What is an abreaction?

An abreaction is an extremely rare event that can occur during a therapy session, when the client is in trance. The client re-lives a past traumatic experience, as if it was actually occurring. This can be quite frightening for both the client and the therapist.

It can happen spontaneously for no apparent reason. It may also occur when the client actually feels safe with the therapist. Their subconscious mind may feel it is the right time to look at this past trauma to address it now. Some therapists may actually induce an abreaction, although ethically I don’t agree with this.

How likely is an abreaction likely to occur?

A spontaneous abreaction will happen very rarely. You may actually never experience one. I have never had one and the principal of the Hypnotherapy school I learned at, only had two in his whole career.

Having said that it is important to consider what might happen if one does occur early in your hypnotherapy career.

Before the therapy

Before an abreaction occurs, anticipate the abreaction happening. Allow time in between clients just in case. The last thing you want is to be rushing a client who is abreacting, because you have another client waiting.

If you charge by the session, not the hour, you can allow for 2 hours just in case an abreaction occurs.

Global Abreaction Reframe

Keep the following script handy. It is a global reframe script designed to resolve whatever caused the abreaction in the first place. Feel free to copy this one. You could print off and laminate. If a client abreacts, you don’t need to think about what to say. Just read the script.

“Whatever just happened there is just your imagination and is totally safe. Your subconscious mind simply took this opportunity to release a highly charged emotion from your past. I am now going to give you a direct suggestion that your subconscious will fully and completely understand. I am now instructing your subconscious to deal with what just happened there  in a safe and natural way. When you have done that, in your own time, nod you head so that I know.”

Ignore  the fluff

Ignore  the narrative of the client during the first five-minutes of the session. If you don’t, you may add your own subjective interpretation and come up with the wrong conclusion. What they say might not be right.

The sensitising incident might not be what they say it is. This means that whatever they came to you for, may not actually be what sets off the abreaction. You have no idea what the traumatic event was so don’t guess.

During the abreaction

1. The Start

Reassure them say “Its ok, just stay with me and listen to my voice”

2. The Peak

This is where the reaction is at its most strong. It is important for you to carry on reassuring the client and don’t panic yourself. It will pass.

3. The abreaction will start to subside

The reactions may still be strong and seem to come in waves, but they are dissipating.

4. The abreaction has subsided

Now reframe what happened, using the Global Reframe Script above or something similar.

So an abreaction probably may never occur to you in your career but just remember the following.

Don’t panic it is perfectly natural. Nothing bad will happen.

There will be tears and it may get emotional, but it is something that the subconscious mind is now ready to throw out. Always trust that the client’s subconscious mind is doing exactly what it needs to help the client to move forward in their life.

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The subconscious mind is influenced very easily and if you don’t watch out you might find external influences can start to control you. Here are six ways that you can influence the subconscious mind yourself, so that you can take back control.

Affirmations

Affirmations are the second gateway to the subconscious. The repeating of a short statement or mantra will influence the subconscious as a command. There are some rules to this though. For affirmations to work, they need to be positive, specific and the present tense. For instance, “I am now a size ten”.
Belief is the foundation of all achievement. If you believe you can do something, you will. If you suspect that you don’t believe in your goal, you can change this by the use of affirmations. You can saturate your mind with positive expectation, until you believe.
If you think about it, we come into the world as babies with no beliefs, we are a blank page so to speak. Our beliefs are then formed by experience, repetition, indoctrination or suggestion. There are a thousand and one ways; such as throw away comments by well-meaning relatives such as:

“You’ll get fat if you eat that” (not necessarily)
“Clear your plate so you grow up big and strong” (what even when my stomach is full already?)

If you repeat something often enough it becomes a strong belief. Therein lies the solution. In my book on The Habits for Fat Loss, I go into how you can identify limiting beliefs. If can identify your limiting beliefs, then the next stage is to write out an opposing positive belief, in the form of an affirmation. For example if you identified a belief such as “I don’t like the way I look” the opposite would be “I love and value my body, I am perfect as I am”. Write out your positive affirmations on a card and read them out aloud as soon as you get up and just before bed. Read them throughout the day, as much as you can. Again, repetition is the key. Ideally repeat 50 times per day, for 60 days.
It may feel awkward at first, you may not really belief what you say, yet. You will believe soon. So how long should you do it for? You do it for as long as it takes.

Gateway NumberThree – Visualisation

The third gateway to the subconscious mind is visualisation. Visualisation is seeing in your mind’s eye the results you want to achieve, before they actually occur. It can also be mentally rehearsing a process.
The subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined. Picturing yourself achieving your goal or performing the habit will actually train yourself to do it. Next time you need to deliver a presentation or performance – visualise yourself doing it before the event. Then see how it goes.

Gateway Number Four – Acting as if

Acting as if, or fake it until you make it. Does this really work? Try this then:
Smile. Go on a cheesy daft grin. How do you feel? Are you happier?
The mind and the body are part of the same system. For this reason, we smile when we are happy, but we are also happy because we smile. But what about skills such as social skills and being outgoing. It can be uncomfortable and potentially embarrassing, to pretend to be outgoing. But if you force yourself to be a little more outgoing and sociable every time you go out, eventually your subconscious will learn that this is the new you. You will then become that which you pretended to be.

Gateway Number Five – Influence

External influence is very powerful, probably the most powerful gateway to the subconscious.
We have evolved to conform to the group, so that the group becomes stronger. In evolutionary terms, if the individuals in a group are like each other, they will stick together. If the group or tribe sticks together and the individuals are safe, then that group will survive.
If an outsider joins this group, there is a strong subconscious influence on that individual to conform. For instance if an overweight person starts to hang around with thin people, they will slowly start to change their habits. This is all at an subconscious level. The tip would therefore be to hang around people who you want to be like and avoid those that you don’t want to be like.

By the way if you are looking to lose weight contact me and I will show you how I did it.

Gateway Number Six – Authority or the Master and Apprentice

What do you do when you are driving down the motorway and you see a police car? You automatically slow down.
Or, what if a man in a white coat and stethoscope tells you to take a pill? Are you more likely to believe him? Yes, you subconsciously believe him. This is the power of authority and it has been used and abused since Adam was a lad. This is because we will unconsciously defer to those who we perceive have a higher status than ourselves, rightly or wrongly.
So how could we use this to our advantage? You can find someone who is already doing whatever it is you want to do. If you spend time with them, you will unconsciously learn their habits. This is why the old master and apprentice model and is also a very powerful way to change.

Gateway Number Seven – Therapy and Coaching

You could find a teacher or coach who you trust to coach you into changing. A good coach should be able to communicate to your subconscious. They should be trained to use language carefully, so that it has a positive effect. They may be trained to use certain techniques designed to influence the subconscious mind, such as hypnosis or NLP. If you would like to learn more about my coaching methods, then please do email me. My address is at the end of the book.
Do you have a goal you want to achieve or a habit you want to change? If you use as many of the seven gateways as you can, you will find that your success rates will increase.

The post Six Ways to Influence the Subconscious appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

Self Hypnosis is a wonderful way for you to make changes in your life. As I have said in other posts, all Hypnosis is self-hypnosis, anyway. Self hypnosis will never take the place of visiting a qualified hypnotherapist, although it is will definitely help you in between sessions; A good Hypnotherapist should teach you self-hypnosis. On its own, it certainly won’t do any harm to practise.

Self-Hypnosis works when you get into the trance state required for you to communicate with your own subconscious mind. Depending on your reason for wanting to perform self hypnosis, there are many therapies you can perform on your own, without the need for a Hypnotherapist to be present. That said, you should always do your research about which therapy to use. One other proviso is that you should not induce self-hypnosis if you are feeling low or depressed.

Inducing Self Hypnosis

Here is a simple method to induce self-hypnosis. Feel free to print this process so that you can practise whenever you want. You may need to read it through a few times, so that you can get the gist of it.

The process

First, make sure you are not going to be interrupted and there are no distractions. Get yourself relaxed. Lying down or sitting up is fine as long as you’re comfortable.
Next, you count up from one to 10. You can do this aloud or in your head. Breathe in as you say the number and as you breathe out say relax:
Breathe in “One”, breathe out “relax” etc.
On each number, you will get more and more relaxed.
When you are ready, close your eyes.

In your mind, remember a special place. This might be somewhere real that you have been to, where you were happy. Or it could be somewhere fictional, from a book or a film. Either way, as long as it is somewhere where you are happy. Remember this is a safe place to go and you can take yourself there any time you want.

You can test out your subconscious mind, whilst you are in hypnosis. You might not realise that we have an inbuilt clock, that’s why you can sometimes wake up at a specific time without needing an alarm. In the same way, you can time yourself in hypnosis. Before you start, make a note of the time and then say to yourself you will ‘wake up’ in five minutes.
You then trust that your subconscious will give you an urge to come round after the five minutes is up. The more you practise this the better you will get.

Using Self hypnosis for stress

We all have stresses in our lives and at different times, we may have more stress than it seems we can cope with. This is distress as opposed to eustress (the good stress, when something challenges us but we are engaged in it and in the flow.)

Whenever you have too much stress, it is usually other people who notice first, in your moods. You might even have bursts of anger. If the stress persists, you will start to get physical symptoms and illness.
If you find yourself in a situation where it seems that it is all coming on top of you. Stop. Give yourself a time out and go to your special place in self-hypnosis. Here you can gain perspective and bring yourself to the here and now.

You will instantly feel more relaxed and able to cope, with your immediate situation. From here, you should then take an inventory of your life to see where your stresses come from. Then you can start the process of eliminating the stresses by, working towards an ideal life.
I will talk more about anxiety and stress later on.

The Five Second Reframe

Here is a quick and easy self-hypnosis tool, I call the five minute reframe. Do you have an unwanted behaviour? A feeling that you want to change? It could be a behaviour that is automatic; a behaviour that you do without thinking. This should be something not too large, but something that is a minor irritation in your life. This is a quick method you can use to reframe the behaviour into something else.

Step one

Relate the unwanted behaviour to the following: “Underlying all behaviour is a positive intent”.
For instance it could be that your unwanted behaviour is nail biting. Therefore, think of the positive intents behind nail biting. It might be that you feel you can concentrate better when you are thinking. You might feel relaxed by biting your nails.

Step two

As this is an exercise for your subconscious mind, you will to go into self-hypnosis. See above. Then mentally ask your subconscious mind to create ten alternative safe, natural and positive behaviours. These may or may not be conscious behaviours. For instance, instead of nail biting, you could take 10 deep breathes.

Step three

Again, whilst still in self hypnosis, ask your subconscious mind to evaluate the ten new behaviours. Are they feasible? Are they ecological? This means are there any effects on other people. Are there any other facets of your life that these new behaviours could affect?

Step four

Choose three of the ten behaviours.

Step four

Let your subconscious mull over these three new behaviours. In your mind, choose one of the three remaining behaviours to do.

Step five

Whilst still in self hypnosis, visualise yourself in the same situation where the unwanted behaviour persists. Now imagine yourself performing the new behaviour instead. Use visualisation to rehearse the new behaviour so you are confident you will perform the new behaviour.
You might want to repeat the mental rehearsal each day until your new behaviour becomes automatic.

You can read more about your subconscious mind and how to make changes in my book Subconscious Change

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