Thoughts on Fear of becoming Violent, on Catharsis, and on Epilepsy

Thanks so much to each of you who are following this conversation. Thank you for all the suggestions and comments, and additional questions. Here are a few thoughts on topics you have raised.

Dear Wendy,

Thanks for your questions about the sexually abused woman and her new baby. It is very common, in fact predictable, that childhood sexual abuse memories and intrusive thoughts will plague people who have not fully released their sexual abuse on the very deepest levels during and after giving birth to new babies. You mentioned that you did three or four sessions with her; however, they did not sound like our typical Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy release sessions. She needs to do the deeper age regression work regardless of whether they put her on anti-depressants or not.

While people are in their Internships and PTI groups, I often hear the comment, “Oh no, not my sexual abuse again! I am so tired of that. Aren’t I finished with that issue yet?”

Sexual abuse is a very traumatic abuse of the Soul, and must continue to be healed on the deepest of levels. This fear that your client has is a perfect place to start her next session. Have her go to the most recent time she felt the fear that she would hurt or kill her baby. The baby she is afraid will be hurt is a terrified part of herself that she is projecting onto this baby.  She needs to get this from her own awareness through the Heart-Centered therapy, so don’t tell her but instead allow her to realize it through her work. In the session, when you are healing her inner child after her age regressions, have her connect with her baby (in the form of a second teddy bear), and assure both children that she will keep them safe.

It sounds to me like there is a lot more to this story than sexual abuse; perhaps she was unwanted and there was a contemplated or actual abortion attempt. The womb may have felt toxic or threatening to her. So it is great that you did the womb cleansing and the Ro-han and the discussion about hormones. They are good tools, but they do not get to the source of her terror. Also, group therapy at the hospital will not get her there. 

Again, we want to let her own subconscious mind go back to the source of the fear of killing “the baby” and resolve the conflict. So you need to do the deeper work with her and if there is a PTI group that she could attend, that would be the best! So refrain from focusing on the anti-depressants right now and just encourage her to come weekly to do this work. This baby is an opportunity for her to heal her issues on a very deep level and I hope she will take it. She is lucky she has you and all the great resources you have to offer her.

Let me know what happens.

Dear Dennis,

Thank you so much for joining in the blogosphere with us. I will speak to your first comment about your office space and releasing emotions. I have found it essential that I, as the therapist, feel completely at ease with the client’s outward expression of feelings. That includes being emotionally at ease as well as physically. I have worked in spaces where I felt like you did as far as being concerned about disturbing the neighbors, etc. I found myself becoming more and more tense about the work and that actually does inhibit the client’s expression, of course.

So it is essential that your space is conducive to full expression of sounds and emotions in order for the client to feel relaxed and to achieve the emotional catharsis so necessary to real healing. Remember resistance to anything is fear; whether it is your fear or the client’s, it still causes them to resist!

Regarding advertisement, I do feel that a separate web site for your promotion of the hypnotherapy is a very good idea. Why? Because I know this will draw people to you who are looking for what you have and then you don’t have to waste valuable “therapy time” educating them on the benefits of hypnotherapy and trying to convince them to do it.

There are more and more people worldwide who know the benefits of hypnotherapy and are out there searching for someone just like you, in Denmark or anywhere else. So setting this up on a web site will be beneficial to you as well as to the clients who are really needing help.

Good luck!

Dear Maureen,

Thank you so much for finding us in the blogosphere. I have treated one major case of epilepsy with hypnotherapy with great results. She no longer has seizures and can drive without danger. However, her epilepsy was caused from an accident during her twenties and was not from childhood.

In terms of using hypnosis with an individual diagnosed with epilepsy, one useful suggestion is to use an “active-alert” induction rather than the customary “passive-relaxation” hypnotic induction. A relaxation-based induction may exacerbate certain disturbing somatic experiences. Find a previously learned skilled activity for the client to focus on during the induction which will permit the experience of a highly focused but relaxed state conducive to therapeutic interaction. An example in the literature is the playing of the computer game Tetris (American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 44:2, October 2001). This approach to induction bears similarity to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s principle of flow, in that it involves a dissociated engagement in a subjectively meaningful, skill-based activity. The article is available on the Resources page for members of the Heart-Centered Therapies Association: search for “The Use of a Skill-Based Activity in Therapeutic Induction” by W. E. Winter. Or just click here.

There may well be physical causes of emotional symptoms. Recent studies reported depression in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (Tebartz van Elst et al., Biological Psychiatry, 46:1614-23, 1999). Epilepsy is mentioned as one source of stress that leads to dissociation (Harvard Mental Health Letter, January 2005). Bessel A. Van Der Kolk found apparent similarities between some aspects of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, PTSD, and some long term sequelae of childhood trauma (Anxiety Research, U.K., 1992, volume 4, pp. 199-212).

Let me know how your work with this client progresses.

Thank you for your interest, your comments and questions, and let’s keep the conversation going!