Age Regression...and Why I Don't Use This Technique to Uncover Traumatic Memories

 I am continuing to suspend in-person hypnotherapy sessions with me in my office. However, phone, and Zoom consultations ARE and WILL REMAIN AVAILABLE! 

This blog was originally posted on January 28, 2014

 

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

 

 

We often see characters on television or in the movies use age regression to solve a crime or resolve a mystery in a protagonist’s life. During the 1970s and 1980s, hypnosis was used as a crime-solving technique. During this period, there was a widely held belief that all psychological problems were caused by sexual abuse. Some people theorized that hypnosis would be a useful device with which to rewind a person’s memory of a traumatic incident to discover what had happened. Once this information was revealed, hypnosis could also help the person to vent out these memories and resolve his or her feelings about and reactions to the issue. Eventually, experts realized that this technique did not help either the client (alleged abuse victim) or lawyers to prosecute their cases. Memories are filled with distortion and amnesia; furthermore, a person under hypnosis is highly suggestible and becomes very eager to please the hypnotist. A highly emotional-suggestible client will infer that the hypnotist wants to hear certain information and will duly provide those details.

In some situations, age regression is considered a therapeutic technique: to help an adult remember a license plate after a car crash or to find a personal item that he or she lost several weeks ago. I also use it as part of an imagery exercise to remember every cigarette that the person has smoked when I help a client quit smoking. However, I do not use age regression to discover (or help my client discover) information or memories that the person is not ready to address. When a terrible trauma has occurred, a person knows how to breathe, sleep, eat and eliminate. If a memory is too traumatic, the mind creates a “scab” over that memory to protect the individual from further trauma or stress. Just like you wouldn’t pull a scab off of an abrasion, I do not use hypnosis to rip a similar scab off your mind. Again, since there is no way to prove the veracity of any memories that a person regains while under hypnosis, this information would not be allowed in a court of law.

My first responsibility to my clients is to do no harm. As a certified hypnotherapist, my role is to help them achieve a vocational or avocational self-improvement goal (California Business and Professions Code 2098). However, if a client spontaneously remembers a traumatic incident, I will use hypnosis to help him or her present reality more powerful than the past, and refer the person to a licensed psychologist or other medical professional for additional professional support in areas that are outside my own scope of expertise in hypnotherapy.

 

 

Special Offer: Free 30-Minute Phone or Zoom Consultation

This is a great opportunity to find out why hypnosis is so effective and how hypnotherapy can help you achieve your self-improvement goals. Call or text me at (661) 433-9430 or send me an e-mail at calminsensehypnosis@yahoo.com to set up your free, 30-minute phone or Zoom consultation* today! 

*This is not a full hypnotherapy session. Hypnosis will not be provided during this consultation. This offer is not redeemable for cash and may not be combined with any other promotion.

 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. Sara has been voted the Best Hypnotherapist in Santa Clarita, California, four years in a row (2019-2022). For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/

© 2023

 

The Post-Hypnotic Suggestion

(This blog was originally posted on September 26, 2017)

Photo by Rick Hustead

When I work with my hypnotherapy clients, I give a lot of suggestions during the session. Some of those suggestions happen at the very beginning of hypnosis. For example, I will tell a Physical suggestible client: “You are allowing your eyes to close.” Or I might say to the Emotional Suggestible person, “Right about now you are noticing that your eyelids are feeling verrrrrrrry heavy.” The content of the suggestions I use to facilitate the client’s desired behavioral changes will depend on the person’s therapeutic/self-improvement goal and his or her suggestibility. I also include two specific post-hypnotic suggestions during the session.

The first is the post-hypnotic suggestion to re-hypnosis. This is what enables the client to easily, comfortably re-enter the hypnotic state in future hypnotherapy sessions whenever a specific word/phrase or physical trigger occurs: the words “deep sleep” and me snapping my fingers or touching the client’s forehead. I include the phrase, “Each time deep sleep is suggested to you for the purposes of hypnosis, with your permission and only your permission” to ensure that this state will be induced only in the context of hypnotherapy. When I work with children/teens I make it clear during the cognitive (alert) and hypnosis portions of the session that only the hypnotherapist can induce the hypnotic sleep, not a parent or sibling, etc. Similarly, when I use hypnosis to help a pregnant woman and her birthing partner prepare for childbirth, I include a similar caveat. For example, the client will not be suggestible to doing anything that is not relevant to relaxation and aspects of the birth process.

The second post-hypnotic suggestion I use is called the post-suggestion to reaction. This is a specific suggestion that activates a desired behavior change when the client is no longer in hypnosis and has returned to an alert and aware state. For example, I might suggest to a client to wants to feel more relaxed and confident when speaking in public begins to notice a specific color that represents relaxation and calm everywhere around him, all over the environment. Furthermore, every time the person sees this color, he immediately feels completely confident, relaxed and in control of his response to every situation and can express himself and his ideas easily, comfortably and confidently.

Special Offer! Hypnosis to Quit Smoking

·      Intensive Hypnosis to quit smoking: $275 (This session lasts 2 hours. You must be smoking 5 or fewer cigarettes per day to participate in this program.)

·      Hypnosis to Stop Smoking: $800 for six-week series. (This is a $100 savings!) The $200 fee for the first session will be included in this rate only when the package is purchased up front.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. In July 2019 she was voted the Best Hypnotherapist in Santa Clarita, California. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2020

Handwriting Under Pressure

(This blog was originally posted on April 26, 2016)

Image courtesy of Microsoft

The April 25, 2016 installment of The Family Circus cartoon strip featured one of the characters, Billy, working on a homework assignment. When his mom asks why he is pressing so hard, the little boy explains that he wants his teacher to know that he means what he is writing. I knew right away that I had the topic for today’s blog. In addition to addressing what is literally meant in the written word, this scenario also addressed the (literally) unwritten part of communication that is so often ignored: what we mean by the words we use and what the reader understands or infers.

Let’s start with handwriting. As I have explained in my previous blog titled What I Look for in an Informal Handwriting Sample, handwriting—a manifestation of what we consciously think—is motivated by a subconscious ideomotor (automatic physical) response. In addition to the various characteristics of writing such as the form of the letters, letter slant, and straightness of the lines of writing, pressure of the sample is also very important. In fact, this is one of the first things I consider when I analyze handwriting. The presence or absence of significant pressure of the writing suggests that the person invested more or less “feeling” in what he or she wrote. This is identified by checking for the presence or absence of indentations on the opposite side of the page. These are comparable to reflections of the writing sample that can be seen and/or felt on the reverse side. Sometimes you can see the deep formation of the letters or even pin-holes of light where the pressure was so strong that it actually made tiny tears in the paper. 

The second feature that interested me about this cartoon is about suggestibility. In the cartoon, Billy tells his mother that he wants the teacher to know (see) that he means what he has written by the amount of pressure he used to write his essay. This is a trait of a Physical Suggestible: I mean what I say and I say what I mean. His apparent emotional investment in writing this assignment is to appear honest or, at least, that he has completed the assignment to the best of his understanding when he answered the question. (By the way, all young children possess Physical Suggestibility.) However, the teacher may not equate the pressure of the pencil on the paper the way he intends her to do. For example, if she is an Emotional Suggestible she might infer that the deep indentations in the paper indicate that Billy was frustrated or even angry about doing the assignment in the first place. Or, she may interpret that the force of his writing reflects his deep interest about the essay topic or questions. If Billy’s answers are wrong or if he misunderstood the question he was supposed to answer in the assignment, the teacher may believe that her student was expressing frustration about what he has been asked to do. Then again, she may not even notice or care about this feature of his writing and grade the assignment simply on the accuracy or correct interpretation of the boy’s answers.

Finally, when I ask someone to provide a handwriting sample for analysis, I instruct the person to write about personally meaningful topic to get a good sense of the ideomotor response being activated. Copying information off of a document or providing the rhyme used to memorize position of letters on a keyboard activates only the conscious mind and does not reveal very much about the person’s subconscious behavior and personality. I don’t know how old Billy is in this sketch, but he looks very young. Even if he is writing an essay, the amount of original thought and analysis he puts into what he is writing, versus stringing related facts into a series of sentences, would depend on his age. It is more likely that Billy’s writing sample constitutes parroting back information versus sharing a new idea that would bear more insight into his subconscious mind. Finally, you can see in that he is writing on lined paper. Ideally, a handwriting sample is done on plain (unlined) paper so I can get a good picture of the natural slant of the person’s writing and width of their margins, etc. 

For more information about handwriting analysis, check out the following blogs: Handwriting Analysis for Hypnotherapy; And Your Handwriting Says; And Your Handwriting Says, Part 2; Handwriting Analysis: Doodles; and When Illness Shows Up in Your Handwriting. If you are interested in getting a formal analysis of your own handwriting, please contact me at (661) 433-9430 or send an e-mail to me at calminsensehypnosis@yahoo.com.

Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss

This 10-week weight-loss package is designed to help you shed extra pounds using hypnosis and therapeutic guided-imagery techniques. It is customized to your specific weight-loss goal, and materials are provided at each weekly session to help you keep track of your progress and maintain motivation throughout this program. In addition, a complimentary recording of the hypnosis portion of each session (CD or digital file) is provided at the end of each appointment to reinforce what you worked on that week. 

$1,250 for 10-week series. (This is a $250 savings!)  

Fee must be paid at the start of the program. This promotional discount may not be combined with any other offers.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2018

The Post-Hypnotic Suggestion

(This blog was originally posted on September 26, 2017)

Photo by Rick Hustead

When I work with my hypnotherapy clients, I give a lot of suggestions during the session. Some of those suggestions happen at the very beginning of hypnosis. For example, I will tell a Physical suggestible client: “You are allowing your eyes to close.” Or I might say to the Emotional Suggestible person, “Right about now you are noticing that your eyelids are feeling verrrrrrrry heavy.” The content of the suggestions I use to facilitate the client’s desired behavioral changes will depend on the person’s therapeutic/self-improvement goal and his or her suggestibility. I also include two specific post-hypnotic suggestions during the session.

The first is the post-suggestion to re-hypnosis. This is what enables the client to easily, comfortably re-enter the hypnotic state in future hypnotherapy sessions whenever a specific word/phrase or physical trigger occurs: the words “deep sleep” and me snapping my fingers or touching the client’s forehead. I include the phrase, “Each time deep sleep is suggested to you for the purposes of hypnosis, with your permission and only your permission” to ensure that this state will be induced only in the context of hypnotherapy. When I work with children/teens I make it clear during the cognitive (alert) and hypnosis portions of the session that only the hypnotherapist can induce the hypnotic sleep, not a parent or sibling, etc. Similarly, when I use hypnosis to help a pregnant woman and her birthing partner prepare for childbirth, I include a similar caveat. For example, the client will not be suggestible to doing anything that is not relevant to relaxation and aspects of the birth process.

The second post-hypnotic suggestion I use is called the post-suggestion to reaction. This is a specific suggestion that activates a desired behavior change when the client is no longer in hypnosis and has returned to an alert and aware state. For example, I might suggest to a client to wants to feel more relaxed and confident when speaking in public begins to notice a specific color that represents relaxation and calm everywhere around him, all over the environment. Furthermore, every time the person sees this color, he immediately feels completely confident, relaxed and in control of his response to every situation and can express himself and his ideas easily, comfortably and confidently.

Trauma Relief Hypnotherapy

I am currently offering a 25% discount off the first hypnotherapy session for active/retired military personnel and first-responders (including fire-fighters, police officers, ambulance/EMT personnel, and EMS dispatch operators) through November 30, 2018.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2018