PTSD - Treating Trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Hypnotherapy

Trauma is one of those things that most of us will be forced to deal with at one time or another on our life's journey. In fact, it's thought that between 50% to 90% of us will experience it sooner or later.

Psychological trauma is always the product of an experience that leaves the individual feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope with or fully process the emotions produced by that experience.

With trauma, the subconscious mind has been shocked by an event, or a series of events, and this has profoundly affected the functioning of the individual.

Powerful though it may be for the traumatised individual, on a psychological level the experience itself is somehow less important than the individual's perception and inner response to that experience.

This explains why a similar event may very well be shrugged off by one person yet creates real difficulty in another. What may be a traumatic experience for one may not be traumatic for another.

Trauma itself can happen at any time on the life journey.

It may take place in childhood, and occur as a result of experiencing or witnessing psychological or physical abuse, or extreme poverty, for example, and it can leave the child traumatised well into adulthood.

Or the trauma may have happened later in life, having its origins in abuse, accident, violence, crime, war, death or natural disaster.

Difficult though trauma itself really is, around 8% will develop the more devastinging and crippling symptoms of trauma known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

Left untreated, PTSD can have truly dire consequences for the individual, seriously affecting his or her relationships and ability to function on a work or an interpersonal level.

PTSD often results from an experience or experiences that threatened real physical harm. Sometimes, however, it can be caused by psychological and emotional trauma where there was no actual implication of physical harm.

Very often, though, it combines aspect of both of these.

While Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is in fact a chronic and severe emotional response to trauma, it differs from traumatic stress or combat stress in that it is usually much more intense and not at all transitory in nature.

In the past, PTSD was also known as shell shock, battle fatigue, and post traumatic stress syndrome.

But it is not necessary to have experienced war in order to suffer from PTSD, any true shock to the nervous system - such as a car accident or a death, drug addiction or sexual assault - can bring it about.

Regardless of the cause, the trauma symptoms that result are very real and distressing for the person unfortunate enough to experience them.

Those suffering from this kind of trauma may experience chronic and acute anxiety, anger, disturbed sleep, disruptive thoughts, flashbacks or nightmares. Often they find it very difficult to talk about the events that caused the trauma.

Because of their disturbing nature, they find it difficult or impossible to effectively deal with and integrate these things on the subconscious level of the mind.

And this is where correctly and skillfully applied transformational hypnotherapy can be tremendously effective, providing a relatively brief trauma treatment that can lead to a full trauma recovery.

Working with a professional and highly skilled transformational hypnotherapist, the subconscious mind can be taught to re-process the traumatic experiences of the past so that the damage becomes neutralised and undone.

The fact is that, despite the fearful expectations and beliefs instilled during the traumatic experience itself, the person did survive. He or she did in fact make it through.

With the correct trauma therapy the actual facts of the traumatic experience remain, but the perception and the psychological disruptions once caused by those facts are forever altered.

Effective trauma treatment requires that the person is helped to come to terms with what has happened so that he or she can then let go of it and move on with life.

Of course, letting go in no way means that the traumatised person is forced to forget what has happened in the past.

Yet it does very often mean that the person has to be helped to forgive any aggressor or any individual who may have been actively involved in the traumatic experience.

This is not for any religious reasons. Neither is it through any kind of altruism. Simply put, it is because failure to do this just keeps the person in chains to the past, supporting and maintaing the ongoing damage - the continuing trauma stress, the ongoing emotional and mental trauma.

It needs to be stressed that forgiveness is for the traumatised person. It is not necessarily for the person or people who may have been responsible for causing the trauma. Indeed, very often the person or persons responsible for this remain forever unaware of the forgiveness.

But it is through real and meaningful forgiveness that the person is changed, released and set free. Through the help and guidance of skillfully applied transformational hypnotherapy, the person is shown how to forgive the past, thereby healing and moving on with their life.

If you or someone you care about is suffering from the truly devastating and debilitation effects of trauma, there really is something that can be done about it.

Working with a properly qualified and experienced transformational hypnotherapist you can put the nightmare of trauma behind you and move on with the life that has been put on hold.

With the right kind of help, you really can experience true trauma recovery and set yourself free of the experiences of the past.