Trauma - Hypnosis Intervention
©
A young Central American M.D. trained in the U.S.
presented numerous problems that had been bothering him
for several years. He had physically recovered from
being tortured three years earlier, but hadn't been able
to sleep, eat, work, make love with his wife, or play
with his children. I asked him to tell me the whole
story. He reached a point in his narrative when he said,
"And then I broke." I sat silently waiting for him to
continue. Obviously he had survived. I wanted to hear
the rest of his story. He didn't volunteer anything more
so I asked, "And then what happened?" Often I will use
present tense to keep the person attached to the
emotional load that is in need of being released. In
situations like this I use past tense to help the person
detach from the intense emotions and embed the inferred
message that they survived.
He told me the part he didn't tell to the doctors who had treated
him, "I was floating at the ceiling, looking down at my broken body. I
thought I was dead." " And then what happened?" "The men pulled their
ski masks off. They were my childhood friends. They pulled my head up by
my hair and said, 'because we like you we are going to let you live.
Take your family and leave the country. Never come back." He did as he
was told and moved to South Florida where he was treated and hoped to
start a new life. He couldn't understand why he wasn't able to resume a
fully functional, productive life. His physical healing was complete.
I asked, "Did you ever get back into your body?" He said, "What?" "Did you
ever get back into your body?" "No one has ever asked me that." This is the
issue I have with traditional medicine and academic training in mental health.
There is spiritual phenomenon that exists outside of the scientific paradigm.
The academically trained healers do not ask questions relevant to soul loss and
retrieval. "Where are you in relation to your body?" "What do you mean?" "Let
your hand point to where you are in relation to your body." His arm rose up, his
hand extended above his head, his fingers pointed above him, "I'm still up
there." "Would you like to get back into your body?" "How do I do that?" "Slide
back in." "How do I do that?" "Like putting your hand in a glove, or your foot
in a shoe. Slide back in." He did. It was easy. This was an easy case. The total
session was about 20 minutes.
I was approached in public a year later by a young boy who stuck out his hand
to shake mine, and said, "Thank you." "What did I do?" "My daddy plays ball with
me, again." His father, the MD, stepped out of the crowd. He reported that he
had resumed working, eating, sleeping, making love with his wife, and playing
with his children.
Obviously the young MD had been getting some sleep and eating something
during the three years between his torture and talking to me. I did not question
the way he reported his symptoms pre and post session, I was seeking to gain
entrance into his view of reality. I assumed he meant he wasn't sleeping enough
to feel rested, and wasn't able to feel hunger or enjoy food, so he was forcing
himself to eat to survive.
It is not uncommon for someone who has been traumatized to get a sense of
getting out of the unsafe situation by "leaving the body". Rape and incest
victims will comment on how they "floated at the ceiling" while the sexual
assault was occurring, or "a part of me went and hid behind the rock, another
part of me went and hid behind the tree". It is my position that these
splintered aspects of self need to be talked / coaxed back into the body so that
the individual can live a fully embodied life.
During a lecture given by a former refugee at a traumatology conference, I
listened as she used dissociative language to describe her experiences of being
displaced, the difficulties of the refugee life, relocation to the United
States, and the challenges of adapting to a new culture. She appeared to be
acculturated, had obtained a degree and was a professor at a university. I
joined her as she walked out of the presentation and asked, "Did you ever get
back into your body." She responded, "That is not a part of a C ACREP accredited
program." "But it is a part of the process of recovering from trauma." "You
can't get back into the body until you know it is safe."
This therapeutic approach to traumatic response is not a part of the formal
educational processes for licensure in the United States, and I have not
encountered them in hypnosis training courses. They have been a common element
in my work with trauma clients who have taught me what works in healing trauma.
Respectfully submitted
By: Monica Geers Dahl
PS: In addressing the issue of emotional detachment - I
forgot to mention the term alexithymia, which is the inability to identify or
articulate feelings. It is prevalent in PTSD and addictions. When warriors
refuse to get treatment, it may be that they have been encultured as men and as
soldiers to turn off their feelings. This is a fine survival mechanism on the
battlefield where a moment of compassion for the enemy could result in the death
of a combatant; it makes it difficult to achieve intimacy in a civilian setting
or in the family.
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