I think I may have discovered a new self-diagnosis technique. My client yesterday was overweight. Overeating in my experience is normally associated with some sort of childhood trauma. However, after much questioning this client said that she could not remember anything about her childhood that was bad. She did say that she had lots of feelings but for the whole of her life she has just pushed them back, refused to deal with them.
I decided that the best approach would be to do Gestalt metaphor therapy. I used a breathing induction with her, and gently lead her into trance. As soon as I was sure that she was in trance, I began fishing for the dominant feeling in her unconscious mind. This involved suggestions such as "There is a feeling that you get, a feeling you have had many times". "It is a feeling about not being good enough, a feeling of being worthless, no good". "A feeling from long ago, and as you think about that feeling, as you get that feeling, this something will come into your mind about that feeling".
And sure enough, she immediately began to cry as the memory that she had tried to push back began to emerge. Gestalt metaphor technique is a way of dealing with the feeling in terms of a metaphor. It is a safe way of dealing with trauma, because you don't have to access the memory directly.
So I got her to express her feeling as an object. She told me it was like a white ball, then it turned into a jelly bean-shaped thing, hard and smooth and lodged somewhere in her chest. I then started the process of suggesting to her that it might change. Eventually it shrank and wrinkled and ended up like a deflated balloon. The next step was to ask if she had ever used a chopping board. That prompted her to imagine chopping up the limp balloon. Whatever that feeling or memory was it was now gone, for ever.
A self-diagnosis technique?
After she came out of trance, we discussed the nature of metaphor healing therapies. She is an intelligent woman, and is very interested in the process. So I decided to do an experiment. I told her I was going to teach her self hypnosis, so that when she was in trance in her own time she could explore her own subconscious mind.
I used a progressive muscle relaxation induction, followed by an eye catalepsy test. She, like many overweight people, had a rapid, shallow breathing pattern. So I deepened her until her breathing became regular and slow.
In this induction, I spent some time emphasizing the power of her own mind, and how strong it was. I told her that in trance her mind would open up to a large empty space and in that space perhaps her mind would show her something. Something to do with the feeling that she gets, something to do with that need to eat, something to do with why she is unhappy. This was something I had not done before. I really wasn't sure what to expect. My hope was that her mind would reveal to her something that she had spent a lifetime trying to hide, but who knows?
She came out of trance, telling me she felt a very profound feeling, unlike anything she had ever experienced before. We wound up the session and she still didn't say anything about seeing something or not. So I asked her if she had seen something. She said "Yes I did, but I'm not telling you what it was", and laughed.
It seems it did work. And I will be exploring this technique in future.
