How Hypnotherapy Can Help Trauma Survivors With Dr Dana Saperstein Phd ⋆ Earth and Water

The invisible wounds of trauma can linger long after the event itself. They can manifest as anxiety, depression, flashbacks, and a distorted sense of self. While traditional therapies offer valuable support, hypnotherapy emerges as a powerful tool for healing trauma, offering a unique approach to address the root causes of these struggles.

Trauma can manifest in various ways, impacting us physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Common issues include flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression, difficulty with relationships and so much more. Traditional therapy approaches, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, can be effective in addressing these symptoms. However, hypnotherapy offers a complementary approach, directly accessing the subconscious mind where traumatic memories often reside, to pull at them from the root.

Hypnosis allows us to access deeper levels of our subconscious mind. In this state, we can explore, analyze, reframe and rework negative thought patterns and emotional responses associated with trauma. Unlike the popular misconception of being controlled while under hypnosis, you remain completely aware and in control of your experience. The media has not done this technique any favors.

Hypnotherapy can help us to challenge negative beliefs and self-perceptions rooted in our trauma, fostering a more empowered and positive self-image. By revisiting memories in a safe, guided environment, we can process and integrate our experiences, leading to a decrease in emotional upset and flashbacks.

Through hypnotherapy techniques, we can learn valuable relaxation skills and coping mechanisms to manage anxiety associated with our trauma triggers. By addressing the root of the trauma, we can regain a sense of control over our lives and cultivate self-compassion, increasing resilience and well-being.

While the journey of healing from trauma is unique for each individual, hypnotherapy offers a powerful tool for accessing the subconscious mind, addressing the root of trauma, and facilitating emotional and psychological healing. Allowing us to rewrite our narrative and reclaim our sense of power, hypnotherapy can empower us to move forward with greater clarity, resilience, and peace.

While it can be a powerful tool, healing is a personal journey that requires time, effort, and often times combined therapeutic approaches. Understanding is crucial to appreciating the potential of hypnotherapy as a safe and empowering tool for addressing the complex challenges of trauma.

*TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual abuse*

Beginning –

There’s tons of different things hypnotherapy can be used to help including but not at all limited to anxiety, trauma, various addictions, self discovery and much much more. Dr Saperstein specializes in helping people with sexual trauma through hypnotherapy.

Years ago hypnotherapy was seen as very controversial. People’s misunderstanding led them to distrust in it made worse by those who used it as a tool to manipulate the courts in various cases. For these reasons, many professionals shelved it as a tool, so it’s not always easy to find a practitioner who’s willing to use it with trauma survivors.

When trauma is experienced, we innately go into an altered state of consciousness in order to protect ourselves and survive the moment. We don’t have the safety at the time of the trauma to be able to process the emotions of it. Hypnotherapy deliberately recreates this scenario in safe space so that the emotions can be processed and released. This allows for healing to begin.

Many professionals are afraid to take on any trauma cases. So much so that they put the fact that they don’t touch trauma cases right up front in their pitches. This can leave so many people displaced, wanting help but struggling to find it.

Hypnotherapy is really just a deeper form of meditation. I’ve spoken on it in depth on this page if you’d like to know more when you’re done over here.

6:57 –

Fear comes from misunderstanding but also facing your trauma is a terrifying thing. Going deeply within yourself to resolve these things takes an enormous amount of courage. It’s not going to be pleasant.

Most therapies focus on resolving symptoms of the trauma. This particular mode using hypnotherapy is used to target that which is generating the symptoms in the first place. Symptoms are pointing you towards what needs to be healed. It’s all energy.

All problems in your life, whether it be physical ailments, mental turmoil or even quality of life focused, are all stemming from stuck energy within you. It’s what so many ancient teachings tried to explain to us but science is finally starting to catch up to it and solidify it into our understanding.

Most everything is deeply rooted in emotions we’re holding onto. The statistics for sexual and physical abuse as well as neglect are astounding. These things are unfortunately more common that not in our society. Healing them hurts because you have to bring them to the surface whereas most of us suppress and bury these feelings in an effort to not feel them.

In suppressing them, we’re holding onto them though. And holding onto them is exactly what’s causing us to experience these negative manifestations in our bodies and life. The only way to heal these is to allow them to run their course, which means feeling them.

10:02 –

We understandably have concerns of hypnotherapy creating false memories. Sometimes this happens but a fail safe to remember is that the content of the “newly unlocked memories” may be distorted but the feelings you have associated with them are most likely true. This can be related to dreams and how the content isn’t as important as the symbolism and the emotions tied to them. Remember, energy communicates in feelings and directions rather than concreate words and images.

We discuss past life regression. “Many Lives, Many Masters” book. Ancestral trauma is a very real thing that areas of study are proving in study. Something terrible that happened to our greatest of great great grandparents that then became coded in our DNA and passed down to us to process and release. Sometimes it’s hard to say what’s ours, what’s our ancestor’s and what happened in a past life. Epigenetics is one faction studying this now.

All of the various ailments seem like separate things to the general public but when you really start studying it all, you start to see all of the patterns and things become simpler. All problems stem from a root cause of some sort of trauma.

Playing with hypnotherapy can be dangerous if you’re not prepared to deal with the things that come up after the door is opened. Some (as seen with entertainment – stage hypnosis) can go into thinking it’s all fun and games and walk away changed due to what comes up and is experienced.

Most of the work in healing is sitting with the feelings and surrendering to what happened. It sucks. It shouldn’t have happened. But it did. How can acceptance be found in order to release the pain and move forward?

20:13 –

Most of the time, in order to accept, release and heal, all we need is a safe place with a safe individual who we respect and is there to validate and support us. Dr. Saperstein points out that this is most likely due to the fact that our trauma is most often caused by someone who was close to us and should have protected us. So to counteract that damage done, we need someone who fulfills the role of what they should have been for us.

Trauma is caused by malice but also by ignorance. Too often, children are hurt by people who just didn’t know any better. That’s a hard fact to deal with because ‘how can you not know that your actions were harmful!?” Unfortunately, that’s a common truth.

People have a hard time with the word ‘forgiveness’. In many situations, people aren’t intending to harm one another, it’s just something that happened unintentionally. Most people really are trying their best with the limited knowledge, understanding and resources they have available to them. That’s not to say that some people aren’t absolutely terrible. Some are. Most people who inflict trauma were they themselves traumatized and are unconsciously passing on the cycle.

27:46 –

A big misconception about the rich is that they’re all stuck up and out for themselves. When you understand the laws of the universe, though, you’re able to see that in order to meet certain criteria for abundance, you have to be kind, generous and thoughtful. Sure, you can get to those higher statuses through more malice but doing it that way isn’t how it happens for most people because your actions and choices have to align with your heart.

Money follows value. Having all of your basic needs met opens you up to the freedom of being unselfish and generous in all areas that you can find.

The vast majority of victims blame themselves at least initially and/or subconsciously for what happened. There’s also a misconception that sexual abuse and other traumas occur from a stranger that walks their way into your life but most is caused by a close friend, relative or caretaker.

We learn to lie to ourselves in an effort to understand why things happened to us. When someone abuses us, they leave behind a poison that we mistake as our own. Victim blaming is so common that the victims also begin to blame themselves for the incident.

Victim blaming is easier than taking responsibility for the evils you’ve done or accepting that others have done evil to someone. We don’t want to believe that these things are so common so we suppress it the only ways we know how to. Shutting it all down and sweeping it into the shadows in an effort to not have to be uncomfortable with addressing it.

Obviously, we should not be doing any of this. Understanding why people take the routes they do is not at all excusing the routes chosen. Instead, understanding makes them easier to identify when they arise so that persistence can be taken. Otherwise, we’re allowing the perpetuation of these harmful practices and more damage to the victim is done.

38:58 –

It’s historically been seen as unprofessional for professionals to speak about themselves, their life and their experiences. This has led to most pretending they don’t exist outside of their workspace. Professionals instead being open about what they’ve dealt with gives them their humanity back and allows them to connect with victims who have endured similar challenges. Being honest about what you’ve personally gone through helps those who need you to more easily find you.

When you’re seeking a professional for a certain type of help, it’s okay to question them on their personal life a bit to try and gauge if they are capable of helping you. A formal education, certification, degree or license doesn’t automatically mean qualified for your specific needs. Every professional is just a person and any person can only help another on a level of which they themselves have experienced.

Especially when dealing with trauma and healing, you’ll generally find professionals who aren’t very helpful more easily than you will find someone who really can help. There’s a lot of problematic hoops here that make finding someone to help you pretty difficult. Please be persistent and don’t give up because you landed on a few unhelpful ones in the beginning. Keep searching and expand your inquires outside of traditional therapy. You deserve the help you need and that help can come in unassuming forms but they are out there.

42:50 –

A common trap that people fall into when they want to help someone (speaking nonprofessionally in more of a private setting) is willingness to help in any way that isn’t emotional. The biggest help anyone can be for someone who’s struggling is emotional availability. If they can’t offer that, they often do more harm by ‘trying to help’.

There are low cost therapist centers. You just have to find them. Cost shouldn’t stand in the way of you getting your help.

About Our Guest:

Dana Saperstein Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, published author and podcaster. Dr. Saperstein has been in private practice in Santa Barbara, CA. since 1989, specializing in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, anxiety and relationship counseling.

Rather than pathologizing clients based on the medical model of psychotherapy, Dr. Saperstein sees therapy as more of an art, developed over years of experience. One of the modalities he uses in his practice is clinical hypnosis, which allows the client to access the subconscious as well as the conscious mind.

Dr. Saperstein’s clients have encouraged him to write a book about his unique and effective practices for many years. In 1990 Dr. Saperstein and his brother published a book called “Surviving an Automobile Accident”, exploring the physical, emotional and legal challenges following a motor vehicle accident. Currently, Dr. Saperstein is hosting a podcast called “Fear Me Out” and writing a book by the same title. Dr. Saperstein has been married for 43 years and has two adult children and two grandchildren.

Dr. Saperstein can be reached at: fearmeoutpodcast@gmail.com

https://www.fearmeoutpodcast.com/