Regression Therapy within hypnosis is re-connecting with events in the past in order to re-frame how we hold those events in our mind, so they no longer have a negative impact on how we’re feeling today. These can be events we consciously remember or those which we’ve forgotten.
Why we do it
Many people would agree that what’s happened in our pasts can affect how we feel in the here and now. With regression therapy we revisit key events with the purpose of gaining insight of what happened, how they negatively affected us and most importantly adding knowledge and learning so that those events no longer affect us in the same way.
Utilising past memories within therapy has been around for a long time, think Freud. However the ways therapists work with past memories has changed over time, very much for the better.
How It Used to be Done
Originally it was thought in therapy someone had to relive their negative past memories, as if they were there. It was thought imperative that you experience all the same emotions, feelings, thoughts and images once again. However the process could be traumatising in itself, asking the person to re-live those experiences can be really painful and in some cases do more harm than good. And it turns out just re-living the memory often isn’t enough, it doesn’t change the way we feel. In other words just knowing in more detail what happened in the past, doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve solved the problem.
We have better options today
Fortunately since then ways of working with regression have developed significantly and we now know how to re-visit past memories safely and in ways that allow us to re-frame those events and take whatever learning we need to from them. Any negative beliefs we took on as a consequence of those events can be addressed and more positive ones developed. All this is done without the need to repeatedly re-live our past.
So although we can't change the past, we can use Regression Therapy to change the way we feel about the past. And once we've done that, the past can settle where it belongs and no longer feels the need to intrude into our present and our futures.
Interested in Finding out more?
To find out how Regression Therapy can help you make the changes you want, please do get in touch.
Explore my site to find out more about some of the other methods I use to help clients make the changes they want, such as Parts Therapy, CBT Hypnotherapy or Imaginary Rehearsal.