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PrintThe Rewind Technique
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Rewind technique used to treat snake phobia |
3-month follow up |
What she needed and I offered was a way to re-code the traumatic memory as something that is no longer threatening. The rewind technique (also known the fast phobia technique because it's also used to lift phobias) is the quickest and most reliable way to lift trauma.
The procedure involves relaxing the subject deeply and encouraging them to imagine a comfortable and relaxing place. Maybe a favourite place they've been to or would like to go to. Within the comfortable place they are encouraged to visualise a TV set with a video and remote control switch. They are then asked to imagine floating out of themselves to one side, so that they can see themselves, looking calm, watching the old memory in fast forward. At this point they can't see the memory itself (as they are looking from the side) but they imagine themselves watching it. This keeps them comfortable and protected.
They are then asked to drift to a time after the memory when everything had calmed down again. From this point they experience 'rewinding' back through the memory experiencing it backwards. This process takes the feeling out of the memory and therefore the person is de-traumatised.
Then they imagine floating back out into their comfortable place. From here they view the memory 'on TV' in fast forward while feeling relaxed. This process is repeated three times or until there is no emotional arousal around the memory. At all. The memory is now de-conditioned and the trauma is gone. Nightmares and flashbacks stop as a result. Now when the person thinks about the time they can feel calm and detached from it.
The technique is safe, fast effective and comfortable. The therapist does not even need to know what traumatic memory is being worked upon, so it is also non-intrusive.
The rewind technique mirrors what your brain does naturally with emotionally arousing memories. We all have memories which were scary at the time but which we can now look back on and talk about with detachment and even amusement. Those memories have moved out of the emotional centres of the brain and into normal narrative memory. PTSD sufferers haven't managed to do that for themselves, so they need a helping hand in a process that mirrors the natural healing process. The rewind technique seems to be the best way of doing that.
And Dr X? I'm happy to say she is back at work, the memory is comfortable and fading and that she even helped an old man across the street recently.
Article by Mark Tyrrell. You can train online with Mark, at our hypnosis workshop, or professional hypnotherapy course.
