One of the key common denominators that has been recently discovered that causes a trauma or a phobia is the perception of feeling trapped or inescapable stress. In other words perceiving you have no place to get away or hide from what is distressing them.
The perception of inescapability does not have to last long for a person to become traumatised. For example this could happen during a short flight, in an elevator, in a car accident, or getting stuck on a road, or a bridge.
Similar to a phobia if you then encounter a situation that reminds you of the initial stressful event consciously or unconsciously, this once again can instantly signal to the brain to fire off stressful chemicals to get the body ready for the fight, flight or freeze response.
The Outcome Havening Technique for Trauma
The creator of the Havening Techniques Harvard graduate, neuro scientific researcher and medical doctor Ronald Ruden discovered how to cure a phobia or heal a traumatic memory within minutes. This is called Outcome Havening. The technique is often used on a distressful memory, and as calming Havening Touch is applied the therapist then asks the client to imagine escaping from the distressful scene and replacing it with a more positive ending or outcome.
This breakthrough discovery causes the trauma to completely disappear almost instantly and can also leave you with a positive memory and feeling about that past situation. We find Outcome Havening works particularly well for fears and phobias, or where there is a specific remembered event were you felt trapped.Think about it as inserting in a new positive ending into the memory, like editing or changing a movie script to make a happy ending.
For example, with a spider phobia memory you could then imagine picking the spider up with some tissue and flushing it down the toilet or throwing it outside . This new visualisation could be enough to completely clear a fear or a trauma, and has been used to cure spider phobias successfully with Havening.
Another example ,would be if you had a fear of the dark you could simply imagine turning on the light switch in the distressing memory. For a traumatic memory of falling, you could imagine that you landed on a soft bed and pillow. For claustrophobia from getting stuck in an elevator, you could imagine that the doors simply opened when they were supposed to and you walked out of the elevator feeling calm and relaxed.
By imagining a more positive outcome whilst using Havening touch it often completely changes the memory and releases all the anxiety, trauma and negative symptoms from it. A little bit of creative thinking can sometimes be needed to imagine what that would be. You can make it as fun, surreal and as imaginative as you wish. (for example you could imagine an angel or superman coming down and flying you away to a peaceful place, such as a beautiful sunny park or a beach)
At Advanced Hypnotherapy Dublin we specialise in helping people quickly and effectively become free from trauma and anxiety based disorders, such as panic attacks, phobias, distressful memories, post-traumatic stress, depression & pathological emotions such as anger, guilt, shame, worry etc with consistently remarkable positive results for our clients.