How you remember a certain event in your life largely determines how you experience events in the future. A hypnotherapist can teach you to bring back a memory under trance and make it more positive. An event will never be remembered completely correctly. You have a great ability to change the way you experience a memory. How can a hypnotherapist help you with this?
The influence of a memory
Your ability to forget can play a major role in therapy. How you experience events in the future is determined by the way you remember similar situations from the past. For example, if you have had a few painful treatments at the dentist, you will think that the same treatment in the future will also hurt. The consequence is that you will experience the next treatment as painful and unpleasant. If you are able to forget the pain of the previous treatments, you will not have to undergo the next treatment unnecessarily tense and there is a chance that you will experience less pain.
Forgotten memory
If your hypnotherapist suggests that it is better for you to forget something, he will probably do so by suggesting that you simply forget it. Because you are motivated to do that, your subconscious mind is open to it. In some cases the hypnotherapist can go through this process by visualizing the erasure.
Something may have happened in your past that you want to forget. Learning to deal with the emotions associated with the memory is sometimes too difficult and it is healthier for you to forget it. This way you can retrieve the memory together with the hypnotherapist without feeling the pain or discomfort. Even if you consciously forget the event, the emotions about it are still present in your subconscious. These can cause all kinds of complaints.
During the session
Another situation where you may experience forgetfulness is when you come out of a trance and do not remember what happened during the session. That could be because:
- There is a reaction to a deeper trance
- Your hypnotherapist asked you to forget what happened in the session
It may seem strange that your hypnotherapist asks you to forget events while in trance. This happens for a reason, because the hypnotherapist is trying to protect you from something. The therapist may feel that when you come out of the trance, the memory undoes everything that the session achieved.
When the memory comes back
Although you are likely to forget what was suggested to be forgotten, there is a good chance that the memory will gradually return. You will probably discover that the experience of the memory has changed: it has become more positive.
Can you really forget?
It is not possible to forget something if you are not fully committed to it. You have to be completely willing to forget something. Together with your therapist you will be brought to a final goal. The result is that your unconscious mind cooperates in making you forget.
Replace a memory
If you can forget something, it is also possible to fill the gap that arises with another memory or a more positive memory. A human has a great ability to change the way you remember an event. Very few people have a 100% correct memory. Just ask the same story to different people; you hear as many variants as there are people. A memory consists of a number of fragments of the event. These emerge when you retrieve a memory from your memory.
The hypnotherapist can use these parts of a memory to solve your problem. By recovering the original memory with the missing parts, it allows you to create memories through suggestion and visualization. No change will be brought about that you do not support. Everything will be discussed clearly in advance and you will be asked how you would like to experience the memory.
Old memories
Replacing an old memory with a completely new one is very difficult. The technique works best when changes are implemented subtly. If you have been afraid of water all your life and had a near-drowning experience as a child, it is possible to change the memory so that you remain calm and relaxed the next time you are in the water. The original memory will probably return after it has been replaced. But because you dealt with it in a positive, playful way, the experience has completely changed.