Someone asked recently about the difference between hypnosis and guided imagery. Many counselors say they use “guided imagery” which they may or may not consider related to hypnosis or hypnotherapy.
My wife recently showed me a quote by Seth Godin: “Anxiety is nothing but repeatedly re-experiencing failure in advance. What a waste.” Well said, Seth. It can be very helpful to recognize more precisely how anxiety is accomplished.
When we say we are traumatized, we are speaking of this tendency of our subconscious to keep reproducing a traumatic event in the sophisticated virtual reality theater of our mind. Therefore, the cause of ongoing (chronic) trauma or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is not the traumatic event itself. If it were, there would be no hope of healing that trauma. The true cause of ongoing trauma, or PTSD, lies within the activity of our subconscious mind.
With hypnotherapy it is possible to expose the root causes of most forms of depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. The root cause may be an unresolved, emotionally traumatic experience and/or an unfortunate habit of destructive thinking. In either case, once the nature of the problem is revealed in trance, it can be corrected through hypnotic communication with the subconscious mind.