I'm Shocked

by

Gerald Kein

I recently returned from the NHG conference in Massachusetts.  It was great to see old friends and meet many new people I have only known on Facebook.  While there I taught several classes but I just have to relate to you an experience I had one of my training programs about Abreaction Control.

My normal training programs that I teach at the Omni Hypnosis Training Center we spend quite a bit of time discussing abreaction's and how to control them.  The types of abreaction's and how to control them have changed dramatically since the 1950s or at least I thought they had.  Back in the 40s and 50s Harry Arrons wrote in his book "The New Master Course of Hypnotism" that if somebody started to abreaction during an induction generally they started rolling their head and moving her legs back and forth.  When this happened you were told to stand behind the individual physically stop the rotation of his head and emerge them.  You are then told to attempt to re-hypnotize the person and if you encountered the same situation emerged in and then send them to a psychologist. 

Today we know that given the same situation we have given a marvelous opportunity to induce deep hypnosis and regression by simply tapping them on the four head while saying "As I count from three back to one go back to the first situation or event that caused these feelings."  In just a few seconds we will find ourselves at the event that cause the problem the person is in your office for.  It may just be soft crying or rollaway to the other extreme loud screaming and flailing of the arms or even more.

To the hypnotist that is well-trained in abreaction therapy this is indeed a gift as it shortens the session dramatically.  You can then do the transformational therapy that should just take a few minutes and the client's problem is eliminated.  I know this may sound simple but the reality is often it is very simple.

Many individuals don't realize that some traumatic events of the past are kept from the knowledge of the subconscious mind.  These are things like rape, combat or extremely embarrassing situations.  They are kept repressed because if the subconscious had to dwell on them on a daily basis the individual would be unable to go through their life normally.  This can create a problem for the hypnotist.  It takes a tremendous amount of energy by the inner mind to constantly repress this information from the consciousness.  If during the induction the clients subconscious mind feels that the hypnotist is able to handle this repressed situation it will reveal this long forgotten memory and an abreaction will begin.  This can be a very exciting time for the hypnotist as it's totally unexpected and sometimes very violent.  If the hypnotist doesn't know how to instantly take care of the situation it can get rapidly out of control and cause the client harm.

We all understand the four types of abreaction that can present themselves but for review let's remember first, we have a directed regression.  That's when hypnotist purposely regresses a person back to a known time and place.  Second, the non-directed regression or the hypnotist simply says go back to the first situation or event that caused the problem you're in the office for.  Third, the spontaneous regression this is the one I talked about above when it comes on when you least expect it.  And last, the recreational regression.  This is generally any regression that things like searching for past lives etc.  Anyone of these regressions can be directly to an either gentle or severe abreaction and all of us need to know how to handle this situation.

The technique that I teach is very old and very simple.  You simply say to the person the words "The scene fades and you tend to your breathing."  Is extremely important for you to memorize these words as well as you memorize your own name.  They are the golden words that will keep you out of trouble during any abreaction.  During the more emotional abreaction's you may have to say these words more than once.  After you say the words the abreaction will slowly go away over a period of 30 to 90 seconds and you can then resume your session.  I went to the exact technique of how to do this in another article so this is just an overview.  It is not the jest of this article

to teach abreaction therapy but to go over situation that happened in my class.

In my class at the NGH while I was teaching this technique of handling abreaction's I noticed two people in the front row of my class kind of looking down at the floor and shaking her heads slowly.  They looked up at me and said that's not what I was taught in my training program.  Well in order to be politically correct I said well there are many ways to stop in abreaction and I asked them how they were taught.  They told me their instructor told them that if in abreaction happened they should lean over the individual lift up their eyelids and blow on their eyes.  Okay.  You got it.  This is why I was shocked!  And I guess I look shocked and for the first time in many classes I didn't know what the say for a few seconds. 

I thought to myself this technique is right out of that old Harry Arrons book we spoke about in paragraph two.  I couldn't believe what I heard could you imagine you have a client in your chair and all of a sudden a slip into a violent abreaction.  There screaming at the top of their lungs.  Their arms are flailing in all directions and you lean over (hopefully without getting hit by one of their arms) lift their eyelids and blow on their eyes.  I can't begin to count the ways how wrong this is.  For example those of you who have studied NLP realize you are creating an unbelievably strong negative anchor that will affect the individual for the rest of his life.  The permanent psychological harm you can cause a person to have can affect them for the rest of their lives.  I thought we moved away from this kind of training back in the 60s but I guess not.

When a client comes into our office they are trusting us to take care of them, mentally and psychically.  To lift their eyelids and blow on the eyes in the middle of a violent abreaction is a sign of abject lack of functional clinical training and whoever is using and teaching this technique owes it not only to their clients but to our entire profession to get retrained in this area.  If we as professional hypnotists are unable to handle these type of situations when they present themselves we probably should not be practicing professionally until we become competent in handling these matters without causing harm to the client.