One example for an approach with direct regression to treat an anxiety disorder is the work with a patient who was often left alone as a small child by his parents, both physically and emotionally. In this first step it is irrelevant, whether the parents practiced that as educational measure (“inurement in order to be strong for the struggle of life”), or whether this was meant as patronising treatment (transfering their own low self-esteem to the child through aggressive actions, physically and/or verbally, and also by means of overly perfectionist expectations set on their child), or because these parents were simply not able to accept their own children emotionally because of their own traumatic experiences.
In the hypnosis sessions the therapist enters into the respective situations together with the pateient and may, for instance, use the method of the informed child in order to heal the fear and the unprocessed event as well as the feeling of lonesomeness. In the figure-therapeutic method of the informed child, the patient goes in the regression and gets into contact with the memories from the time in which the emotional injuries occurred. As soon as the patient and the therapist reached the first situation triggering the feeling, it is explained to the inner child that from now on the adult person is responsible for the welbeing and the protection of the “small child” (“small child” stands for the feeling sensed by the adult). In many cases this works very well, so that anxiety can be healed in only very few sessions.
The revaluation of the unprocessed situation is in the foreground for the hypnotherapeutic approach, whereby the severe and complex traumatisms (e.g. in case of attacks by still living reference persons) other and “smoother” hypnosis strategies (e.g. hypnosystemic or resource-oriented strategies) can be applied than with an event that has not yet been processed (unconsciously), but is “less severe from the standpoint of the mind”.
An example for such a traumatic event, which I am treating quite frequently with hypnotherapy in my hypnosis practice in Munich and which is “less severe fron the standpoint of the mind” is the following:
The child just fell asleep and the mother (who loves and protects the child beyond all measure, i.e. actually the “perfect” mother) wants to use the “free time” to hang out the laundry in the cellar. However, the mother splits the beans with the neighbour and the child awoke, is alone in the room and feels the evolutionarily provided mortal fear, because in the evolution the absence of the mother often meant death. In many cases this fear does unfortunately not dispel and this is why it should be treated with hypnosis as described above.