It’s common knowledge that if you need mental health support of any kind NOT to go to anyone you know – it’s too close for comfort. I admit, I went against that tenet and had a session of hypnotherapy back in April 2024, two month after I’d had the punch in the gut and kick in the ribs trigger which left me reeling in a quagmire of emotional pain. He was newly ‘trained’ in hypnotherapy and NLP, and, as I didn’t know anyone else to try and save me from the quagmire I was sinking in, and, as he was building up his practice, in my desperate, seriously messed up, ‘please fix me’ survival setting, I convinced myself to give him a try (as he’s a well meaning chap with his heart in the right place, certainly not a superficial, poseur type). Not the best thought process upon which to place your wellbeing into someone’s hands – it’s not akin to trying out a new restaurant. Surprisingly the session with him went well although I proved the tenet right – I felt uncomfortable and bearing my soul to him was way too close for comfort. That was over a year ago.
A month or so ago, I was mildly affronted by a text chat with him. In passing, I mentioned on the brief exhange that I’d been seeing a counsellor since December last year. Totally unprompted, and to my surprise, he proceeded to spew his prescriptive opinion at me (as a very newly ‘trained’ therapist) For the sake of saving face (in case he ever stumbles across this post as I don’t want to fall out with him), I’ll paraphrase what he said: “oh this can be healed quite quickly with NLP. When you know what trauma you want you heal you can heal it really quickly. You just need to remove old anchors and replace them with new ones. The rewind and timeline techniques work very well. EFT is a must and deep meditation But you also need to find peace with yourself and learn to forgive, forgiving yourself for any wrongs and others to help you move on….“
Really? That’s how you re-parent the inner child? Abracadabra (swoosh of wand) and you’re fixed of your childhood wounds that quickly?
And don’t get me started on the whole forgiveness thing. It’s not as cut and dried as just forgiving and ‘moving on’. I’ve got a post sitting in my drafts about the ‘F’ word and I’ve got a few things to say about that too. It’ll probably come out next so watch this space, perhaps subscribe if you want to hear about that one when it’s fully baked.
I’m no expert but his type of prescriptive response is not only naive but dangerously feckless *especially* if you’re feeling fragile, alone and vulnerable (like I was last year) as the natural tendancy and reaction will be to gravitate and cling to people like this for a ‘quick’ solution. When you’re crumbling internally, all sense of instinct and intution is shrouded by desperation, fragility, listlessness and the feeling of wanted to be magically scooped up and fixed. And with that desperation you kiss goodbye to any discernment of whether the intervention is going to be right for you.
But coming back to his message.
I *never* asked for his opinion, let alone his unsolicited choices on what would work best for me in healing my childhood trauma; yes well-intended but totally misdirected, leaving me mildly affronted by his oblivious but well-meaning impertinence He makes it sound easy; a click of your fingers, hocus pocus and TA DAH, just like that, you’re healed, super quick to match a fast forward world. Just to be clear, techniques like anchors, timeline and rewind are all great for programming new behaviours, getting past limiting beliefs and releasing irrational fears/phobias (I know I’ve done an NLP course before but never really used it). But personally I don’t think NLP is a good fit at all for healing childhood trauma; what I have come to realise from writing about and revisiting my own trauma is that it’s a pain body that continues to exist in your psyche, a pain body that’s still screaming in its own echo chamber, a pain body which needs to be witnessed, loved and integrated, a pain body which certainly remembers you and will control you if it’s repressed and stuffed away (as I’ve written about in my previous posts). So then it begs the question: how can a newly ‘trained’ therapist justify doling out unsolicited advice when he doesn’t even specialise in childhood trauma? Yes, he might have had one or two clients who think they’re healed of their afflictions after one or two sessions (and good for them – perhaps they did) but lets get one thing straight: he should NOT have prescribed therapy and interventions unless I’d specifically asked; if he’d have been trained properly, he’d have known that! And that is a whole other topic of conversation to be had but I’m not going to get on my soap box about that right now!
In true Columbo style just one more thing: opinions (the one you don’t ask for) are like arseholes: everyone’s got one and they all stink. It’s a sure-fire repellent when someone projects the horizontal smelly fart of unwanted suggestions in your face. Goes without saying I never bothered responding to him.
For me, my long-fix of months of therapy have been instrumental on this healing journey so far. Had I not fortuitously followed my hunch and found my counsellor last year, I don’t know how much I’d have progressed (or may be even regressed?). The past 7 months I’ve been seeing her have made a palpable and visible difference to me in how I appraoch the past, how I approach my triggers and how I’m learning to reparent the inner child. I have the understanding that you have to revisit and feel in order to heal. And yes it IS about going over the same ground again and again, not for the sake of it to or wallow in self pity but about processing and learning how to manage your own emotions and shadow self until the pain is assuaged. You can’t just numb the pain and shut it out with anger or feelings of retribution and wanting to be an instrument of providence or bathe in victimhood. Acknowledgement of the pain for me has been key. Having read some Jung recently, it’s about prising the pain body out of the shadows and bringing it forward, all of it, until it is a conscious part of you. It’s about literally building a relationship with your shadow and not leaving it as an ostrasized part of you crumpled away only for it to metasize. Healing is a process. It’s not about just forward imagining a timeline and manifesting your life (which is what some of these ‘famous’ gurus teach). Never conflate material success with healing. (that’s yet another conversation for another day – and yes I’ve made a mental note). Living with the aftermath of childhood trauma, you don’t know WHO YOU ARE or WHAT YOU WANT having abandoned yourself a long time ago; you don’t even know what you want tomorrow let alone in a year’s time or five year’s time. I’ve never known what I truly want; I’ve never been able to set goals – how do you forward think and set goals when don’t know who the hell you are? Everything I thought I wanted that society tells you that you should want just felt like an empty pipe dream; And I’ve never known how to thrive and live fully although I’m still learning how to – it’s difficult when survival has been modus operandi for all of my adult life.
Tear a page from what these online ‘gurus’ say that you’re in victim mode if you think about your past. I remind myself that I am NOT in victim mode when I revisit the past to heal it. Living in the past is another thing entirely but revisiting to hold space for myself to process the pain with a new set of tools is totally different. Processing your pain is essential for healing to occur. Giving my pain a voice, recognising it for what it is, validating it, acknowledgment that yes, it was so very difficult and damaging for my inner child has been the ray of light that had soothed the pain and made a stormy sea within much more calm.
I don’t believe in quick fixes, not for childhood trauma anyway. The invisible wounds are the hardest to heal. Re-parenting the inner child takes time which is what I’m learning to do now I have the tools. Physical wounds don’t simply vanish with a plaster and a poke overnight do they so do you seriously think that an internal emotional wound like childhood trauma has a quick fix? Surely that is just obtuse and wishful thinking. You can’t just push a button and reset the nervous system overnight akin to the fact that you can’t rewire your brain overnight either. It takes time. True healing takes time. And patience. And it takes TLC of the emotional inner self. Just like physical wounds your internal emotional wounds have their healing timeline too. That’s my opinion anyway and yes, my arsehole stinks too.
If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:
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