pain of the experience. Now, the experiencer can come to terms with whatever is going on. And in that, I believe we have made an important first step, helping the experiencer to regain sovereignty over his/her life. Now, we can begin to reclaim our lives from 'Them.'
