ILARIA EGESTE'S EXPERIENCE
Hypnosis in the treatment of abused women.
Dr. Ilaria Egeste
Psychologist-psychotherapist
Master’s degree in Ericksonian Clinical Hypnosis
Treating abused women is a demanding task, especially from the emotional standpoint. I feel the need to share my experience as a therapist who uses hypnosis because I believe that in severe cases, which leave deep emotional wounds, it is crucial to choose a tool that can go deep into the darkness of those experiences, to work on them in order to lead the person outside of the tunnel.
I purposely used a metaphor because each and every of these women I met presented, as first obstacle, a block of verbal expression. They are unable to describe their abuses, the feeling of being a victim instead of an accomplice of what happened and, when I used to face this apparently insurmountable rock, tests and direct questions were useless. Since when I met hypnosis for the first time my approach changed: I used metaphors that described the event, I “disseminated” open questions that could let glimpses of the possibility of a positive change, of healing, through. And it worked. Talking about it now, when it has become my “modus operandi” feels weird, but its immediate effects were really incredible.
Elide, 30 years old, asked for help because of eating disorders; she told me that she couldn’t stop eating when loneliness grew too strong. She is not Italian, but she has been living in our Country for 5 years, she is a student. When I met her for the first time, I focused all my attention, both internal and external, on her and we immediately established a deep connection, we dived in a “hypnotic bubble”. The anamnesis revealed a history of repeated abuses during her childhood committed by her father and a hyper-corrective mother who never defended her.
Elide had a really low self-esteem, but she used to think that the past had no connection with it and with her current lifestyle. After one year and a half of therapy this woman says that she is finally happy.
Besides the entire intervention that I conducted on her, I would like to focus on the role of hypnosis in the therapeutic work: through static, dynamic and modified timeline, Elide went back to her past, working on herself, her father, her mother, and using the skills of the “Adult Elide” to help the “child Elide”. Using sub-modalities Elide transformed the scary places that she remembered from her childhood in colorful places filled with music. Her eating disorder, after the elaboration of traumas, reduced its intensity until it disappeared.
The aspect of this therapy that I would like to examine in depth is the treatment of trauma. In fact, with almost every abused woman, the use of non-hypnotic techniques always left me the feeling that, in the end, “something was missing”. These women felt that they had no control over their every decision and attitude. They used to rationally overcome it, but it kept coming back like a boomerang in everyday life and, above all, it permeated every relationship, especially romantic ones. The first big work that I did was on my attitude. I understood, intuitively, without intellectual mediation, that I had to plunge into the negative emotions of these women and to enter their perceptions. How could I do that? Through hypnosis my doors of perception were opened too, my communicative channels, up to the point that my patients feel my emotional presence, not just the physical one. Then I started working with hypnosis on traumas. The first step, almost for each one of my patients, has been the application of the hypnotic induction to “train” them to listen to their subconscious also because they all have psychosomatic symptoms such as insomnia, lack of appetite, frequent headaches. Then, session by session, the elaboration of traumas became the main focus of the intervention; the most difficult thing that I had to face was the fact that I had to be extremely flexible, because patients under hypnotic state may rapidly shift from one aspect of their problem to another. Furthermore, hypnosis allowed me to work on the sense of guilt that abused women have. Inside of them, in fact, there is always a voice that says: “You could have run, you didn't scream enough, actually it is your fault because you remained there…”; and it goes on until it becomes true guilt in cases of domestic abuses. To treat this aspect I intensely use metaphors, through which women deeply and emotionally understand that the sense of guilt is a complete deceit and that they can finally forgive themselves. Furthermore, another technique that I used was the oscillating induction. Many abused women find it really hard to let themselves be touched and the gentle physical contact that must be established in order to use this technique allowed me to let them understand that they could trust me and they could let themselves go, even using their bodies.
After having successfully treated several cases, I thought that the richness of individual experiences was somehow lost while working in my study and also that many women told me about the pain of solitude, of feeling isolated, of not being able to talk about what happened because of shame. Therefore I decided to experiment hypnosis on a broader context: the group. For a year and a half I conducted groups of 6-8 abused women who decided to talk about themselves. It has been a wonderful experience, the group setting has been useful to legitimate the sharing of their abuses; to work together on the reduction of anxiety and on self-esteem, to treat painful memories. However, at the end of this work, I understood that in cases of abuse the group is very useful in the initial phases. Then comes a moment in which women must face their traumatic memories on their own otherwise the group, once a helping factor, may become a “shield”, which protects the participants while preventing them from entering in their individual traumas.
I still work with victims of abuse and hypnosis has become an essential tool.
Dr. Ilaria Egeste
Psychologist-psychotherapist
Master’s degree in Ericksonian Clinical Hypnosis
Psychologist-psychotherapist
Master’s degree in Ericksonian Clinical Hypnosis
Treating abused women is a demanding task, especially from the emotional standpoint. I feel the need to share my experience as a therapist who uses hypnosis because I believe that in severe cases, which leave deep emotional wounds, it is crucial to choose a tool that can go deep into the darkness of those experiences, to work on them in order to lead the person outside of the tunnel.
I purposely used a metaphor because each and every of these women I met presented, as first obstacle, a block of verbal expression. They are unable to describe their abuses, the feeling of being a victim instead of an accomplice of what happened and, when I used to face this apparently insurmountable rock, tests and direct questions were useless. Since when I met hypnosis for the first time my approach changed: I used metaphors that described the event, I “disseminated” open questions that could let glimpses of the possibility of a positive change, of healing, through. And it worked. Talking about it now, when it has become my “modus operandi” feels weird, but its immediate effects were really incredible.
Elide, 30 years old, asked for help because of eating disorders; she told me that she couldn’t stop eating when loneliness grew too strong. She is not Italian, but she has been living in our Country for 5 years, she is a student. When I met her for the first time, I focused all my attention, both internal and external, on her and we immediately established a deep connection, we dived in a “hypnotic bubble”. The anamnesis revealed a history of repeated abuses during her childhood committed by her father and a hyper-corrective mother who never defended her.
Elide had a really low self-esteem, but she used to think that the past had no connection with it and with her current lifestyle. After one year and a half of therapy this woman says that she is finally happy.
Besides the entire intervention that I conducted on her, I would like to focus on the role of hypnosis in the therapeutic work: through static, dynamic and modified timeline, Elide went back to her past, working on herself, her father, her mother, and using the skills of the “Adult Elide” to help the “child Elide”. Using sub-modalities Elide transformed the scary places that she remembered from her childhood in colorful places filled with music. Her eating disorder, after the elaboration of traumas, reduced its intensity until it disappeared.
The aspect of this therapy that I would like to examine in depth is the treatment of trauma. In fact, with almost every abused woman, the use of non-hypnotic techniques always left me the feeling that, in the end, “something was missing”. These women felt that they had no control over their every decision and attitude. They used to rationally overcome it, but it kept coming back like a boomerang in everyday life and, above all, it permeated every relationship, especially romantic ones. The first big work that I did was on my attitude. I understood, intuitively, without intellectual mediation, that I had to plunge into the negative emotions of these women and to enter their perceptions. How could I do that? Through hypnosis my doors of perception were opened too, my communicative channels, up to the point that my patients feel my emotional presence, not just the physical one. Then I started working with hypnosis on traumas. The first step, almost for each one of my patients, has been the application of the hypnotic induction to “train” them to listen to their subconscious also because they all have psychosomatic symptoms such as insomnia, lack of appetite, frequent headaches. Then, session by session, the elaboration of traumas became the main focus of the intervention; the most difficult thing that I had to face was the fact that I had to be extremely flexible, because patients under hypnotic state may rapidly shift from one aspect of their problem to another. Furthermore, hypnosis allowed me to work on the sense of guilt that abused women have. Inside of them, in fact, there is always a voice that says: “You could have run, you didn't scream enough, actually it is your fault because you remained there…”; and it goes on until it becomes true guilt in cases of domestic abuses. To treat this aspect I intensely use metaphors, through which women deeply and emotionally understand that the sense of guilt is a complete deceit and that they can finally forgive themselves. Furthermore, another technique that I used was the oscillating induction. Many abused women find it really hard to let themselves be touched and the gentle physical contact that must be established in order to use this technique allowed me to let them understand that they could trust me and they could let themselves go, even using their bodies.
After having successfully treated several cases, I thought that the richness of individual experiences was somehow lost while working in my study and also that many women told me about the pain of solitude, of feeling isolated, of not being able to talk about what happened because of shame. Therefore I decided to experiment hypnosis on a broader context: the group. For a year and a half I conducted groups of 6-8 abused women who decided to talk about themselves. It has been a wonderful experience, the group setting has been useful to legitimate the sharing of their abuses; to work together on the reduction of anxiety and on self-esteem, to treat painful memories. However, at the end of this work, I understood that in cases of abuse the group is very useful in the initial phases. Then comes a moment in which women must face their traumatic memories on their own otherwise the group, once a helping factor, may become a “shield”, which protects the participants while preventing them from entering in their individual traumas.
I still work with victims of abuse and hypnosis has become an essential tool.
Dr. Ilaria Egeste
Psychologist-psychotherapist
Master’s degree in Ericksonian Clinical Hypnosis
