Posted by antigua on September 19, 2006, at 14:57:19
I just wanted to let you guys know where I am with the hypnosis.
I've been four times. The first two times I didn't go under, or go into a "trance" as the guy likes to say. The third time I did, but I could still hear every word he said. Basically, he was talking about letting the unconscious mind connect with the conscious mind. My mind was all over the place, I couldn't really settle on anything in particular. But when he brought me up, I was very, very scared. Of what I didn't have a clue. Nothing was there but the fear. It took me a while to calm myself down in the car (I sang a lot of songs out loud!).
The fear persisted for a day or so, and then a memory I already had became clearer--just bits and pieces to fill it out, but it was still disturbing. Visceral too, I could smell and taste, but it wasn't a flashback. Just creeped into my mind. It was disgusting, but it helped me. Once I figured that out, the fear left me, although my feelings about the memory have stayed intense.
The fourth time, he asked me if I wanted to go deeper (he was concerned for my fear reaction) or work on inner child stuff. Gung ho that I am, I said "let's go deeper," but he decided it was better to do the other. I connected with the wounded child and discovered something I never knew. She's really mad at me. I had only seen her as wounded and pathetic, but I never felt her anger. She doesn't talk, but she gets her feelings across.
This week, since discovering she's angry, my T of course said maybe you could ask her what she wants, blah, blah, blah. Well, all I got was that she wanted something sweet (I used to eat sweet things after the abuse to kill the taste in my mouth) and so I ate some cookies. This is silly, I thought, and then I got mad. Mad at her for holding me hostage all these years--she is where all my self-destructive behavior comes from (as punishment to myself--drinking, ED, etc.)
So we are at a stand-off; I'm not giving into her. I told her it was time she grew up. And i'm really annoyed that all this stuff has just been sitting there for all these years and I never noticed it. My T says that if I'm mad, that's progress.
So the hypnosis has been interesting. Kind of like EMDR in a way, but so much more relaxing, as I've learned a lot of new relaxation techniques.
But it wasn't what I expected either, which is good I think. Although I was somewhat overwhelmed that one time, it was o.k.
As to that memory I've been trying to recover--I don't care about that anymore. It just doesn't seem very important. Real or not.
antigua
poster:antigua
thread:687439
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060911/msgs/687439.html