Regression and Revivification

Does hypnosis work for anxiety and panic attacks? The short answer is yes, hypnosis does work for anxiety and panic attacks. There are many reasons for the anxiety and panic attacks and your therapist will need to know what they are before they can help you. Some common treatments for anxiety and panic attacks are the use of regression and revivification.

Regression and revivification

When you are in trance, you may go back to a time, in your mind. Are you actually experiencing the events or is it a memory? For example is it regression or revivification.

Regression

Regression occurs when you have disassociated memories of a past event. When you talk in trance, you are usually in the past tense. You will be unemotional.
Another way you can tell if you are in regression is that you will have the body language and tone of an adult.
Your therapist can intentionally use regression to get you to go back to a traumatic sensitising event, in a safe way.

Revivification

Revivification is when you remember an event but you are associated to it. That means that your experience is real to you. Your language will be in the present tense, as if the event is happening now. You may get emotional and your body language and tone may be that of the child you were at the time.
Some therapists may use revivification to get you right back to the sensitising event. I personally would not use this method with any of my clients because I cannot know exactly if this was the real event or not. It’s also not very kind on you.
During my Hypnotherapy training, I practised intentional revivification with a Brazilian chap. We knew he was in revivification because he was speaking Portuguese. He had obviously gone back to a time before he learned English.

Using The Bridge Method to explore the past event

A nicer way that I would use regression and revivification with you is to use the Bridge method.
Here I would suggest to you that you go back to a time just before the incident. It is important that you go back to a time of your choosing. I would then suggest that you move forward in time to the traumatic incident.
I will watch out closely to your body language or biofeedback, as you approach the event. Above all, I will make sure I use clean language. As soon as you reach the beginning of the sensitising event, I will suggest that you pause just before the event.
Then I would ask you to jump out and forward to just after the event. I will then ask you where you are and what is happening. I will ask you to look forward to the future to see your adult self. Next, I will ask you to ask your adult image to walk back towards your child image, just after the sensitizing event. I would then reframe the incident; Then I would get you to come back to the present by using the following script, or similar:
“All those symptoms are just coping strategies which have served you, but now you no longer need anymore”.
Finally, I would use the positive resources I had gained from the initial consultation.

Watkins Bridge

A slight variation of the Bridge method is when you experiences anxiety in the present, but you don’t know what causes it. It may have roots in a past event. For instance, a driving instructor gets anxious when he drives up a certain hill. There is no rational reason for this, but there may be something locked away in his past.
First under hypnosis, I would ask you to feel that same anxiety (see what you saw, feel what you felt and hear what you hear)… FOR THE LAST TIME.
I would then suggest that you then go back to a time when you first had those feelings. Where were you? What was happening? Eg, the driving instructor was a small child at the fun fair and he was scared of the big dipper. Then I would get you to go back, as your present self, to the event. Here I would reframe it then bring you forward and back. You would now be cured of the cause of that anxiety or panic attack.