PTS - stop.
Post Traumatic Stress…
happens.
“I have ptsd.”
I sip my tea.
She clears her throat. And repeats a bit louder this time.
“I have PTSD.” squeezing water into her mouth from her sports-bottle on her side of our virtual consultation’s first moments. “I am never comfortable. I’m a mess. My thoughts are...” She takes a shallow breath in a quick gulp, “...unbearable.”
We both sip and breathe, she continues.
“My therapist said you might be able to coach me in different ways?”
The extra three syllables she uses to elongate the vowel in ‘ways’ lets me know she is more than a little nervous about this concept.
“Have you, or anyone you know, ever done hypnosis before?”
She just shakes her head and looks down.
No judgements from me. It makes sense when people are nervous. I send her loving energy as she takes a moment.
If the only impression of dentists was Steve Martin from Little Shop of Horrors, we’d all be smiling a lot less brightly. If the only concept of dental care we had was this sadistic representation of a Nitrous huffing egomaniac I used to call Uncle Steve*, we’d all be drinking blended steaks through straws and gumming our mashed potatoes.
(Image: Steve Martin as Dr. Orin Scrivello, DDS in Little Shop of Horrors.)
Is this who you picture when you think of a hypnotist?
Could you possibly have limiting beliefs and misperceptions about what hypnotism is?
Is it possible you have the wrong impression about what a hypnotic coach will empower you to do for yourself?
I stayed silent.
These were not the right questions, in this moment, to pose to the scared young woman on the other side of my computer screen. This scared young widow of a mass shooter.
Have you ever considered the family on that side of the gun? I will admit, I had not until this moment. This moment of seeing her sadness. Her guilt. Her shame. The emotions she determined were hers to carry. The emotions the shooter had left for her, after he took his own life, after robbing the innocent lives from the families he had shattered.
Had he intended to include his own family in the wake of his hateful destruction?
It broke my heart as I waited. As I held compassion for someone who had lost all hope of felling any compassion for herself.
“In my family...”
She clears her throat louder this time than before. “..my hyper-religious family...” squeezing more water into her mouth, “it was understood hypnosis was...” more water and a rough pre-cough, “it was understood, it was making contact with Satan and his demons.”
Looking up, she quickly continues, “Same as with yoga being weird and now it’s the thing to do.” She justifies trying to backtrack her honesty. “Even though still not accepted by my family...”
She sighs and looks down, clears her throat.
Her water bottle is empty. I can hear her squeezing the last droplets unsatisfyingly.
“Here’s to hypnosis being allowed to shine next.” She says as she begins to end our call.
I totally understand.
Every kernel of corn pops in its own time, even over the same heat sharing the same oil.
But that’s the thing.
We aren’t un-popped corn kernels, are we?
We definitely aren’t all sitting in the same hot oil over the same source of heat!
Each and every single one of us is recovering from something different. Something too personal. Something we haven’t been able to let go of, no matter how many times we have tried. No matter how far we have gone no matter to what lengths we believe we have already pushed ourselves.
Trauma is sticky.
The brain doesn’t actually know what to do with it. The brain recognizes the different ‘charge’ to the event that it isn’t able to sort into the normal timeline of daily events. The charge has to be regulated and dissipated before the brain can safely store it alongside the rest of the events of daily living it sorts and stores.
Think of this as the toxic-waste storage and disposal system within your brain.
Did you know?
There is a portion of your brain dedicated with the storage and disposal of toxic-waste residue left by what we societally term traumatic-events.
Hypnosis has scientifically backed ways of creating depotentiation (a fancy word meaning decoupling, detangling, detaching) of the traumatic charge within the memory. This depotentiation is the charge-reduction that allows the memory to be safely removed from the brain’s toxic-storage wasteland and allows it to be safely contained within the normal timeline of events. Where it belongs. Where it will allow your focus to return to what is your now.
My personal belief is this, we should not call this Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Because, labels matter!
Post-Traumatic Stress Experience.
We are recovering from experiences; we do not have a disorder. Our brain is simply working in overdrive. It hasn’t practiced for this. It doesn’t know how to adjust accordingly. YET!
Each and every single person experiences their worst day, their worst experience, differently. Even when it is the same day, the same experience.
Each and every one will have an individual thought or feeling created, an individual belief, in their most traumatic experience. Each brain experiences each event differently. This is why even when there is a recording of an event there can be arguments between participants on what actually occurred.
It doesn’t matter what someone else ‘thinks’ or ‘believes’ about any individual’s worst experience, in comparison to anybody else’s “worst”. Each individual’s worst day is their worst day. And they deserve to recover.
They must recover!
I dedicate what I do to all those who have had a traumatic experience, no matter what that trauma was. No matter what!
There will be no comparing scars here. Comparing scars is pointless and petty. It provides no productive relief to anybody, especially not the ‘winner’.
The worst aspect of comparing, ranking, or rating, the things people find traumatic are all those who end up not seeking assistance, or don’t feel deserving of “recovery.” Because, their worst experience(s) don’t measure up to what ‘counts’ as traumatic in the eyes of the world.
Did you just try to discount your own pains?
Every single person’s worst day is their worst day!
Just because the news isn’t reporting about the things you’ve had to survive, doesn’t mean your brain hasn’t accepted it as ‘traumatic’. It can be the daily accumulations of unaddressed heartache, disappointment, and humiliation that is unresolved, unhealed, and left to fester that actually needs the most clarity.
Accumulated, unresolved pain solidifies & compounds, it grows into ignored trauma.
Even if you haven’t lived through a mass shooting, had a plane crash into the buildings above your head while commuting to work, or had to return to your job after a mob has ransacked the halls you consider hallowed, your pain counts.
Are you emotionally blending today’s joy down into unrecognizably small portions that you sip-up and mush around rather than devouring with delight?
You can stop thinking hypnosis is what you saw in that old movie you watched while unable to sleep.
It’s okay, you can stop believing hypnosis is mind-control or magic meant to make you bark like a dog or cluck like a chicken.
Svengali is to hypnotism what Dr. Orin Scrivello, DDS is to dentistry.
Are your misperceptions and limiting beliefs worth being stuck in the pain you cannot walk away from, no matter how hard you have tried?
It’s okay, hypnosis is different. Hypnosis is not what you think it is. Hypnosis is more than you know.
#HypnosisHelps #HypnosisHeals
(*story for another day)