Self Hypnosis ??

Just curious if anyone has an opinion on this. I've Googled it and haven't really found anything that is of value, that relates to memories that you can't get to.

Something happened to me yesterday and I'm trying to figure out what it was. I would explain, but I would rather not until I make some kind of peace with it.

For some reason that keeps coming to my mind (self hypnosis), but from what I've read, that doesn't fit the bill.

Just curious.

here in my location self hypnosis is purposely relaxing, just another word for meditating, deep relaxation. some people while in this deep state of relaxation can make a suggestions and affirmations to their self... ie i will not smoke today. I will be calm and relaxed today.

there are many CDs on the market by way of amazon and local grocery stores\ department stores and music stores. they are packaged under the labels of relaxation music, quit smoking, how to relax, and inspirational. I find my self hypnosis CD's at our local mall in the bed, bath and beyond store and in department stores that have mood candles (scented candles used for creating a relaxed comfortable atmosphere.

i find self hypnosis to be very helpful after a long stressful day

I do not use self hypnosis for things like repressed memories/ DID and the like because memories are not always literal and the brain has a way to create false memories through the power of suggestion.

example someone I know placed their self in a state of deep relaxation. due to their fears, life style and knowing others with abuse\DID issues their brain created the false memory of being abused and falsely having DID (in other words she ended up diagnosed with mental disorder imposed on self rather than PTSD from abuse and DID. this person finally told the truth when she realized her treatment provider had to terminate with her and the treatment provider placed under investigation for causing the client to have a mental disorder she did not have.

hypnosis (a treatment provider guiding their client through to uncover trauma memories )is rarely used now for treating mental disorders due to the false memory syndrome.

my suggestion is contact your treatment provider, let them know what happened and how so that they can help you to understand how to use self hypnosis with out creating more problems accidentally.

your treatment provider can also teach you how to use self hypnosis in a way that is non triggering for you.

my second suggestion is that since using self hypnosis (placing yourself in a deeply relaxed state of mind) triggered you, you might want to not use it just yet. maybe take a yoga class, or a walk or other relaxing activity that can calm you.

Hello.

As Ive said before I am not a doc. I am someone who lived with DID for most of my life. I am now whole and hopefully, integrated. I continue to make myself stronger in my sense of self by practicing good habits and staying away from people in my family who I know are not good for me to be around.

It is my personal belief that for those of us who are DID we reacted in a way similar to automatic self hypnosis when we dissociated and kept from feeling the terror and threat of the trauma which we were in fact experiencing. We detached form the feelings and expereince via hypnosis.
I noticed late in my therapy that it is /was always in my eyes and sight focus that I first reacted to a trauma and association related to trauma. My eyes' fixed' and I fell under, nodded off and dropped down into a lower layer of consciousness. I think that yes, this was self induced hypnosis. I also think that this originally saved me from experiencing and feeling an unbearable trauma. Self hypnosis likely became a defense mechanism that was there for me in other times when the pain or threat was too great for my head to handle.

I also think that with DID two things are common and shared among the functions/alters/others : one thing is our body is used by all and the other common thing is that we all share and have access to the same unconscious. Body memory will be present no matter whose expereinces left the impression. This can be a teaching tool to use for connecting with a dissociated memory /expereince. Also, in addition to my body remembering , segments of my life frequently were avaliable to me via dreams and nightmares which are also functions of the unconscious. Sometimes in my dream state I was actually there back in those moments and expereinces which intially were cut off from my wide awake awareness.

I think that these things can be used as tools in therapy for DID. Also, there was a function of me that presented herself to me early on and who via hand written notes (automatic writing I guess you would call it) watched over me and encouraged me and even let me know there were others beside myself, that I was not alone. This function was the one who stood behind all the rest and who knew about us and what was going on. My doc referred to her as the executive function.

Hello Again.

When I was in therapy, as a survivor of trauma and workign through DID, I came to write my own theory of what was going on with me. I would like to share this with you. Take or leave whatever is useful/not useful accordingly. .

I never know from reading posts on this site what brought a particular DID person into therapy. It would seem to me that what happened to bring a person into therapy is also key to how therapy progresses as far as DID goes. There has to be some central facet or driving force that wants to get this fixed.

I came to beleive that when one part of a person couldnt stand anymore what was happening to her that part would show up at a doc's office. In trouble, but not really understadning what was going on with her. Over time more and more would ebcome clear as the original patient came to react to her envrionment and other parts would present themselves.

When I was in therapy actively trying to figure out where my life had gone there were also a few things I used as tools.

First off, I think in pictures and my memory is held in pictures, snapshots of the moment. Also, I dont know how common this is, but I am able to go back into these snapshots and walk around in the time and place framed by the snapshot memory.

Missing so many years left me feeling disconnected to what should ahve been my own life. I went back to my parents house and went through photo albums looking for clues to where I was and what was going on with me during the times for whcih I had no memory. (years were missing) Photos sometimes provided me with connections. These photos would trigger associated feelings and memories connected to the photo. In time I could go abck to the photo and go back into the moment and expereince what it was that was so difficult so traumatic for me in the first place. Piece by peice I was able to do this.

I also found myself 'looking for things that were mine' in vintage clothese and shoes and such. A lot of years were gone and when I found a perfume I recognised an association brought time back with it, for example. There were also perfumes my mother wore that conencted me right abck into feelings and these feelings were very bad and terrible and were also associated with expereinces I had shunted away from my present awareness.

I guess when I read your posts they make more sense to me than some others because what you describe is more familiar to me. It seems to be DID as I knew it and hopefully, some of the same tools I used might work for you.

There is a quote I read by a psychiatriac neurologist Antonio de Silva I think is his name. It explains to me how DID is real in a very elemental way. The quote is about memory and how our memory makes us who we are, how all our expereinces shape us and end up defining us.

When I read that I realzied its significance in understadning DID. Without memory, in the absence of being able to remember our own expereinces we cant grow into ourselves. when expreince and memory and personal hisotry is held behind separate sets of eyes through which the DID person is aware of and sees the world, there is an inability to live life integrated in one sense of self.

The alters/functions/ others of DID each have theri own expereinces and memory and personal history. while DID has saved the traumatized child at its center it has kept us from growing up and into our one self. Bringing all of this out into the light of acceptance and understanding is the work of therapy. Accepting as our own, in therapy and over time, the expereinces and feelings of our other functions( at the point of their original creation in reaction to a terrible trauma) is the key to having one self and one sense of awareness of self.

Hello again. Trailrunner.

Self hypnosis was one tool I found myself using. It was almost natural for me. Actually, in the beginning, sometimes I couldnt stop this from happening though. This was the time before I was really in active therapy dealing with what was happening to me and my life.
with self hypnosis I was able to drop back in time and go back into a time ,expereince, memory that had been freed up already by having a dream or nightmare or by seeing and reacting to either a photo with a connected or a flashback that hit me with all its associated feelings.
Self hypnosis also seemed to give me control over what I was working through.

Take care now.

Okay. hello again. I find myself realzing something after what I jsut wrote to you. I think that self hypnosis was how I left the scene so to speak. I think that when threatened both while growing up and as an adult I used self hypnosis to access the functions that stood in for me! I can almost see this as being the case. I can, in fact, see that this was so on many occassions where I had to get out of where I was and someone else stepped in to save me.
wow. I am learning more about myself even as I live life today in one piece. This is really cool!

Thank you!

Hypnosis has never really felt comfortable to me. It's always kind of scared me. Control. To me that is totally relinquishing control to someone else and that doesn't feel like a safe place to me right now.

I am going to discuss what happened with my counselor on Monday. Self hypnosis does lead me to feel like you could open Pandora's box, by yourself, with no one to help you close it.

I was already triggered when I sat down and tried to sort some things out. I feel like if I educate myself on it more, then it might be a good thing for later.

Thank you so much for all that you have shared here!

It is so amazing and I'm so grateful to be able to share these things here, and be understood, encouraged and validated.

Self hypnosis, looking at it from this angle, may be considered dissociating on purpose. Dissociating intentionally, for a purpose.

I can see how it would be helpful to be able to work with memories from a safe distance/place. I'm going to share with my counselor what I experienced. I do believe that I should educate myself more for it to be a help and not a scary thing.

I never know from reading posts on this site what brought a particular DID person into therapy. It would seem to me that what happened to bring a person into therapy is also key to how therapy progresses as far as DID goes. There has to be some central facet or driving force that wants to get this fixed.

There is a driving force that comes sometimes. That was definitely what started me down this road. There was a situation with my husband that happened, and going back and looking at it now, I can actually see myself split in that moment. One minute I was looking at him, hearing him yelling and then it was like a vacuum…

I came to beleive that when one part of a person couldnt stand anymore what was happening to her that part would show up at a doc's office. In trouble, but not really understadning what was going on with her. Over time more and more would ebcome clear as the original patient came to react to her envrionment and other parts would present themselves.

This sounds like the process that I am going through now.


When I was in therapy actively trying to figure out where my life had gone there were also a few things I used as tools. First off, I think in pictures and my memory is held in pictures, snapshots of the moment. Also, I dont know how common this is, but I am able to go back into these snapshots and walk around in the time and place framed by the snapshot memory.

I also think and see in pictures. The memories come back in pictures and fragmented bits and pieces of images. It’s like talking on a cell phone with bad reception. I am not able to go back and be present in those times. I can see them as an observer. I believe there is a part of me that is afraid of that possibility. That’s kind of where I am right now too. There was a thread last week talking about how good it felt to hear that their therapist said, “I believe you.” I am not sure if my counselor has actually said those words, but I feel that he does. There doesn’t seem to be a question there. The question is coming from inside me. A part of me is asking, “Do you believe me?” It’s a very uncomfortable place. I want to reassure that part of me that I truly do believe, but the undercurrent is there.

Missing so many years left me feeling disconnected to what should ahve been my own life. I went back to my parents house and went through photo albums looking for clues to where I was and what was going on with me during the times for whcih I had no memory. (years were missing) Photos sometimes provided me with connections. These photos would trigger associated feelings and memories connected to the photo. In time I could go abck to the photo and go back into the moment and expereince what it was that was so difficult so traumatic for me in the first place. Piece by peice I was able to do this.

I’ve looked at some pictures, but there is only a melancholy sadness to all of them. Maybe that will come in time.

I also found myself 'looking for things that were mine' in vintage clothese and shoes and such. A lot of years were gone and when I found a perfume I recognised an association brought time back with it, for example. There were also perfumes my mother wore that conencted me right abck into feelings and these feelings were very bad and terrible and were also associated with expereinces I had shunted away from my present awareness.

Smells have had that effect on me also. The smell of cotton candy takes me back to a bad memory of my dad at the fair. We have a camp house in the country, and as a child we would go there every weekend to get away from the city. There aren’t pleasant memories connected with that. There was no electricity and the lighting was kerosene lights. That kerosene smell now, confuses my thinking and makes me feel sick.

I guess when I read your posts they make more sense to me than some others because what you describe is more familiar to me. It seems to be DID as I knew it and hopefully, some of the same tools I used might work for you.

What you have shared sounds very familiar to me also. I am not diagnosed with DID. When I started meeting with my counselor, it was for general anxiety. As we have talked and discovered the other “parts” of me and how they deal with different situations, dissociation is clear. There is a continuum. As I learn about myself, I guess that will show it’s self too.

There is a quote I read by a psychiatriac neurologist Antonio de Silva I think is his name. It explains to me how DID is real in a very elemental way. The quote is about memory and how our memory makes us who we are, how all our expereinces shape us and end up defining us.
When I read that I realzied its significance in understadning DID. Without memory, in the absence of being able to remember our own expereinces we cant grow into ourselves. when expreince and memory and personal hisotry is held behind separate sets of eyes through which the DID person is aware of and sees the world, there is an inability to live life integrated in one sense of self.

This is very true!! Very thought provoking.

The alters/functions/ others of DID each have theri own expereinces and memory and personal history. while DID has saved the traumatized child at its center it has kept us from growing up and into our one self. Bringing all of this out into the light of acceptance and understanding is the work of therapy. Accepting as our own, in therapy and over time, the expereinces and feelings of our other functions( at the point of their original creation in reaction to a terrible trauma) is the key to having one self and one sense of awareness of self.

There has been such healing and acceptance for me, in the memories that have been brought out, opened up and acknowledged. Sometimes I feel that is all they need. The need to be known, seen and heard. I’m not understanding the fear inside of me, of really seeing the truth. The fragments put together into the memory. It feels like the fear of knowing the truth would change who I am – who I thought I was. It’s a feeling like it would shatter something inside of me.
I do know that it feels like they demand to be heard, and the fight to not listen and see them is wearing , If that makes sense.

OK!! Sitting at my computer and just finished up this reply. Picked up my iphone and heard music playing through the earphones.

It's a song that triggered me one night in my kitchen. I actually had a conversation with my son that I have no memory of.

What are the chances of this being random??

Wow, thanks for posting - thats an amazing song!