It is true that sexual abuse is very much in the collective consciousness now, and that is a good thing. In the past, it happened all the time and nobody spoke of it. Now, as a society, we are becoming aware of its frequency, causes, and terrible legacy. But within the context of hypnosis, your conscious mind, that is thinking about all that, lets go of thinking. The therapist guides you in a very open ended way, saying things like “You’re walking down a hall, with many doors lining it. One door opens to a room where your inability to keep a job first began. Open the door and tell me the first thing you notice.” Clients’ responses are widely different.

I have found that the subconscious mind can communicate both literally and symbolically. Sometimes the client will describe a dreamscape and, at other times, regress to something that really happened in an earlier time. It may be something the person consciously remembers, but now examines with more wisdom. Or perhaps, though aware of the incident, the individual may be unaware of some still unexpressed emotion that needs to be released now. When the client enters a dreamscape, the therapist just follows the lead, asking intuitive questions and helps the person resolve issues on a symbolic level. For example someone who doesn’t take time for self – nurturing might walk into a room of dying plants. In taking time to water them, the client understands on a deep level the importance of attending to needs of the self.

It is also important to realize that just because many people were sexually abused, this is not a universal experience. What is common to each of us is that, no matter how loving our parents were, none of us got all of our needs met fully all of the time, and that’s exactly what we all wanted.

Many people worry about even exploring hypnosis for fear they’ll find out the parents they think are so loving are actually horrible people. Occasionally people do remember terrible things their parents did that they had repressed. Most often, however, people remember times that their parents just weren’t there for them. The parents may have been preoccupied with work or other siblings or maybe were just not able to show affection. This doesn’t seem traumatic to an adult but the child registered it as a trauma.

Why dig up old pain through hypnosis instead of getting on with life?
Getting on with life is impossible if you’re dragging past hurts like a ball and chain. Whether or not you remember what happened to you, whether or not you think it was serious, you can tell the past is haunting you if there’s a pattern to current problems. If pain in your life follows a familiar theme such as abandonment, rejection, or abuse, there is probably a connection to something painful in your early life. While you can manage the difficulties of the present, you will not end the pattern and get on with a happy life until you deal with the original wound. Hypnosis is the most effective tool I know for doing that.