Hypnosis for Past Memories: Helpful or Harmful?
It’s not uncommon for people to approach me to understand their emotions. Sometimes, they have anxiety, which is contributing to chronic pain. Sometimes it is a specific fear. Or it might be a tendency toward depression.
Since they have lives that, on paper, sound wonderful, what might be at the root of their (or their child’s) unhappiness? Could there be some deep memory or association which they have not identified? Can hypnosis help them discern the source of their feelings or uncover some hidden episode from their past?
Using hypnosis to recover memories is a practice fraught with complications. There is a very real risk that a person might unwittingly create a false memory. This memory might function as a way to better understand their current situation but at the risk of implicating other people in some history of harm. This possibility of false memories has been widely recognized to the point that memories recovered by hypnosis are not considered valid testimony in a court of law.
So, I do not recommend peering into the mysteries of the past to better understand the present. This is not to say that a person’s past has no role in helping to improve the future by addressing a problem in the present. I prefer to use memories differently: to identify times when a person demonstrated strength, capability, or some other quality that could now serve them again.
Looking back in time, a person can identify resources they had and still have. They can dust off these strengths, bring them up to date, and apply them to the issue of the moment.
