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Absolutes: Messages In Mind – Jeffrey J. Ryan (Is.23)

Jeffrey J. Ryan, M.A. C.R.T.

Abstract

During the process of discovery in locating the ISE, (initial sensitizing event) an important question needs to be asked of the client/patient. What messages are they carrying in mind about themselves? I call these messages “Absolutes.” In most cases these messages rule the life. The emotional energy attached to each message will undoubtedly trigger feelings within that will stop the patient cold.

 We, as human beings, horde these messages as though it was and is a retirement account. They are delivered to us sometimes in small increments but in most as a one two punch to the head or gut. They are given to us by well-intentioned meaningful authority or respected figures in our environment.

For example, a parent will say to the child, “Don’t touch that; you’re too clumsy.” It could come at the precise moment that the child feels happy to be working with Dad. And it will stay for life and affect everything he attempts to do. However benign that one statement is, the affect depends on like messages being received from the same source over and over again. These statements build on each other and eventually wear down the patient. The subconscious, which remembers and holds onto everything, will eventually boil them all down to one huge gigantic absolute that will play havoc in the mind.

Past-Life Therapy with Difficult Phobics – Johannes M. Cladder (Is.2)

by Johannes M. Cladder

There are many books and articles dealing with regressions in trance to so-called past lives. Some include fascinating case histories using past-life therapy. Others attempt to establish the authenticity of reincarnation and the reality of past lives, though the question of whether reincarnation is or is not a possibility can best be determined by lines of investigation other than hypnotic regression, such as the work of Stevenson. Systematic research to determine the possible use of past-life regression with certain kinds of patients is just beginning.

 

Experimenting with past-life regressions in the hypnotherapy of difficult phobics gives the impression that patients are flooded with traumatic material from the hypothesized past lives and cannot avoid experiencing strong anxiety in this one. Case histories suggest that remission in regression therapy can be explained in terms of known therapeutic principles like emotional catharsis, desensitization cognitive restructuring, and post-hypnotic suggestion.

Past-Life Therapy in the Netherlands – Rob Bontenbal (Is.7)

by Rob Bontenbal, M.A.

 

Ten years ago past-life therapy was still an almost unknown form of therapy in the Netherlands. Books by past-life therapists such as Thorwald Dethlefsen, Morris Netherton, Edith Fiore, and Denys Kelsey had become available, and hypnotherapy had grown increasingly accepted, bringing many hypnotists into contact with past-life material, but in general few members of either the public or the professions had yet become aware of the potentials of PLT for solving mental, emotional, and physical problems.

This situation existed in part because most hypnotherapists did not know how to work with past-life material. Whenever a client revealed experiences he could not relate to this life, the therapist either neglected the material or worked with the stories as if they were fantasies and used only flooding techniques to deal with the emotions involved. Very few professionals dared to reveal their interest in this new approach.

Induction to Childhood: Principles of Induction and Transformation – Henry Leo Bolduc (Is.7)

by Henry Leo Bolduc

 

Present-life regression can be every bit as powerful and as healing as regression to a past life. If there is any secret to present-life regression, that secret lies mainly in simplicity rather than in any complicated techniques.

One key to this simplicity is a careful explanation made to the subject before the session begins. Such advance preparation greatly facilitates recovery of material. Particularly important is the subject’s understanding of the various methods that individuals employ to process memory. In order to determine which method a subject will feel most comfortable using, the subject may be given an opportunity first to process a happy present-life memory. Whether this memory is an event that occurred five minutes before or five years earlier is unimportant. (If a pleasant memory cannot be found, a sad memory may be substituted). The way this memory is processed by the individual indicates the way that additional memories will be processed while the subject is in hypnosis. Seventy percent of people process visually, but many others are predominately audio processors—they hear information or people speaking through an inner ear. A smaller number are kinesthetic, meaning that they process information and experiences through feelings and emotions, and they often feel themselves in motion. On rare occasions a person processes through the olfactory senses—that is, with the sense of smell (such as of the ocean, a forest, a barnyard, etc.).

Rescripting: A Family of Therapeutic Techniques – Kenneth Kaisch (Is.5)

by Kenneth Kaisch, Ph.D.

 

Rescripting is a hypnotic technique which is occasionally used in psychotherapy. It also refers to a family of related therapeutic techniques. Re-scripting per se involves the hypnotic addition of life experience in order to modify the patient’s felt experience of him/herself. It is most often used when the patient has an experience deficit that is so profound as to be debilitating. For example, a patient who had severely abusive parents may be so deprived of ordinary parental affection as to be unable to establish an adequate sense of self worth despite the use of ordinary therapeutic treatment. In cases such as this, rescripting is the treatment of choice

It is informative to consider the place of rescripting in the therapeutic armamentarium. Rescripting is the technical complement of reframing. Reframing is a more widely used therapeutic technique, and involves changing the context around a traumatic event: changing the symptomatic situation into a positive opportunity (Watzlawick P., Weakland, J., & Fisch, R., 1974). For example, an obese woman who wanted to lose weight found herself unable to do so, even though it was a medical necessity. Using the reframing technique, she found that she used her weight to appear unattractive to men, because she was unsure of her ability to handle sexual advances. Within this newly found context, she was able to deal directly with her sexual fears, and could then lose weight. With refraining, the content of her experience remained the same, but the context was radically altered.

Given the complementary nature of rescripting and reframing, and the current widespread use of reframing in such diverse modalities as Ericksonian hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), and cognitive therapies, it is curious that rescripting is seldom mentioned in the literature, or used in. practice. In an exhaustive computer search of the literature in Psychological Abstracts and Index Medicus using a variety of key words, the author was unable to find a single reference to this technique. While rescripting is occasionally mentioned in the hypnotic literature, there is no systematic examination of this technique in the literature. The purpose of this article is to address this deficit in the literature: to collect data about this technique, to examine the data critically, and to draw tentative conclusions about the place and utility of rescripting in psychotherapy with adults.