PTSD is treatable by hypnosis. This can be quick, effective and long lasting, requires no drugs or other aids and can transform lives from ongoing nightmarish torture into wholesome, fulfilling contentment. In order for this to occur, the true roots of the original trauma must be addressed.

However, the discovery of the original catalyst(s) of the client’s PTSD, particularly when the events in question have happened early in the client’s life, perhaps many decades prior, is never straightforward, may not be in the client’s or the therapist’s best interest and is not, in my belief or experience, strictly necessary.

Generally, therapists rely on the client’s memory, the client’s understanding of this personal history and their ability to clearly and meaningfully relate this to the therapist to whom they have turned for assistance. 

The therapist can then devise a hypnosis session which addresses these issues to resolve the client’s long-term problem. I have done this many times but with mixed success, eventually dawning on the realisation that clients’ memories are like any other person’s memory (including my own) – incomplete, changeable over time and therefore unreliable.

In many cases the client will describe some terrible past event or events and ascribe their current, ongoing state of stressful torment to these specific events. And yet, working on this information can often have no effect at all. So, why might this be?

Human survival instincts are such that, in some cases at least, a person’s unbearable memories are kept entirely from conscious attention in order for that person to function in society and to cope with day-to-day living. The original events, often being too traumatic to allow any recall whatsoever, are buried too deeply for the conscious mind to fully access. A different or altered set of events, either real (though less traumatic) or simply imagined are substituted for the primary catalyst and it is these alternative sets of memories which are retained and then subsequently related to therapist. Devising a hypnotherapy based on these mistaken/altered memories will yield little success, the actual events remaining untreated.

While it is certainly possible to uncover these original buried memories by way of hypnosis, I believe that it is highly inadvisable to do so. Such memories have been taken out of the sphere of waking, conscious attention for a good reason – survival. The reliving of these original traumatic events may cause serious harm to your client and truly do not need to be brought back into waking consciousness in order for them to be resolved.

Although the client’s conscious waking mind may be unaware of the true roots of their PTSD, the client’s deeper mind certainly is aware and can be persuaded to resolve these in its own way, through its own understanding of the client’s psyche, an understanding far better than either the client’s or the therapist’s.

What is required here is a mechanism whereby the deeper mind is given the opportunity to reassess these events, understand them from a different perspective and thus lay to rest the client’s ongoing suffering.

A theory to which I adhere is that, at some deeper level of the mind, the original events which caused the later PTSD in the client’s life, are being constantly relived, reviewed and re-experienced thus causing stress and suffering throughout the client’s psyche.

The deeper mind is very capable of bringing this constant replay to an end but needs encouragement for this to be achieved. This can be done simply by bringing the problem to the attention of the deeper mind, informing the deeper mind that this constant replaying is extremely unhelpful and suggesting that great benefit can be acquired by the client should this be brought to an end.

Single Eye Hypnosis offers several complete hypnotherapy scripts in which this can be achieved.

Burning Down the Haunted House

The Head Exchange

Peeling the Mirror