that is exactly why I am doing this with my therapisT. Actually I started developing my plan for this a few years ago with my past therapist. I have a nightmare. It feels very real in fact I wake up in panic attacks. The problem is I cant remember what it is about after a certain point and every time my past therapist and I would try to get to work on it to find out what it is I would end up dissociating - feeling far away, floating and end up in my mental safe place while she was talking to me while I was physically acting from memories (doing this is called having DID).

So my therapist and I put working on the nightmare on hold while I gained contorl of the Dissociation and DID.

In the process of learning how to take care of my DID I learned that dissociation is just using relaxation and imagry (relaxing and daydreaming until you are no longer feeling the effects of the real situation that is happening) so I decided to find out about various relaxation techniques and found out hypnosis is just relaxing and using imagry - which is exactly the skills used during dissociation. Well I had dissocation down pat so pat that when I did it I could only hear and see and feel what I was imagining - my mental safe place. Hypnosis uses the same skills for dissociation with one difference - the person is still aware of real life in fact sometimes hyper aware and can tell things like when someone new comes into the room while they are relaxed. They can hear what the other people in the room are saying, can answer questions, they can take and use any suggestions they normally (without hypnosis) think is ok, but cannot do anything that they think goes against what they believe or is wrong. They can locate memories just by wanting to because they are so relaxed that they are not afraid of that memory.

Finding out all this is amazing so I started developing a plan on how to use it to fight my nightare.

My first step was I had to know and break down my dissociating into slow motion type steps. and be able to control that so that I knew where I go from the relaxed level of hypnosis and my mental safe place and my floating out of body.

Once I had that information I was ready to begin using hypnosis - I used the book recreating yourself by Nancy J Napier. That book has alot of relaxation and imagry exercises. I would read them then lay down in bed and try to do that exercise while I listened to my cd I use at night for relaxing and going to sleep (intrumental music). I called my therapist voice mail every night right before going to bed and doing the exercises so that I could hear her voice, I did this (calling my therapist voicemail to hear her voice and then the relaxation cd while doing one of Nancy J. Napiers relaxation visualizations) too after waking up from a nightmare - basically teaching myself to focus and be aware of my therapist voice and using the relaxation visualizations.

After a while I got to know how it feels to reach that totally relaxed but aware feeling so then I started doing it on and off during the day and throughout the process I would tell myself I want to remember what happened when... (a positive and happy memory that is one of my familys story telling situations) and told myself I wanted to remember one thing that isn't in the retelling of those stories. Then after remembering the situation with relaxation I talked to relatives to confirm what I remembered and I was always right on sometimes even amazing my relatives with how I a person who has always had a bad memory was suddenly able to remember details that they forgot until I remembered them. by doing this it gave me practice of focusing on a specific thing and also showed me that I can trust whatever I remember with relaxation techniques.

Once I told my therapist what I was doing she helped during therapy by bringing up hard topics and helping me use relaxation and her voice to stay focused on her at all times not the emotion of fear of the topic.

Once using relaxation/ visualizations and focusing on my therapist voice became habit and automatic we were ready to use this with finding out the situation that caused the nightmare and the nightmare itself.

That was put on hold again because of governemnt cutbacks forced her office to lay off many therapists and she was one of the many great therapists that were let go because she hadn't been with the agency a certain cut of amount of time that was used for the lay off list because each any every therapist there were great people and great at their jobs. This agency is one of the best in this city.

Anyway so then I had to have a new therapist who knew nothing about what my therapist and I were working on, who I was and what works for me, and I knew nothing about her so I continued staying in practice with what my past therapist and I were doing while taking a couple years to get this therapist caught up and my getting to know her.

As time went on a surprising advantage to my plan came my way. My therapist was the one assigned to take over the depression management group another therapist who got laid off had been running and I had taken. I signed up right away thinking this will be a great way for the two of us to get to know eachother and I can see how she is with others compared to how she is with me. Well boy was I surprised my therapist was doing relaxation visualizations during the group.. So without her even knowing what my past therapist and I were working on I was able to teach myself to focus on her at the same time work on the problem of dissociating during it. I kept my alterior motive for being in the class and what I was doing to myself until one day during therapy my therapist asked me right out if I use relaxation visualizations on my own. I told her about the Nancy J Napier stuff and showed her the meditations and conscious living exercises that I do. (she's now doing them and got others in the agency on board with trying the material) she is using the agencys fund for clients to get me some recodings from Nancy J Napier and she told me about Belleruth Naparstak. after knowing all this I wrote her a letter outlining what my past therapist and I woere going to do with all the relaxation visualization plans we had been working on. My present theraist is very excited about doing this with me and has recorded in her voice on a cassette a couple Belleruth Naparstak relaxations from the book Invisible Heros so that I can continue practicing focusing and relaxing by myself and also guided by her voice (which is what self hypnosis and hypnosis is). We are also doing them during therapy sessions so that I get used to doing them with her live in sessions with her. The next step is go for the nightmare memories when ever she's ready. I figure it will take a few times shes still nervous over the fact that I had thrown a table at my past therapist when I was in my mental safe place and my body was reacting from memories. But its a go this time - no layoffs that I know of in the works and its the right time after we get past some practice in sessions Court on my sons review status is soon and will be over before we start work on reaching the nightmare memories.

I can tell you hypnosis works and can be fun at times. Talk with your therapist and the two of you can work each step from what the goals are to how to start practicing and how to do it and then actually doing it all with positive results. Take care