Its great when the topic of your next blog falls into your lap and this week was no exception.
In the last few days I have had repairs done to the chimney stacks on my house and at one point found myself standing with the gentleman who owned the roofing company watching his workers run up and down the ladders and across the roof without a care in the world.
It prompted a conversation between us as to whether I had helped people in the past with issues concerning heights to which I responded I had done so on a number of occasions.
I gave him the example of a gentleman who had come to see me nearly two years ago in relation to a problem he was having getting up a simple step ladder. The issue was becoming a pressing one as he was moving into air conditioning and had a fantastic business opportunity in that sector but could no longer function due to this increasing fear of falling.
He asked how I had resolved it and I told him that I used regression and that the clients initial fear had stemmed from something seemingly unconnected from a rational perspective (it was related to taking his kids to look at rock pools on a family holiday). We dealt with it in one session and I have no reason to believe that it caused him any further problems afterwards.
The roofer was amazed and fascinated; Fascinated that without prompting the client had immediately regressed to a moment in his past that cognitively he would have struggle to locate using psychoanalysis, but that had clearly attributed to his presenting problem. Amazed that this simple process had been so effective and had resolved the issue in less than an hour.
It didn't dawn on me to use it as the subject of this weeks blog until I read a Facebook post dismissing regression and painting it as a dangerous tool (on the basis of a 'straight to dvd' film and a stereotypical and sensationalised example of it being used rather badly).
What bothered me more than this article in the Scientific American, a decent magazine (though not decent enough that I would regularly rely on it for the bulk of my research) and which was really a blog to promote the upcoming release of a book on memory, was the need to share such a flimsy and misleading piece on such a respected hypnosis forum.
Therefore I thought I would use my irritation at the sharing of this unhelpful and as mentioned, misleading post to write a blog on the process of regression and why not only is it a safe process in the right hands, but an incredibly effective one.
When a skilled hypnotherapist uses regression as a tool they do so with the utmost consideration to their client and with a responsibility to their profession, their professional organisations and their fellow hypnotists. A proper hypnotist using regression will never make assumptions (this is what differentiates hypnosis from psychoanalysis) and will also never lead unless appropriate ( for instance someone had an accident and has since been unable to drive). They are extremely mindful of the state of suggestibility a client may be in and therefore are mindful of the words and questions they themselves use. They often will also have a number of additional tools such as direct suggestion, other therapeutic approaches or maybe a bunch of NLP techniques they have picked up along the way, to offer the client.
The clients subconscious does the work and takes the client unprompted to the source of their issue. Of all the hypnotherapists I know who are confident enough to routinely use regression, not one of them would have found themselves in the contrived hollywood situation the author of the blog based her whole headline around (to grab the attention and push her book).
And confidence is a key factor in the use of regression, because working with high level emotions in a client takes a hypnotist who can remain composed and unfazed. It is more than fair to say that the reason many (not all) hypnotists don't use regression is a level of personal confidence rather than a dismissal of the process itself. Admittedly there are also some who do not use regression because the techniques they use suit their own methodology better and then there are those that just don't believe in the process full stop. I do not have a problem either way, I use it because it works for me, the efficacy of regression for me is not in doubt and the clients respond well to it. Sometimes I don't use it because I don't need to (for instance a golfer needing a hand with their swing) and then there are also instances where it hasn't been successful (like any other process for that matter) so I will revert to something else or explore why it wasn't.
Simply put, regression is a straighforward process, that works safely when a basic set of rules are adhered to and at the top of the list of those rules is that we do not guide a client to create memories that suit a narrative or are based on conjecture. If you've been in the hypnosis business for any length of time and have been open enough to look into how processes other than your own work, you should know that is actually how your peers use hypnosis.
Whether the memories are factually 100 percent accurate or not is almost an entirely different discussion altogether. A lot of hypnotherapists who use regression are also very aware of the research on memories, false memories and how memories are retrieved. It actually doesn't lessen the argument of using regression at all in my opinion. It is about the process and the attribution of memory, whether wholly accurate or 'remade'.
The research on memory and recreating memories is often cited as a reason to discredit regression, but this is completely disingenuous because a hypnotherapist working with regression does not create the memory at all, if the memory is made up it is done so entirely by the client following back an emotion and in doing so aligns it with many other approaches, such as some used by NLPers.
Many critics of regression will know this but give the impression that some more malevolent memory manipulation is taking place when regression is being. The fact is that once the memory has been supplied by the client, the hypnotist will coordinate therapeutic processes, not rewrite the initial memory.
Some of those that label the hypnotist who uses regression (in the proper way) as outdated, misinformed or worse, deliberately spread articles that propagate the notion that regression must be dangerous, need to look at their own approaches.
For instance if we are going to insist that memories are factually accurate, authentic and unable to be manipulated or compromised in order that we can use them in change work and therapy, then there are a lot of therapists and especially NLP'ers who are going to be pretty limited as to what they can do.
Basis the argument put forward in the article and by those sharing it as creditworthy, NLP processes like Role Modelling, Re-parenting, Time-lining and on and on should become more obsolete than regression because they actually manipulate memory in my opinion more than proper regression does.
I like to think that I am open enough that I can be as comfortable going back to processes that work and continue to work, such as regression to cause, as I am in experimenting with new methods and approaches (as long as that is what they are). In many ways I went full circle in my own development, exploring different approaches beyond hypnosis before returning to my own style with traditional hypnotherapy at its core, complemented by strategic coaching, usable NLP, applied social psychology and whatever else is useful.
Why do I know regression is a wonderful tool? Because I can recall that man and his step ladder, the numerous overweight clients, the victims of child abuse and rape, the blusher, the stutterer, the socially awkward, the angry, the depressed, the desperate and so on and so forth, all of whom
took me to the place where their subconscious deemed I needed to work with them.
Those clients told me regression worked just perfectly for them and I base my opinions on what works for me not what I read in a magazine.
It's also why I jumped at the chance to teach a syllabus (OMNI) that at its core has pretty much remained unchanged for the best part of thirty years and creates hypnotherapists who's clients tell them on a daily basis around the world that regression works for them too.
You only have to visit a hypnosis convention and see how popular the hypnotherapists who use and teach regression are - Jerry Kein and Hans Wipf, Cal Banyan etc. and to clearly see that the respect for the process and the competent hypnotists who use it, is as strong as ever.
It is also clear why some people circulate derogatory articles about regression, - the mention of regression is often a bigger draw than the thing you find they are invariably trying to sell to you, whether its a book on memory or another course.
Taking this to the next level, be wary of any course where the main selling point is that it isn't something else (for instance in the context of this article - regression) and be very cautious of any training that takes a subjective or dishonest approach to others methods while not objectively looking at its own.
If the people promoting their 'stuff' are going to deliberately encourage others to throw the baby out with the bathwater and dismiss all of regression on the basis of a hollywood stereotype and imbalanced article, they may need to dismiss every single one of their own processes that work with memories for exactly the same reason.
As a footnote to this blog. If you want to sign up to the Advanced Hypnosis Training Newsletter to find out about the next OMNI Advanced course, next GHSC foundation course or other workshops we are offering in the new year, please click
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Sending out our best wishes to Jerry Kein, perhaps the leading authority in regression therapy, as he recovers from surgery.
ref.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/memory-mondays-regression-therapy-isn-t-real-but-hollywood-keeps-the-myth-alive/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20151123
