Questions about helping a client rid herself of the fear of going too far from home or work using Hypnotic Age Regression Work (HARW).
Answered by Calvin D. Banyan, MA, CI, BCH
Question:
I am an NGH Certified Hypnotist and I attended one of your seminars and bought your book while at the NGH Convention this year. I was reading on your regression work and have a question. I am seeing a client this week with a fear to travel outside her "safe zone" which is probably 3 miles around her home and where she works....this could be via car, plane, bus, walking, etc. She seems to think it started during her marriage some 20 years or so ago. Prior to her marriage she traveled everywhere. So if I do a regression to the ISE it may not be back to childhood like your book suggests. If we do find the ISE in adulthood, what hypnosis would I use to heal it? Would I still use a modified version of the informed child approach or would you suggest another approach?
Thank you so much for your time and assistance with this.
Regards,
Dawn Lannon
Certified Hypnotist
Answer:
Hello Dawn,
That is an excellent question Dawn. Here is what I think. The event that occurred in her adult life during her marriage may or may not have been the ISE (Initial Sensitizing Event). Often your client will have no conscious recollection of the ISE and as a result thinks that the earliest remembered event must have caused the problem. This is the most logical reason from their perspective.
We need to be very skeptical about what the client thinks the cause of the problem is. Typically, when an issue (e.g., fear, phobia or anxiety) arises in adult life, the event that the client thinks caused it is the SPE (Symptom Producing Event) rather than the ISE. On the other hand, it is possible that something very traumatic may have happened in her adult life that is in deed the ISE, but usually it has to be something very traumatic for it to be an adult ISE (e.g., fear of sex after having been raped, fear of thunder after being hit by lightening, etc.).
How can you tell which is right in her case? Do an Affect Bridge Age Regression. In order to do that you will suggest to your hypnotized client that she follow the feeling back to an earlier time when she “felt that way” and then as the session continues to keep following the emotion (fear in this case) back to the first time she “felt that way.” When you truly have the first time that she felt that way you have uncovered the ISE. A simple way to check and confirm the ISE is to regress her to just before the ISE and find out if the feeling exists. On our web sit, in the Free Articles section there is a complete article on identifying and confirming the ISE. Go to free_articles_list_of_hypnosis_articles.htm and click on Article 20.
The key to success here will be to let the process uncover the cause and then neutralizing the cause. To neutralize the cause of the issue, go ahead and do the Informed Child Technique as described in my book, Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy: Basic to Advanced Techniques for the Professional.
I know that it can be difficult sometimes, but you and your client will benefit if you don’t take her word for when the issue started. Let the subconscious mind provide that information when she is in hypnosis.
If the ISE occurred in adulthood, use the same procedure as you would with a child. Also, in either case I recommend that you do some pre-vivification by age progressing her after the age regression work has been completed. This is a good way to check the work that was done in the age regression and to give her a mental and emotional expectation of being successful after the session is over.
Sincerely,
Cal Banyan, MA
