Hypnosis Regression Technique for Confinement Phobia

This was a client who gets panic attacks at the thought of getting into any place where she might not be able to get out. That includes planes and elevators. She wants to be able to go on holiday without bottles of anti-anxiety pills and feeling sick for weeks before. Her phobia is about not having a way of escaping. She worries about feeling embarrassed in front of others and being seen as weird.

She can drive because she can get out, but cannot drive with a stranger in the car because of the fear that she might get a panic attack in front of them. She was totally unable to use a lift on her own. There has to be someone else in it before she will get in, just so that there might be someone to help her if the lift got stuck. Even in staff meetings she will spend so much of the time worrying about the door being closed that she doesn't hear what is going on.

Her boyfriend wants to go to Bali on vacation in a few months time, but even now she was dreading it and beginning to get panic just thinking about it.

The standard treatment method for this is regression.

I took her very carefully into trance. I used a kinesthetic induction focusing on relaxing her body. I had to keep telling her that she was in control. I used the corridor induction as deepener. I said 'I wonder if you can imagine a big house somewhere?", and she nodded! She was so afraid of not being able to get out that I had to continually assure her that the corridor was wide and open and she was in charge.

I then did a countdown induction and took her down the stairs. Immediately her breathing pattern changed. I tried to pace with her breathing but she had pretty much stopped breathing. I kept up a continual flow of reassurance. Even though her eyelids were flickering, she was fighting going into trance all the way. She really, really didn't want to lose control. It took nearly fifteen minutes before I was happy that she was in trance.

Inner Child Regression

I told her to get the feeling she gets in confined spaces. She clearly did not want to go there.

I started on a gentle metaphor therapy but she was in distress and crying so I asked "what is going on?? What are you experiencing right now?" She said "it is black. I am scared. I can't get out". I asked what she was standing on and she replied that she was lying in some black place and couldn't get out. I asked her what she wanted in that place and she said 'My dad'. I told her to reach out to a knob in front of her and to start sliding it to one side. She reported that there was a bit of light coming in. I developed this until it was wide open. She said she felt she was outside but I wanted to clear the whole feeling.

So I used the INNER CHILD technique. I told her that her dad was reaching in and pulling her out. That she could feel his strong arms around her. She was crying copiously by now. I told her "He is wiping away your tears. He is stroking your hair and telling you that he is so worried". I got him to tell her " I will always be there for you". I told her that he was tickling her and she was smiling, then she was laughing. And deep in trance, she actually was smiling through the tears.

Then I told her she was outside, and she and her dad were looking back at that place she had come out of. I asked "What would you like to have happen to it?"

She said that she wanted it to disappear. I asked how it could disappear. She said they could crush it with their hands. I noted the 'they' - that is, her father had to help. I got them to start crushing it with their hands, and then to smash it up by stomping on it and then a road cleaning machine came along and swept up all the smashed pieces and took them to the incinerator.

I tested about how she felt about getting on the plane to go on holiday to Bali now and she said it would be fine. I asked her about getting the lift down to meet her boyfriend outside and she said no problem.

After the session she told me that she wished her father had been there during her first panic attack. And that he later died and her anxiety got worse after that.

She finally said good bye and went down in the lift without even thinking about it.