Conversational Hypnotherapy (in French or Arabic)

It is a therapy where both the patient and hypnotherapist are actively working together, to help the patient regain control of their emotions, pain and life. We work on phobias, stress, depression, unhealed grieving, and traumas. Mind Minders hypnotherapy technique insures no pain suffered by the client.

In fact, we unknowingly go under hypnosis in our daily life. When are absent minded we experience a hypnotic trance, although we are fully awake. This is what hypnosis is all about: to be day dreaming but fully awake at the same time.

Our conversational hypnotherapist is certified from the Belgian Institute of Milton Erickson. Through this technique, we help the patient go into a modified conscious state, between awakening and sleeping, closer to what we know as ‘having one’s head in the clouds’.

Our therapy sessions are generally quite short in number, each session lasts between 45 minutes and an hour.

When we go through a painful event like an accident or a catastrophe, the mind automatically goes under hypnosis to protect itself, paralysed by the event. During the hypnotherapy session, the patient is helped go back to that event to replace the painful memories with positive ones and by doing so, we change the negative impact of the trauma.

The therapist adjusts the session according to the patient, as the patient controls the session, not the therapist. The technique used is called PTR, which in French stands for ‘Psychothérapie du trauma réassociative’.

When to use PTR?

The PTR hypnosis is useful for all kinds of traumas and other painful psychological experiences (accident, sexual abuse, mourning, aggression…) but it can also help heal many other psychological disorders like phobias, anxieties, fears, psychosomatic diseases, sexual problems, lack of self-confidence, children’s or adults’ nightmares, as well as stress at school among other things. It can also be used as a preparation to a surgery, childbirth or a competition.

How PTR hypnotherapy works:

When an unbearable event occurs like strong fear, the victim finds him/herself in a modified conscious state, or hypnosis, that makes them store the pain and emotions of the event in their subconscious mind. This post-traumatic stress disorder happens similarly with road accident or aggression victims who, sometimes, do not remember at all or partially what happened (after a trauma, the victim develops different forms of protection like amnesia, anaesthesia, physical or emotional dissociation, catalepsy, psychosomatic reactions …). Nevertheless, these protections can become, later on, harmful as the events and the trauma are imprinted in their subconscious mind and remain there forever leaving the victim with many symptoms : psychosomatic diseases, guilt, depression, phobia, anxiety, nightmares, addiction to alcohol or drugs, self-mutilations…

The practice of hypnosis is modifying the stored painful emotions in the patient’s subconscious mind, by utilizing the patient’s own defence mechanism engaging their own imagination. This modification is established in a soft and creative way that is characteristic to the patient’s culture and personal references. The patient is then able to regain control of their autonomous nervous system which controls the body’s automatic reactions like sleep, digestion, emotions, psychosomatic diseases etc.

Concisely:

The therapist spends some time with the patient to create the anamnesis (the patient’s medical or psychiatric history, in their own words), the therapist helps the patient enter into hypnosis by starting with the recollection of a good moment (a holiday, a walk in a park, a family gathering… it does not really matter as long as it is a good moment for the patient).

This good moment is very important as it will be the safe haven for the patient during the therapy, the place where the hypnotherapist will bring them back to if there is any form of emotional pain during the sessions.

Working with the patient is essential: the therapist will invite the patient to refuse their suggestions if they are too painful for them or unsuitable.

When the patient is ‘comfortably settled’ in the good moment they have chosen, the therapist will progressively incorporate elements related to the trauma but in a modified way in order to desensitize them.