Hypnosis Attracting Your Success Mind Control, Self Hypnosis and NLP ( PDF
Rape victims and hypnotherapy Globally, almost 50% of women and girls under the age of 18 will experience
sexual assault. In a survey conducted in Lusaka, Zambia, 53% of school-aged
girls reported that they had endured some form of sexual harassment. While
rape happens to men and boys, too, it is almost always perpetrated by men.
Sexual violence is endemic in almost every society in the world, including the
United States.
Rape victims suffer disproportionately from PTSD, at a rate of one in two
(50%). Regardless, many women are reluctant to report sexual attacks, due to
societal attitudes about sexual violence. This is true of both male and female
victims. Shame is a strong motivator in failure to report, as well as victim doubt
about the nature of the assault and whether the victim “deserved” to be attacked.
Societal attitudes about violence of this nature continue to inhibit the ability of
rape victims to recover from their trauma and to reconcile themselves to the
event itself as a circumstance beyond their control.
But as with other PTSD sufferers, rape victims can benefit from hypnotherapy
by gaining access to repressed memories of the event, as well as connecting the
trauma to ongoing symptomatic manifestations. A challenge with the success of
hypnotherapy for victims of rape is the level of susceptibility in patients, due to
the lack of trust (particularly trust in male clinicians) required to undergo
hypnosis. Victims seeking hypnotherapy to address the impact of PTSD on their
lives should seek a licensed practitioner with strong recommendations in the
professional and patient community, for this reason. Taking the time to find a
professional who the patient feels can be completely trusted and building that
trust through the clinical relationship, is key to the success of this therapeutic
model in rape victims, in particular.
