Leaving childhood issues behind with hypnotherapy

Unless you do something about it, you can carry pivotal events of your childhood forward all your life and be forever weighted down. You can be left to feel that, whatever’s happened, you’re left with a sense of guilt, shame, low self-esteem, anger and/or trauma.

What’s happened? Typical childhood events that are carried into later years

It can be anything. And if it matters to you and it’s stopping you from moving forward, then it’s something that needs working on. 

The event(s) can be as extreme as sexual abuse, coercive control and violence, but there are others that can leave a legacy. For example:

• Being bullied. This might be by siblings or in the playground (a nasty 'Lord of The Flies' sort of environment).
• Feeling other siblings were valued more – like you weren’t the favourite.
• A casual remark. Many years ago, I had a client who, on her way home from a none too enjoyable ballet class was told, “Never mind, you’ll always be the chubby one”. So from that day on, she ate and ate. It became a self-filling prophecy.
• Physical appearance. You were singled out for being too tall/small, a birthmark maybe, or hair colour.
• Illness. You felt left out. For example, you couldn’t join in with sports.
• You felt you were different. You didn’t make friends easily, or you were coming to terms with your sexuality.
• Problem parenting. Now you’re an adult, you might realise how poor your parents were at nurturing you.

What does this childhood trauma look like in adult years?

The effects of childhood trauma can appear in various ways, such as anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

To be more specific, you might drink, take drugs, avoid others, or overeat. Perhaps you don’t feel worthy, you might cry or become scared for no apparent reason. You might even self-harm. Perhaps you find yourself getting stuck for hours going over and over your childhood feeling unable to escape.

How can hypnotherapy help overcome childhood issues?

There is an old saying that we suffer more in imagination than reality. Basically, this means using your current-day thoughts to hold you back because of a childhood event.

And this is where hypnotherapy can help you heal. Quite simply, it’s a way of relaxing, visualising a past event, bringing it to life here and now and wandering around that scene – and taking away, or dialling down the meaning.

Or, to put it another way, to take away the meaning. Something that’s easier to do when you’re calm and relaxed. You can see things for what they are... past events... and getting ever further into the past. You can put the event into your library of learning and move forward. Just crack on.

In effect, what I’m saying is that life is understood backwards but lived forwards. And you don’t have to be held back by past events.

Techniques used in hypnotherapy for childhood trauma

The one thing hypnosis and hypnotherapy don’t do is avoidance. And another technique I’m keen on is this: calmly walking you, the adult, back to a scene where you were, say, a scared child. Once we’re here (don’t worry, I’m with you) the adult you reassures the child you that everything will be OK, and takes the child version of you by the hand and leads you away.

What I’m doing as a hypnotherapist is tapping into your subconscious mind, accessing and processing your traumatic experiences. Working with you, I’m looking to improve your mental health, give you better emotional regulation, and a renewed sense of inner peace.