Metaphor For Depression Caused By Historic Child Abuse

Welcome to My Metaphor Of The Month. A hypnotic induction is a process by which a hypnotist guides the client from conscious responses to subconscious responses. With some people this can be done in conversations just by the type of questions I ask, but other clients need to be put into trance which means I ask them to close their eyes and go deeper into their own mind and then I will try some hypnotic tests to ensure they are hypnotised.

I was helping a guy rid himself of a depression that he had had for years. The depression was caused by historic child abuse and recent events in his life had triggered it. I used some trance work with him and took him deeper into his own mind and then tested that he was hypnotised. He was – he responded well to the suggestion that he could not open his eyes so we carried on with a full session.

He told me before we started the real work that when I had taken him into trance he could find no place in his mind that he wanted to go, that it was dark and lonely and he had not enjoyed it. I took this on board and next time I asked him to close his eyes, I dispensed with my usual metaphor of approaching an entrance to hypnosis in his imagination and told him to go the way of his depression – to go all the way down in his mind to the lowest point he had ever found himself and to let me know when he was there. He nodded after a minute or two with tears leaking from his eyes.

I then asked him how he got there and he replied that he had followed the path and then come down the steps and he motioned behind him as he said it (at no point had I said anything about a path or steps this was all his mind).

I then told him to turn around and walk back the way he had come. He immediately started shaking and crying more and said he could do it but it was very hard. I asked why it was hard and he said because he felt so very heavy. I suggested that this made sense as has been carrying some things around since childhood and the longer you carry something the heavier it becomes. I told him if he put these things down he would feel much lighter and it would be easier to walk out of his depression caused by historic child abuse. Now, he was in hypnosis and responding to my suggestions so I told him that when I clapped my hands he would put these things down that he has been carrying around and leave them down there in his depression and walk up and out of it. I clapped my hands and he shuddered and said progress was easier. We repeated this a few times until he said he felt a lot lighter and it was easier for him to walk up and out of his depression. He was crying as he imagined all this in his mind and I told him that he would keep walking in this direction now even after he opened his eyes, upwards always upwards, away from the things that had dragged him down.

That was all it took to free him from a history of child abuse and the effect that still had on him decades later. I did not need to see him again because he felt fine after that, that it was actually difficult to think about what had happened as a child even if he tried.

Hypnosis for anxiety or depression can be caused by all sorts of things but there are ways out of it and not all of those ways are available in books – they are available in your own mind though so come and see me for some Worthing Hypnosis and I can help you find them.