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Hypnotic Regression Therapy is a highly controversial type of therapy that is based on the premise that everything an individual has ever experienced is recorded and retained in their mind. I will not address the Past Life Regression therapy in this article as I feel that PLR ranks right up there with UFO’s and alien abductions; but go ahead and comment if you disagree—this is a safe place for everyone to state their opinions and beliefs.
Everything that we experience is connected with a certain amount of emotion, positive or negative. The stronger the emotion the more it affects us. Love and fear are the two basic emotions. Love always affects us in a positive way. Fear is basic to the negative emotions of anger, guilt, shame, resentment and hate.
It is believed that emotions and certain personality traits are present at birth and these emotions are re-experienced and reinforced as we mature. Traumatic childhood experiences can cause lifelong negative emotions that are imprinted on the brain. Regression Therapy promotes the idea that these negative emotions are responsible for all types of physical ailments and therefore, if these negative emotions are re-lived under Hypnotic Regression Therapy that the emotions can then be ‘re-framed’ or transferred to a more positive emotion, thus curing all those physical or psychological ailments.
Here’s how they claim regression therapy works. The process, which is done under hypnosis, is to first identify the origin of the trauma and then to identify the connecting emotion. The next step is to determine the origin of that connecting emotion (the very first time that emotion was tied to the trauma). When the origin of the emotion is determined the individual is directed to re-live the experience. But this time, they are advised to recognize that there was an instant of choice in relating to the experience with either a positive, negative, or indifferent response. Then the patient is directed to reconstruct the experience with a positive emotion. When the original negative emotional imprint is changed all of the following experiences that connect to the original negative emotion have to be re-evaluated and reconstructed. This is done by using the imagination to create a different reality surrounding the experience at the sub-conscious level of the experience.
Whew! That’s a pretty tall order! My opinion is that if it were truly possible to re-program our entire emotional connections through hypnotherapy, and if we had the lifetime required to do all that, we theoretically could be programming a bunch of human robots if we so chose. Regression therapy is highly controversial with only anecdotal evidence of success.
There is no doubt that some people can be hypnotized. I am a certified hypnotherapist and have held many stop smoking and weight loss clinics. Some people are good candidates for hypnosis and some are not. Hypnosis is not some new age hocus-pocus, it is merely a method that the therapist uses to put the patient into a very relaxed and highly suggestible state of mind. It works wonders during childbirth or painful medical procedures. But, even in this suggestible state the normal restrictions that we all have on our behaviors will always stay functional, which means that no one can successfully make a hypnotized person do something that is against their personal mores or boundaries. Anything to the contrary is theatrical nonsense.
For a patient to allow themselves to be hypnotized they must completely trust the therapist and also be willing to allow themselves to be vulnerable to suggestion. They must have complete trust that the therapist will not harm them and will not make them do anything against their wishes or ask them to reveal personal information that they would not otherwise reveal. That does not describe a Sex Addict’s personality. Sex Addicts do not trust anyone and, they have secrets that they must guard. So I do not see a Sex Addict allowing this type of vulnerability. I personally do not think most Sex Addicts can be hypnotized therefore Regression Therapy would not be beneficial even if it were capable of doing all the things it claims.