“STOP LISTENING TO THIS CON-MAN AND OPEN YOUR EYES OR I’LL F@#&ING HIT YOU!”

This (along with several other choice sentiments) were aimed, not at me, but at my excellent subject and his friends by another friend of theirs while he was thoroughly enjoying a great hypnosis experience that I’ve already written about (here). I should point out that this person was not hypnotised at any point during the evening.

This is an abreaction.

Many in the hypnosis community won’t agree with this statement believing that, as is taught by most hypnotherapy courses and books, an abreaction has to happen while IN a state of hypnosis.

“A physical movement or an emotional outburst as a reaction to a suggestion while in the state of hypnosis.” www.hypnosis.edu

During my hypnosis training I was taught all about hypnotic abreactions – occasions where the hypnotised client spontaneously experiences an incredibly intense negative emotional state. This might be caused by a sudden regression to a past event or simply an overwhelming negative emotion. Either is easily dispelled by following carefully practiced and delivered suggestions easing the client away from or out of the horror they are experiencing/re-living.

Since my IEMT training with Andrew T Austin (the technique’s creator) I have had to revise both my definition and my approach to abreactions. Andrew taught all of us on the course about the three stage abreaction which is detailed below and since I also practice IEMT as a treatment it became important that I learned how to deal with kind of non-hypnosis abreaction.

3 Stage abreaction

In a therapy setting (not necessarily using hypnosis) the three stage abreaction is generally experienced as an escalation of emotion by the client following (roughly) the stages below:

1. Verbal warning – “I don’t like what you’re doing“
2. Emotional threat – “You’re making me upset!“
3. Physical escalation – [pokes you in the face] “OI! I SAID F@*&ING STOP IT!”

These abreactions can and should be used and those who support the provocative therapy approach actively seek to create these situations. From my IEMT point of view, I love this as you can immediately launch in to a “so on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being really bad, just how strong is this feeling you are experiencing now?” and then quickly help them overcome it and expose whatever it is that is causing the problem underneath. Dealing with it when you’re in the middle of a bar with loads of people watching on and enjoying seeing someone being (and also enjoying) hypnotised is quite a different matter and I have to say that in the end, closing time and generally leaving the bar was the only way to sort out the situation.

It was certainly very interesting to experience an abreaction (albeit unpleasant and slightly embarassing) so strong in a public place, and I hope that the person involved felt better about it the next day. For those hypnotists who read my blog, I hope that you will realise that abreactions do not just happen when your subject is directly in hypnosis in front of you and that it can take many forms and manifest in many different ways. The rote 9 word abreaction fix is not going to cut the mustard in all cases and indeed in some, it is to be actively managed in order to HELP the therapy!