Question:
I had lots of hypnosis sessions for some time to help me deal with a driving phobia I have. Well it got me back into the car again, but the anxiety/panic attacks are still there- so I don't see it as being a very successful outcome.
What the hypnotherapy DID do was dredge up my abused childhood I have been tryng to forget ever since leaving home. I had to re-live horrible events and 'process' this, in order to move on to a fulfilling life. I think I only really coped by actually pushing the abuse to the back of my mind again, beacuse I feel they are in the past, it is over- one must move on. I have no inclination to dredge it all up again, not for anything. It nearly broke me.
I still however want to get rid of this phobia/anxiety that is hampering my lifestyle. Are there any mind therapies that can help me get rid of this phobia without having to go back to my past again?
Hiya
EFT, EmoTrance or NLP are fabulous at being able to deal with these past issues but without needing the specific details of the problem.
An example - A lady came to me to lose weight and we then found that an incident that had happened at a much earlier time was the cause of her low self-esteem; which she got around by eating to comfort herself. We used EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) to melt the very painful feelings away, without having to go through the trauma of the incident itself. We used a codeword for the incident, which if my memory serves me correctly was 'CUSHION' because that was what she was sitting next to on the sofa in my therapy room. Her face was a picture as she left, saying that she was raped and had no problem telling me, even though she had never been able to see, hear or write the word up until that point. She was so happy to have got the issue out of the way for the first time in her life and without reliving the painful experience.
So, there are ways of getting relief from the hurtful feelings in a pain free manner.
Hope this helps.
Hugs
Steve
PS - There are llots of posts on the therapies I have mentioned, just do a search in Mind Therapies and they will pop up for you.
Hi
Just thought I'd mention that mental and emotional treatments with Reiki are great for this purpose too.
Donna.xx.
And another option!
You don't have to give up on hypnosis, there are hypnotherapists out there who don't delve into the past any more than they have to in order to understand the problem and how it affects you. They then focus on the solution using resources that you already have. This is called brief solution-focused therapy, and is very effective when used in conjunction with hypnosis.
As far as the phobia is concerned, and the trauma related to the abuse, this can be dealt with quickly by a hypnotherapist trained in a technique known as the Rewind, or VK, also known as the Fast Phobia Cure. This is recommended by the Red Poppy association and is often used with people suffering from PTSD, including soldiers returning from areas of conflict. It is a gentle non-exposure technique that is extremely effective - I've "cured" people of their phobias in just one session. In fact, I was training as a counsellor and wanted to work with abuse victims when a demonstration of the Rewind/VK was demonstrated on an abuse victim - its simplicity and effectiveness was amazing and I jumped ship from an expensive counselling course that I'd already paid for, over to a hypnotherapy course that taught the Rewind/VK and also combined it with solution-focused therapy.
If you'd like to find someone in your area who has these skills, or if you want to know more about the VK, pm me and I'll see if I can point you in the right direction.
No doubt you'll have lots of advice on the various therapies that can help you over the next few days, but no-onecan tellyou what is the best, only you can select the one that is right for you.
Hope this is also of some help.
Amber
I agree. Reiki can be very gentle, working purely with the energy with no actual doing of anything by you. It may take longer than Steve's suggestions, which I think are really great and faster and pretty painless, but many prefer it at least as a start. Or you can have Reiki with EFT or EmoTrance.
some great suggestions above
the meridian therapies like FREEWAY-CER , TAT, EFT, TFT, Emotrance etc are great for phobias, so is nlp fsat phobia cure, or a combination of the above can indeed hel to resolve this.
just because the past may have been painful it does not mean your future has to be
dez
I would have to agree with Amber Lady here. Also, it concerns me that you say that you had a lot of hypnotherapy sessions. Phobias are usually fairly easy work for a decent hypnotherapist, I rarely need to see someone more than twice for a phobia and can cure most in one session.
Another point that concerns me is that hypnotherapy is an extremely effective way of healing emotional problems from the past. If a therapist has actually caused you more anxiety by doing this rather than helping you to deal with it then I would again be very wary of that particular therapist and their training. Obviously, it's unfair to cast too many dispersions about their techniques (or lack of) without knowing all the details which an online forum is not the place for. However, I have a therapist based near me who I get stories like this about far too often.
[align=left] [/align]
I agree that your hypnotherapy sessions should not have been as painful as they have been for you.. things which are deep rooted can take a while to heal and resolve, occasionally, the personalities aren't quite in tune, so people don't get what they wanted out of their treatments and objectives aren't met. Don't be afraid to say whis isn't working with this person - there's nothing wrong with moving to someone else who does suit you.
I would advise that you look into meridian therapies - there are more EFT practitioners out there than those who do Freeway CER, TATor Emotrance - but you may find that an EFT practitioner will be trained in more than one modality - thus having more tools a their disposal.
As has already been explained the beauty of EFT is that you don't need to delve right into it in order to work on it.. and as your perception of these traumas ease you will be able to think of these events without the trauma you face now and the triggers which once caused you to feel very bad indeed wont affect you how they do. With EFT it's quite astonishing how your perception of events can change in just a few minutes.
If you feel you are ready - don't push it to the back of your mind, face it head on - in a way which is appropriate to you and put it behind you for good.
Thanks xx
Without going into the details, I will say I remember little of my childhood and I feel my mind dida marvelous thing by pushing memories to the farthest regions in order for me to survive and ultimately live a happy life.
I originally went to hypnotherapy to get over my driving phobia- all I wanted to do was get in the car and drive! I went to 2 hypnotherapists in the end and it was all about re-living past events, but this still didn't help me to come to terms with things, so I made to the conscious decison after some time to end therapy and forget about my abused childhood, kind of deny a lot of it happened, forgive my dad and get on with my life.
So Istarted to read around,and began focusing on the now, reading spiritual books, doing my Reiki, and attempting to find my Authentic Self, the Happiness within. And slowly I am getting there. I don't ever talk about the past, there is no need. Now is all we have!
But the driving phobia thing is still there, the anxiety tied to it is still there and it is crippling my life as we live in a little village and sometimes my kids need to go farther afield for activities.
I tried to analyse why I have the phobia and I think it boils down to 2 things.
1- Getting stuck in a place where I can't get out (has happened once and was very stressful) which also links into
2- being verbally abused by other car drivers eg for hitting their car, blocking the way, being too slow etc. Admittedly I think the bit about being shouted at, being verbally abused DOES stem from my childhood.
So all I want is a magic therapy :)to help me get over this so I can drive. I am in the process of booking some driving lessons with BSM, but want to have seen somebody first to help me deal with my anxiety when any reversing is asked for. There some EFT therapists near me, so maybe it would be worth checking them out and doing more Reiki than I normally do! Would one session of EFT be enough?
I have seen three clients for driving phobias recently, and each one was just a single session. However, last year I saw one that took two.
It all depends on your trigger that causes the phobia. A good EFTer will usually get the job done quickly.
hugs
Steve
I have also had very positive results with people with driving phobias - they are for the most part resolved in the first session. I have even managed to clear a fear of motorways and driving during a short presentation, so if you do find an experienced EFT'er you may find that it is much more effective.
I'd also like to say that you are not alone in the experiences you have explained as contributing factors to this problem - it's a natural thing to have this wariness, obviously the extent to which this hinders you is far more than it should be. Please don't feel alone in this - there are ways of overcoming this without pain.
I feel I must add something here to all the good advice above. While most phobias are helped in one session, some phobias are a symptom of something else and refuse to go until this is helped, and some others go about eg 80% and then take a few more sessions to completely go. Also in my experience there are many physical conditions that aggravate phobias and anxiety disorders, such as severe overbreathing, some neurological disorders and some allergies/sensitivities. I have helped many people who have been written off by other therapists because they didn't respond as fast as expected, and I myself have frustrated clients by giving them over-optimistic expectations in the past and even get the number of sessions wrong now sometimes.
What I'm trying to say is please don't beat yourself up if you have to go for more sessions in order to be completely free from this.
What the hypnotherapy DID do was dredge up my abused childhood I have been tryng to forget ever since leaving home. I had to re-live horrible events and 'process' this, in order to move on to a fulfilling life. I think I only really coped by actually pushing the abuse to the back of my mind again, beacuse I feel they are in the past, it is over- one must move on. I have no inclination to dredge it all up again, not for anything. It nearly broke me.
I still however want to get rid of this phobia/anxiety that is hampering my lifestyle. Are there any mind therapies that can help me get rid of this phobia without having to go back to my past again?
Answers:
Hiya
EFT, EmoTrance or NLP are fabulous at being able to deal with these past issues but without needing the specific details of the problem.
An example - A lady came to me to lose weight and we then found that an incident that had happened at a much earlier time was the cause of her low self-esteem; which she got around by eating to comfort herself. We used EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) to melt the very painful feelings away, without having to go through the trauma of the incident itself. We used a codeword for the incident, which if my memory serves me correctly was 'CUSHION' because that was what she was sitting next to on the sofa in my therapy room. Her face was a picture as she left, saying that she was raped and had no problem telling me, even though she had never been able to see, hear or write the word up until that point. She was so happy to have got the issue out of the way for the first time in her life and without reliving the painful experience.
So, there are ways of getting relief from the hurtful feelings in a pain free manner.
Hope this helps.
Hugs
Steve
PS - There are llots of posts on the therapies I have mentioned, just do a search in Mind Therapies and they will pop up for you.
Answers:
Hi
Just thought I'd mention that mental and emotional treatments with Reiki are great for this purpose too.
Donna.xx.
Answers:
And another option!
You don't have to give up on hypnosis, there are hypnotherapists out there who don't delve into the past any more than they have to in order to understand the problem and how it affects you. They then focus on the solution using resources that you already have. This is called brief solution-focused therapy, and is very effective when used in conjunction with hypnosis.
As far as the phobia is concerned, and the trauma related to the abuse, this can be dealt with quickly by a hypnotherapist trained in a technique known as the Rewind, or VK, also known as the Fast Phobia Cure. This is recommended by the Red Poppy association and is often used with people suffering from PTSD, including soldiers returning from areas of conflict. It is a gentle non-exposure technique that is extremely effective - I've "cured" people of their phobias in just one session. In fact, I was training as a counsellor and wanted to work with abuse victims when a demonstration of the Rewind/VK was demonstrated on an abuse victim - its simplicity and effectiveness was amazing and I jumped ship from an expensive counselling course that I'd already paid for, over to a hypnotherapy course that taught the Rewind/VK and also combined it with solution-focused therapy.
If you'd like to find someone in your area who has these skills, or if you want to know more about the VK, pm me and I'll see if I can point you in the right direction.
No doubt you'll have lots of advice on the various therapies that can help you over the next few days, but no-onecan tellyou what is the best, only you can select the one that is right for you.
Hope this is also of some help.
Amber
Answers:
I agree. Reiki can be very gentle, working purely with the energy with no actual doing of anything by you. It may take longer than Steve's suggestions, which I think are really great and faster and pretty painless, but many prefer it at least as a start. Or you can have Reiki with EFT or EmoTrance.
Answers:
some great suggestions above
the meridian therapies like FREEWAY-CER , TAT, EFT, TFT, Emotrance etc are great for phobias, so is nlp fsat phobia cure, or a combination of the above can indeed hel to resolve this.
just because the past may have been painful it does not mean your future has to be
dez
Answers:
I would have to agree with Amber Lady here. Also, it concerns me that you say that you had a lot of hypnotherapy sessions. Phobias are usually fairly easy work for a decent hypnotherapist, I rarely need to see someone more than twice for a phobia and can cure most in one session.
Another point that concerns me is that hypnotherapy is an extremely effective way of healing emotional problems from the past. If a therapist has actually caused you more anxiety by doing this rather than helping you to deal with it then I would again be very wary of that particular therapist and their training. Obviously, it's unfair to cast too many dispersions about their techniques (or lack of) without knowing all the details which an online forum is not the place for. However, I have a therapist based near me who I get stories like this about far too often.
[align=left] [/align]
Answers:
I agree that your hypnotherapy sessions should not have been as painful as they have been for you.. things which are deep rooted can take a while to heal and resolve, occasionally, the personalities aren't quite in tune, so people don't get what they wanted out of their treatments and objectives aren't met. Don't be afraid to say whis isn't working with this person - there's nothing wrong with moving to someone else who does suit you.
I would advise that you look into meridian therapies - there are more EFT practitioners out there than those who do Freeway CER, TATor Emotrance - but you may find that an EFT practitioner will be trained in more than one modality - thus having more tools a their disposal.
As has already been explained the beauty of EFT is that you don't need to delve right into it in order to work on it.. and as your perception of these traumas ease you will be able to think of these events without the trauma you face now and the triggers which once caused you to feel very bad indeed wont affect you how they do. With EFT it's quite astonishing how your perception of events can change in just a few minutes.
If you feel you are ready - don't push it to the back of your mind, face it head on - in a way which is appropriate to you and put it behind you for good.
Answers:
Thanks xx
Without going into the details, I will say I remember little of my childhood and I feel my mind dida marvelous thing by pushing memories to the farthest regions in order for me to survive and ultimately live a happy life.
I originally went to hypnotherapy to get over my driving phobia- all I wanted to do was get in the car and drive! I went to 2 hypnotherapists in the end and it was all about re-living past events, but this still didn't help me to come to terms with things, so I made to the conscious decison after some time to end therapy and forget about my abused childhood, kind of deny a lot of it happened, forgive my dad and get on with my life.
So Istarted to read around,and began focusing on the now, reading spiritual books, doing my Reiki, and attempting to find my Authentic Self, the Happiness within. And slowly I am getting there. I don't ever talk about the past, there is no need. Now is all we have!
But the driving phobia thing is still there, the anxiety tied to it is still there and it is crippling my life as we live in a little village and sometimes my kids need to go farther afield for activities.
I tried to analyse why I have the phobia and I think it boils down to 2 things.
1- Getting stuck in a place where I can't get out (has happened once and was very stressful) which also links into
2- being verbally abused by other car drivers eg for hitting their car, blocking the way, being too slow etc. Admittedly I think the bit about being shouted at, being verbally abused DOES stem from my childhood.
So all I want is a magic therapy :)to help me get over this so I can drive. I am in the process of booking some driving lessons with BSM, but want to have seen somebody first to help me deal with my anxiety when any reversing is asked for. There some EFT therapists near me, so maybe it would be worth checking them out and doing more Reiki than I normally do! Would one session of EFT be enough?
Answers:
I have seen three clients for driving phobias recently, and each one was just a single session. However, last year I saw one that took two.
It all depends on your trigger that causes the phobia. A good EFTer will usually get the job done quickly.
hugs
Steve
Answers:
I have also had very positive results with people with driving phobias - they are for the most part resolved in the first session. I have even managed to clear a fear of motorways and driving during a short presentation, so if you do find an experienced EFT'er you may find that it is much more effective.
I'd also like to say that you are not alone in the experiences you have explained as contributing factors to this problem - it's a natural thing to have this wariness, obviously the extent to which this hinders you is far more than it should be. Please don't feel alone in this - there are ways of overcoming this without pain.
Answers:
I feel I must add something here to all the good advice above. While most phobias are helped in one session, some phobias are a symptom of something else and refuse to go until this is helped, and some others go about eg 80% and then take a few more sessions to completely go. Also in my experience there are many physical conditions that aggravate phobias and anxiety disorders, such as severe overbreathing, some neurological disorders and some allergies/sensitivities. I have helped many people who have been written off by other therapists because they didn't respond as fast as expected, and I myself have frustrated clients by giving them over-optimistic expectations in the past and even get the number of sessions wrong now sometimes.
What I'm trying to say is please don't beat yourself up if you have to go for more sessions in order to be completely free from this.
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