Friday, September 28, 2012

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder & Hypnosis


-Ask the Expert-

Question:

ptsd, hypnosis, memory
Hello, i have a simple and straightforward question: is it possible, through hypnosis, to delete completely and permanently part of one's past from memory?
Thank you for your answer.

Answer:

Dear Jane, i could straightforwardly answer you no. But that would not be the truth, because the truth is way more complicated than that.
I will explain better: when we -as human beings- have to face very stressful situations, our nervous system fixes these times in our memory, and they often become knots of anxiety and distress.
This means that, in some unfortunate cases, we are forced to live always focusing on these chunks of memory; this causes us to suffer, and gives us the feeling that time never passed, and that our future will not exist. Always remember that this experience is only determined by the way our minds work, and it is not reality.

What i just described you is what who suffers from a condition called “Post-traumatic stress disorder” experiences usually. As you can imagine, this kind of disorder is particularly constraining, because the subject perceives time as in a story that never ends and always comes back to the starting point.
What can be done? The answer is clear: it is not possible to delete memories, but it is possible to reallocate those memories within a story that is able to create an evolutionary patch in the subject's experience.

In order to achieve this, hypnosis is a valuable tool, because through the alteration of the state of consciousness of the subject, it is possible to modify the emotional answer to certain memories, so to give back to the subject a feeling of control over his reality.

Dear Jane, I do not know what happened to you, but what i can tell you as a psychotherapist is that what you are living right now is only part of a narrative structure that caged you in a game without end, a tale that loops taking away your ability to make projects for the future.

I will conclude quoting an ancient Greek philosopher, Epictetus, in the hope that will bring you some hope: “Not things, but opinions about things, trouble men.”

Good luck.

Answer:
Paolo Chellini, Psychotherapist
Question:
Jane, 25 years old
Publication Date: 03/19/2008

Check out the original article here

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