For many people the word therapy is a little bit taboo. Only people with issues go for therapy right? I have been told by someone that their mother didn’t like the fact they were having therapy because the counsellor would “make me think I’d had a bad childhood”. What is this thing that many therapists have about bad childhoods? I have personal experience of this as when training to become a hypnotherapist I was told “you must’ve had bad things happen in your childhood” I replied with no I don’t think I really did (what constitutes bad anyway?). This was in a room full of people all looking at me. I was then told “you must have because you are blushing”. Well yes, many people would blush if put on the spot like that in front of many other people.
I didn’t have bad things happen to me in my childhood and I am not someone who thinks that everyone had bad things happen to them. I do however think that everyone has had a negative reaction to something when growing up that has resulted in some kind of issue in adult life (be it a lack of confidence, weight issues, control problems, addictions etc). This is why I use regression in many of my hypnotherapy sessions. When I say regression I mean that I allow the client to go back to a time prior to today to find out and resolve some of these things that could have created certain behaviours today. I certainly don’t lead the client to a particular time in life – even childhood (which is where most regression therapists would say the client has to go). I also do not use past life regression, though I have been trained to do so.
My problem with regression is that for many therapists the purpose is to find awful things that happened to the client during their childhood. This frustrates me, as does the thought process of many that memories of sexual abuse (that the client had no idea of before) will be found. There is a problem with using regression – false memory syndrome. This is when a person is affected by “memories” uncovered using recovered memory therapies (such as regression) which are not true memories. Wikipedia (the fountain of all knowledge!) says:
“Recovered memory therapy is used to describe the therapeutic processes and methods that are believed to create false memories and false memory syndrome. These methods include hypnosis, sedatives and probing questions where the therapist believes repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse or other traumatic events are the cause of their client's problems.”
In the above definition childhood sexual abuse crops up. When you look on the website of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation there is again a lot of talk on the subject of child abuse. Unfortunately I have spoken to lots of therapists who often say things like “ah yes that problem is related to sex” or something along the lines of sexual abuse. It is no wonder we have this problem of false memory syndrome when so many therapists think everything is related to a bad childhood ... and what is a bad childhood?
In my years of working with clients I have never experienced anyone recover memories of sexual abuse, I have also never had anyone experience a hugely dramatic abreaction (this is where someone relives an experience – often in hypnosis – and releases emotions that were repressed at the time). Yes I have clients get upset and sometimes angry but never what I was given the impression I would see prior to becoming qualified. What I have seen however is clients reliving positive experiences, many of those seeing me for weight loss therapy remember happy times with family or friends at big social events where food was always involved; big feasts during holiday periods or at weekends or treats for behaving all day. Childhood experiences that mean the adult often reaches for food to relive the feelings felt at these times, but great childhood experiences. There was even someone who once said to me “Juliet, you have helped me find the old me”. This particular person had remembered times of fun, energetic outings, holidays and parties with friends... very different to the depressed adult that was sat in front of me. For me using regression in my way means going back to previous experiences, sometimes releasing emotion, reframing experiences from an adult point of view or learning coping techniques but many times finding happy, positive memories. I am yet to work with a client that finds memories of big things, such as sexual abuse that they didn’t know had ever happened, someone will often say “I’d forgotten all about that” but in my opinion if someone has been abused physically or mentally they know about it, they may have suppressed each individual episode of abuse but they know they were abused.
When I use regression with a client I am not searching for memories that are not known, I am not even searching for negative memories, nor always childhood memories. In fact, in my opinion many of the thoughts and memories ‘recovered’ could be spoken about and relived in a normal conversation. However, for me, the hypnosis helps my clients to feel relaxed, lose inhibitions and to feel that they are in their own world. It is common for someone to say to me “I can’t believe I told you all that” but the relaxation and eye closure helps my clients to feel confident and comfortable speaking about things that are bothering them or have bothered them in the past, perhaps things they find embarrassing and would not ordinarily speak about. Whether these thoughts and memories have been suppressed or not talking about things helps the majority of people. I always spend a lot of time at the beginning of a session explaining to the client that we are not necessarily looking for negative memories just things that they could have reacted to in a negative way, after all a parent may love and care for their child so much that they are over protective. Unfortunately that often results in an adult with confidence issues as they have been brought up indirectly being told that they are not safe anywhere or capable of looking after themselves. Is this a bad childhood? I don’t think so. I am also very careful to make sure my clients do not leave blaming their parents for their issues today. In the majority of cases our parents always do what they think is best for us, what they believe at the time to be right or doing all they can to the best of their ability. As explained above (with the over protective parent) this can result in an adult with ‘issues’ but it is not the fault of the parent it is simply because every person is an individual and the way things are perceived at the time is not always the way they were meant. This does not mean, in my opinion, we all had bad childhoods.
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