Trauma and phobias www.hgi.org.

uk

For further information about trauma and phobias, listen to the CD: Effective anxiety management,
without drugs
For training in how to use the rewind technique, see the MindFields College workshop:
 The Fast Trauma and Phobia Cure

There are two kinds of bad memories. Some fade slowly, so that a year or so later the memory of
the car crash, or whatever it was, is no longer intrusive, and in time it goes away only to be recalled
as an ordinary narrative memory about some unfortunate incident you once experienced.
Traumatic memories do not fade in the same way, and as time goes by they may become worse.
These memories are usually connected with a life threatening or other serious event and are more
deeply embedded in the brain as a 'survival template'. If they are not treated they may continue to
fire off strong emotional reactions at inappropriate moments and thereby cause trouble for the rest
of the sufferer's life.
What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?
Trauma, as a medical term, refers to any injury or wound violently inflicted on the body. Post
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating condition that often follows a terrifying physical,
life threatening, or perceived as life-threatening, event. It causes the person who survived it to have
persistent, frightening thoughts and memories, or flashbacks, of the ordeal. Persons with PTSD
often feel chronically, emotionally numb. Once referred to as “shell shock” or “battle fatigue”.
About 25 per cent of people involved in major traumatising events go on to develop long-term
PTSD symptoms. This percentage rises if life-threatening incidents are almost constantly repeated,
as in front line fighting during sustained battles in war.
What kinds of event can cause it?
Violent attacks on the person. Rape. Sustained verbally aggressive attacks. Sudden illness events
like a heart attack. Traffic accidents. Industrial injuries. Witnessing sudden violent death, as in train
crashes, bombings and war-zone incidents. Panic attacks where the person thinks he is dying. In
fact, any event that triggers a strong fear (phobic) response can lead to PTSD. Children have even
developed PTSD symptoms from watching horror films on TV.
What is a phobia?
Any uncontrolled, persistent, irrational fear that is accompanied by a compelling desire to avoid the
object, activity, or situation that provokes the fear, is called a phobia. As far as the brain is
concerned it is no different from PTSD. The same neuronal pathways are involved.
How do you know if you have traumatic memories?
Traumatic memories may cause any or all of the following problems: panic attacks, intrusive
memories, nightmares, sudden irrational anger outbursts, depression and other unpleasant emotional
states, even intense flashbacks where you actually hallucinate going through the terrible event again
as if it were in the present. One sufferer who was traumatised by experiences in the Falklands War
(who also experienced flashbacks) described it as “a constant, silent churning” in the back of his
mind.
Why are PTSD memories different from the others?
In people suffering PTSD symptoms, the pattern of the memory is stored in a part of the brain
called the Amygdala, which is responsible for ensuring our survival by triggering the 'flight or
flight' response when something dangerous occurs. When something in the environment or in the
sufferer's thinking matches the memory in the Amygdala, it sets off the alarm bells just as if the
original incident were happening again. At the same time, other memories may be recalled very
powerfully, bringing back the sights, smells, sounds and emotions from the original incident. The
Amygdala has no sense of time, and does not know that the incident is in the past.
Is this a major problem?
Trauma is a problem for most GPs, psychologists and psychiatrists, all over the world. The
continuing blizzard of news stories about the difficulty of living with PTSD shows how little effect
the currently popular treatments have.
What is the human givens approach to treating trauma and phobias?
The amygdala has to learn that it is possible to visualise the incident without panicking, and the
most reliable and least invasive way to do this is through the psychological method known as the
'rewind' technique. This technique is a refinement of one taught on NLP courses for many years.
This is a guided imagery technique, which allows the brain to revisit the traumatic events in a
dissociated way while being physically extremely calm, so that the amygdala can reinterpret the
memory patterns as non-threatening.
The human givens version of the technique was refined, as a result of finding out why it worked. It
is the HGI preferred method of treatment because, when properly delivered, it reliably relieves the
nightmares, panic attacks, flashbacks and intrusive memories.
Extensive clinical experience shows it to be a more cost effective and successful treatment than the
treatments recommended by NICE guidelines, namely EMDR and CBT that take many sessions and
are often only partially successful.
Treatment is safe (unlike critical incident debriefing for example, which research shows may
increase rates of PTSD).
Treatment is non-voyeuristic (It is suitable for victims of sexual assault, beating or any kind of
humiliation, as the victim do not have to tell the therapist details what happened.)
Treatment is fast.
How long does it take?
In our experience of thousands of cases, people with a single-incident trauma are almost invariably
detraumatised in one session, with one follow-up to check that all is well. Where the case is more
complex the trauma is still normally resolved in one session, but there is often more work to do to
help the patient catch up with things that they missed out on while in the traumatised state; build
confidence or lift out of a depression or anger disorder created by the suffering. Even so, the aim is
to keep the therapy as brief as possible to give volition back to the patient as soon as possible.
>> Read an indepth article about why various treatments work
>> If you would like a qualified HG practitioner to treat a phobia or trauma symptoms, find your
nearest one on our online register.

© Human Givens Publishing (2009)