How Trauma Hijacks Us
Part 1 Demystifying Depth Hypnosis
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Depth Hypnosis is a spiritual counseling model created by Dr. Isa Gucciardi in the mid-1990s that helps people work through issues quickly and gain long-lasting results. By synthesizing key principles of shamanism, Buddhism, hypnotherapy, energy medicine, and transpersonal psychology, Depth Hypnosis brings the ancient healing wisdom of many cultures to the unique imbalances of contemporary Western society. Kristina Renée is a Depth Hypnosis Practitioner working with individuals, dyad and groups both locally and online.
This is Part 1 of a series of articles demystifying the highly effective therapeutic model of Depth Hypnosis.
When I was two years old I fell into the deep end of the pool. My older cousin, by 12 years or so, was to be watching me. The story goes that he didn’t notice I fell in and my mom jumped in and saved me.
When I was older around 10 years of age, I was taking private advanced swim lessons. One day the weather was cold and gray, and the outdoor pool was darker than usual. My instructor wanted to take me to the deep end for our lessons. I remember going from calm to terrified in a second. As she kept persisting, unable to understand my fear or validate it, the more petrified I became. Thankfully, after what felt like a fight to be heard but looked like a “meltdown”, my mom ended the lesson and we went home.
That is trauma.
These two experiences are interconnected. The 10 year old me, unknowingly at the time, was reliving the unprocessed two year old me’s experience of falling into the deep end, almost dying. How do I know this? I know this because of the transformative healing methodology of Depth Hypnosis. In the practice, we work in the unknown spaces of the subconscious bringing felt experiences of wounding and discord into deeper awareness for healing, and finding completion to incomplete cycles. For example, when the same overwhelming fear arose later in life as an adult in a situation that I knew I was safe in I was able to see there was a withhold, or what could be called a record skip, a bump, or what I call a karmic knot cycling in my nervous system.
As I went into a process of Depth Hypnosis, I unravelled the felt sense in my body to this memory in my childhood, taking it all the way back to that little me, confused, scared and alone sitting at the bottom of the pool. Unable to process the experience at that time, my mind creatively stored it in my subconscious, separating or fragmenting a part of me away from my self to feel safe. While this was quite genius and supportive at that time, it became problematic when it resurfaced later in life taking me out of the present moment, unable to think or make choice clearly. The nervous system remembers even if the conscious mind does not. This is why my body at 10 years old reacted to having to go to the deep end of the pool. I couldn't make sense of it then. I remember my mom asking me what had happened and I didn’t know. Looking back I can see that my mind had stored the memory away to protect me. In a way, we can look at these experiences of unexplainable fears, anxieties, confusion, shame, anger, sadness and more as messages for us from our body, a calling to us for a healing.
As I reconnected to my felt experience of fear and confusion with the techniques of Depth Hypnosis in a safe container, I brought resolution to the experience of the two year old me. In doing so, I could bring it forward in time to all the versions of myself, all the parts of me that ever felt this terrifying, confused feeling, and thus came a completion to the karmic knot. I welcomed home to myself this lost part of me and came into a deeper connection with my whole self, and a healthier and more empowered relationship with fear. This process is better known as an age regression in hypnotherapy, inner child work in psychology and lesser known as a soul retrieval in shamanism. In Depth Hypnosis, we hold each perspective, knowing they all bring healing.
Our nervous systems can’t heal in threat mode or overwhelm.
When you begin to take stock of when trauma is hijacking your mind, the time for inquiry and understanding are best held in safe, grounded spaces, not during the incident. With tools and education, as well as practice, you can begin to learn how to regulate and find an anchor to land into a sense of safety in your experiences. Like a child who is learning how to be with their big emotions, the actual moment of the big emotion is not the time to bring things to the rationality of the mind. That “offline” moment is best supported with grounding which is done with connection. This is known as co-regulation. The same concept goes for adults, though the co-regulation shifts in how it is practiced. No matter if one is a child or an adult, the rational mind cannot handle cognitive reasoning when it’s in a trauma reaction.
The next time you feel within yourself or see someone at any age acting “irrational” take a pause, and remind yourself that the body remembers and holds wisdom that we cannot always understand, especially in the reactive moments. Just knowing that these moments when we are triggered or hijacked from our rational thinking mind are actually signals from our subconscious trying to connect with us — parts of us wanting to rekindle and find resolution, to return home.
When we learn (and we actually do have to learn) how to hold these moments, hold ourselves and our experiences with tenderness, and respect our nervous systems as they are, not as they should be, we offer not only spaciousness for healing, but also the integration of inner peace to our nervous systems, our minds and our hearts for an alchemical transformation on every level of our being.
Indeed, there are methods of practice we can bring into our daily lives to support this process — to support our nervous systems such as breathwork, yoga, mantra, prayer, nature therapy, cold plunges, better sleep, EMF protection, clean, whole foods, cellular wellness, infrared light, etc. I have also found that getting to the root cause and finding inner resolution to parts of us that need healing supports the integration of these practices into our lives as a state of embodiment, and thus a metamorphosis.
Read Somatic Titration & The Inner Journey: Part 2 Demystifying Depth Hypnosis
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Kristina Renée
Resonates-thank you. I’ll be pondering for a bit☺️