Hypnosis: Attracting Your Success: Mind Control, Self Hypnosis and nlp pdfdrive com

Case study – returning vet undergoes treatment

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Dr. Kelly Gerling is a hypnotherapy practitioner in the Seattle area. He offers
the case of a returning veteran seeking help for managing his PTSD symptoms. 
On revolving back to the real world, “Gary” (pseudonym) encountered a great
deal of difficulty adjusting to civilian life and turned to the services offered by
Dr. Gerling for relief from his discomfort with this no-longer-familiar reality.
Gary related to Dr. Gerling that he felt alone most of the time, even though
surrounded by a network of support in family and friends. He described an ever-
present fear, while out in public, that led him to be constantly on the lookout for
threats, preventing him from enjoying even a day out. Gary also found that his
mental equilibrium was constantly under threat from the incursion of unwelcome
memories of the violence he’d witnessed as a combat soldier. He related that
this effect was not only present in his waking life, but dominated his dreams and
nightmares. His nightmares were often vivid re-enactments of what he’d seen
and been part of on the front lines.
Combat veteran Gary was also profoundly impaired in his social interactions,
describing a numbing effect when engaged with those around him, particularly
when engaged in conversations about contentious subjects. His relationships
were suffering, particularly in his family. Disagreements and arguments (a
frequent and normal feature of family life) were either avoided by him, due to
his fear of erupting, or met with disproportionate outbursts. Gary also found that
forming new friendships was difficult, especially if the people he met were not,
themselves, veterans of war. Attending all the foregoing was an overwhelming
sense of guilt about acts he’d committed in the theatre of war that he felt, in
retrospect, had been immoral.
In the course of therapy, it was discovered by Dr. Gerling that Gary had
witnessed several of his comrades-in-arms killed. It was agreed that the incident
would be explored, but using the controlled setting of hypnotherapy. Dr.
Gerling then explained that his project was not to magically “cure” Gary of

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PTSD, but rather to render the trauma he’d suffered endurable and redeem it
through deriving life lessons. In this way, the former combatant might be
enabled to make some sense of the trauma and to experience it as a past event
which was now a part of life he’d learned from.
Gerling further explained that Gary would be able to regain control of
relationships and improve their quality, due to a reduction in the hypervigilance
(looking for danger at every turn and in every situation) he’d been prone to, as
well as the numbing and outbursts he’d been experiencing. He further reassured
him that the nightmares he’d been having would be transformed into something
less negative; more like the rewind of an experience that he could begin to
understand in a more revelatory light. Dr. Gerling finally made it clear to Gary
that while he couldn’t guarantee a complete recovery, he could guarantee a
diminishment in the manifestation of his symptoms and that, perhaps, with time
and diligence on his part, that the more damaging effects of PTSD would at least
be fully under control. Gary’s ability to recognize triggers and behaviors would
enable him to view them from a standpoint of being in charge of them and not
vice versa.
In describing the treatment to Gary, Dr. Gerling stated that a change in
perspective would occur, directed through the use of hypnotherapy, with Gary
entering into a trancelike state that would provide the doctor with access to his
subconscious. He also told Gary, that while he’d be there to direct the course of
the hypnosis, Gary would be the sole “driver” of the therapy and its process. 
Ensuring that Gary understood his role as a guide, Dr. Gerling assured his
patient that hypnotherapy would allow him to call up the traumatic imagery from
a different perspective. Finally, Dr. Gerling said that Gary would be enabled to
move beyond the event’s psychic hold on him and, as a result, be able to see his
future life with renewed optimism.
Gary would, in fact, be enabled to see the traumatic experiences that had led to

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his PTSD from a third-person perspective, as a dispassionate observer,
uninvolved in the action and only passively observing it.
Dr. Gerling then guided Gary through a visualization exercise in which he was
parachuting. From the first person perspective, Gary imagined himself about to
jump from airplane. He described the sensation as “frightening”. Gary was then
asked to visualize himself from the perspective of someone observing him about
to jump, from the ground below. The shift in perspective was profound for Gary
and he was able to ascertain that the perspective of third person observation was
not invested in the action being observed. This is a key element of the third
person methodology in play in this version of hypnotherapy. When the patient is
able to see his actions through the lens of an observer, all personal overlays and
psychological detritus attending are swept away, leaving only the raw action.
Gary was then asked to move to the second stage of the visualization process. 
Dr. Gerling asked that he picture himself seated in a movie theatre, where he
would view the events that had led to his PTSD from a safe and uninvolved
distance. Key to the visualization was the idea that he was watching the past
unfold – that it was past and not present and that it had occurred in another
place; a place he was no longer part of. Detachment, in this form of
visualization creates a safe space for the patient to review events for what they
were, and not through the lens of guilt and other emotions.
In visualizing the primary event (in which his friends had been killed and Gary
had been sent into the killing field to recover their remains), Gary began to enter
fully into the scene he was viewing, prompting Dr. Gerling to ask him to hit
“pause”. Gary was then asked how he might reduce the imagery’s intensity. He
then elected to view the “movie” in black and white and further, in a blurry
format in which the imagery might present itself less clearly, permitting him to
review it less emotionally. With these adjustments, Gary was able to review the
imagery with greatly increased comfort and with much less emotional

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investment.
Upon opening his eyes, after viewing the traumatic scene at length and in detail,
Gary described his comfort with confronting the event which had been
impacting his life so negatively for so long. Dr. Gerling then asked Gary to
picture himself in the final frame of the chain of events which had unfolded in
the movie. When asked what he believed the character in the film (Gary)
needed, he responded:
“For someone to help and pay attention to what I’m going through”.
Gary was then directed to enter into the action, as though it were a three-
dimensional stage play. Dr. Gerling directed him to move into the action by
going into the movie (as a three-dimensional reality) and sitting down next to
himself. He was directed, further, to ask the kind of questions he believed he
needed to be asked to arrive at an understanding of how the emotions around the
trauma had been affecting him. As Gary listened to himself, a young man who’d
just collected the broken pieces of his dead friends from the dust of a distant
battlefield, he felt a wave of compassion and love for him and began to cry. He
later related to Dr. Gerling that he had cried with his younger self, there in the
theater of battle, as re-created in hypnotherapy.
Gary’s tears amounted to profound and enduring healing. Over time, Gary and
Dr. Gerling worked through other events Gary had experienced in this time as a
soldier, moving from one to the next, using the same techniques. In addition,
Dr. Gerling provided Gary with an audio recording to take home and use prior to
going to sleep. Gary was also instructed in a technique to help him guide his
subconscious mind in dreams, based on his clinical experiences of visualization.
Now that we’ve reviewed the history and some modern applications of hypnosis
and hypnotherapy, let’s find out more about how it works and introduce
ourselves to the science and practice of hypnosis.

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