Hypnosis and PTSD, how does it work?

I recently watched a documentary about the Falklands War, the brutality that left thousands of soldiers with terrible PTSD. The things they had to do and the things that they saw have stayed with them for over forty years. It got me thinking about the work I do in helping people to deal with people suffering with trauma.

Counselling can really help to talk through memories and get things off your chest. Hypnosis is different, we don’t talk a lot about your memories so much but we deal directly with the pictures you make in your mind and the way that you talk to yourself. Hypnosis and eye movement therapy is a targeted attack on misery. How does it work? It detaches emotion from memory and it can work very quickly. I can’t make you forget that something happened, but I may be able to make those memories fuzzy and distant. It may be useful to remember what happened but there is no good at all in re-experience the pain that you felt in the past. No use at all.