Recover from Toxic Relationship Break-Ups
And resolve traumas related to …
… gaslighting, coercive control, domestic abuse and bullying.
Relationship break-ups, separation and divorce rank as some of the most stressful situations we can experience.
It’s possible to move forward constructively and steadily with Solution Focused approaches.
Photo courtesy Unsplash masaaki-komori-8AiqkQsA6r8-unsplash
Why are Relationship Break-ups so painful?
When a relationship breaks up, there are many unknowns, and great uncertainty. Our primitive mind kicks in to drive up anxiety, depression and our deepest fears. That’s when Solution Focused Hypnotherapy and Rewind Trauma Therapy can help.
Whatever the circumstances of a relationship split, once the decision has been made, you will be learning to navigate the world again as an individual. And that’s a dramatic change in circumstance.
Anger, betrayal, rejection and grief
The break-up of a relationship can result in persistent anger, a sense of betrayal, feelings of rejection or a deep sense of loss.
When we carry the effects of neglect or attachment issues the impact of a break up - toxic or not - can be even more devastating. We may feel worthless, unloveable, unattractive or utterly abandoned.
In these instances it helps to address the deep roots of these intense and debilitating feelings. Clients may need further support as they, in effect, need to ‘reparent’ themselves, resolve past traumas and develop an inner core of stability and psychological safety.
Cycles of rumination and obsession
Perhaps the break-up process involved protracted conflict and stress, creating cycles of rumination, obsession or over-thinking. If that happens, the result can be a hyper-vigilant anxious state where adrenaline and cortisol flood the body and mind.
It’s impossible then to think clearly. In extremis people turn to alcohol, food or medication to get through.
How can Solution Focused Brief Therapy and/or Hypnotherapy help?
Importantly, when you undertake Solution Focused Hypnotherapy, you will discover you won’t be pondering on the past, searching for reasons for what’s happened or dwelling too much on what went wrong. It’s likely you’ve already done much of that with friends and family and you are all talked out!
We focus on the present and future
Solution Focused Brief Coaching identifies best hopes for the future, and helps clients take steady steps towards realising those hopes; even in the most challenging circumstances.
Scaling and incremental change
The process involves scaling. Let’s say Harry* defines a score of 10 as, “The separation has taken place; I have moved out of the shared home and found somewhere else to live; my ex-wife and I have reached a settlement; and we have sorted out child visitation results satisfactorily.”
For the purposes of illustration, Harry is an eminently reasonable person! However this works well where the breakdown is difficult and protracted too.
“Then I would ask Harry, “On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is that your best hopes have been realised and that is how your life is, and 0 is none of those things have been achieved, where you are now?” ”
If Harry says he scores as 3 on the scale, I would ask him what makes his score a 3 and not 0. He explains, “I have a good lawyer. My wife is a reasonable person and wants to reach a settlement too. We are both in the marital home but I have agreed to move out and sell the house.” And so forth. Luckily his wife is reasonable too it seems.
Creating a foundation for change
Immediately Harry realises he has already created a foundation for change, and is able to focus on the present, and the steady rebuilding of the future.
What follows is the Miracle Question, so called because many people find it hard to imagine any future at all, saying, “It would take a miracle”.
By asking what would happen if a miracle happened, Harry can let go of all those negative presuppositions and start to imagine, in increments, what he might notice if he moved forward one step along the scale.
“Listening to the Sense-Ability recording, free with the initial consultation, every evening or night, will help you get to sleep, stay asleep, lower your anxiety and alleviate your depression. Listening regularly empties your ‘stress bucket’ and primes you for the one-on-one sessions through which you make rapid progress.”
I ask, “If you woke up tomorrow and you had moved one point along the scale, what would you notice?”
The Preferred Future
The resulting Preferred Future, created through further open-ended, skilled questions, enables Harry to create a detailed picture of the future. By doing so, he primes his subconscious to begin to create his achievable and realistic vision of the Preferred Future he has created.
Harry is then primed to look for and notice any positive changes throughout the week that indicate his preferred future is being manifested.
Photo courtesy Unsplash keegan-houser--Q_t4SCN8c4-unsplash.jpg
Moving forward from a relationship break-up
And so, step by step, week by week, (or perhaps month by month), Harry moves along the scale towards realising his Best Hopes.
The Solution Focused Brief process
As I am a Solution Focused Hypnotherapist, I can support the Solution Focused Brief Therapy process (which works very well on its own too) by including elements of Harry’s description from his Preferred Future within the suggestions of the relevant hypnotherapy script.
Each week or month, Harry notices and celebrates all the positive changes he may have noticed, until he has got where he wants to go, or is happy to continue his journey without support.
For some, Solution Focused Brief Therapy, SFBT, is all they need, so I can work with clients solely using SFBT with no hypnotherapy of that is better for the client or their faith doesn’t allow the use of hypnosis.
How can hypnotherapy help resolve grief, loss and emotional pain?
Hypnotherapy for trauma helps us let go of the loss, pain, hurt and frustration. The deeply relaxed and safe light to medium trance state has been proven to lower blood pressure, tone the vagus nerve, and reduce stress and anxiety.
Listening to the Sense-Ability recording, free with the initial consultation, every evening or night, will help you get to sleep and stay asleep, lower your anxiety and alleviate your depression. Regular listening empties your 'stress bucket' and primes you for the one-on-one sessions through which you make rapid progress.
Focus and now and the future
Rumination, regret, obsessive thinking or anger, can hold us back from building a new life. We focus on now, and the mindful experience of being fully present in the moment.
Of course we need to share our experiences with friends, to have a sanity check, to be heard, validated and understood but then we want to move on for our own wellbeing.
Sally’s Story – How to recover from a mutual break-up
*Sally’s divorce was planned. She and her husband respected and liked each other still, but their relationship had run its course. They wanted different things and their children had grown up so there was nothing binding them together. Their split was mutual. Nevertheless, Sally’s life had been disrupted. Her home, her relationships with friends and wider family, her routines and her relationships with her children all needed re-defining.
Sally was all talked out. She explained, “I needed to explore who I was outside of that partnership”. There was a sense of loss, grief, confusion and deep sadness she needed to work through.
One thing is for sure, when a relationship ends, your life has been disrupted. Your home, your friendships, and routines with children are all going to change.
Sally just needed support to help her move through a major disruption without falling into depression, or succumbing to anxiety. A few sequential Solution Focused Hypnotherapy sessions weekly, followed by fortnightly and then monthly sessions, helped her move life forward relatively quickly and painlessly.
By the end of the year, Sally was settled in a new home, had affirmed old friendships and made new ones, developed a couple of new hobbies and was comfortable seeing her ex-husband at family gatherings. She even started dating.
But sometimes, it’s so hard to let go, especially where there has been cruel treatment or coercive control.
How do I recover from an abusive relationship?
Where your partner has been unfaithful or betrayed you in any way, you may feel anger, shame or deep hurt, as well as a total loss of confidence.
You may catastrophise that no-one else will love you or that you have no future.
You may feel profoundly jealous and be ruminating about your partner’s or spouse’s latest love interest?
Break-ups where there has been abuse
“Jane worked out a Rewind Therapy plan for me during my first session with her. I have to say, it was like some kind of miracle and had an immediate and positive impact on my life. The ruminating disappeared and the memories seemed to lose their emotional connection. They changed from sitting on my shoulder on a daily basis to being a dim and distant memory that didn’t bother me anymore; where they should have been. I would recommend anyone experiencing the pain of heartbreak and loss to try this really rather simple and very clever therapy. Have faith, it works!”
In break-ups where there has been a history of abuse, violence, gas-lighting or coercive control, the damage may be to your deepest sense of self.
Once we reach a state of persistent agitation, it’s even harder to heal and to reach a new equilibrium. We are in survival mode and no longer have the energy to adjust, reappraise our life objectively or plan a new future.
How do we manage stress, fear and anxiety after a bad break-up?
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help calm the turmoil and help you let go of your former partner or spouse. The process helps to put the events back in to the past; and ensure they are no longer part of your future.
Rewind Trauma Therapy
Rewind Trauma Therapy aims to move any trauma, quickly and firmly, out of the hippocampus – the part of the brain where painful patterns are stored – turning even the most intense emotional memories in to narrative memories.
Rewind Trauma Therapy is a comfortable and effective treatment that can greatly reduce, and even remove, trauma symptoms quickly through relaxation and guided imagery, without even having to talk about the details of the traumas. The technique evolved from NLP and is also known as the visual/kinaesthetic dissociation technique.
This therapy works by creating a ‘dissociated’ film of the trauma. In your mind’s eye, you create an imaginary film of the trauma. You do not see events ‘looking through your own eyes’, rather you see yourself in the picture. The aim of dissociating from the original traumatic events helps you avoid re-experiencing the trauma. The process does take focus and concentration however it’s also very straight-forward too. For ongoing trauma that has led to CPTSD, the process involves creating a film, usually with up three to five ‘episodes’ or several sessions of ‘peeling off the layers’.
Quick recovery from trauma
Rewind is a comfortable and effective treatment that can greatly reduce, and even remove, traumatic symptoms quickly through relaxation and guided imagery, all without even having to talk about the details of the traumas in question. Rewind originated from NLP and is also known as the visual/kinaesthetic dissociation technique.
Clients report feeling great relief that they ‘don’t believe the difference’ or ‘they no longer have nightmares’. One client texted me to say that, when confronted with a typical trigger for her impotent rage, shame and distress, she ‘…felt nothing. NOTHING’. A specific traumatic memory had been neatly placed in a different box, and over 40 years of being triggered was over. Permanently.
The Rewind Process
The film is rewound under guidance to change emotional memories to narrative memories. The Film and Rewind takes less than two minutes, but the preparation, developed to avoid or minimise any possible traumatic response (there is no need to disclose the trauma) takes about 40 minutes. The Rewind process is repeated a few times until you are ‘nicely bored’ and feel quite differently about the memories.
It sounds to good be true, however the many stories on the www.iartt.com website are testament to the efficacy of Rewind Trauma Therapy.
Eliminating the emotional impact of trauma
Rewind Trauma Therapy aims to dramatically reduce or eliminate the emotional impact of ongoing trauma, prior to rebuilding life as an individual. The process is hugely helpful in creating a firm and steady foundation on which the real, authentic you can be rediscovered and rebuilt.
How to overcome a relationship break-up - Laura’s Story?
“The best revenge is happiness,” said Laura* after a few weeks of Rewind Trauma and Hypnotherapy. During her relationship, Laura had constantly heard messages that she was not good enough, and couldn’t be trusted to make decisions on her own.
Over a period of seven years, Laura had lost her confidence, and her sense of identity. But we didn’t discuss what had gone wrong with the relationship – she really felt she was talked out and exhausted by it – but she did sometimes need to talk about aspects of the relationship that left her feeling bruised and battered. In this instance, I listened respectfully and validated her perspective.
“By asking questions about the very near future, using Solution Focused questions and hypnotherapy, Laura was able to work out her own feelings, resolve her anxieties and build her self-esteem. Day by day she made incremental improvements. ”
Then gently and steadily, when she was ready, we began to focus on the future she wanted.
By asking questions about the very near future, using Solution Focused questions and hypnotherapy, Laura was able to work out her own feelings, resolve her anxieties and build her self-esteem. Day by day she made incremental improvements.
Very early in the therapy process, Laura chose to undertake Rewind Trauma Therapy with the hope it would remove the most traumatic memories leaving her ‘calmer and more resolved’.
To be honest, she was sceptical. And anxious. The idea that all that suffering could become nothing but a distant memory was somehow disturbing. It made the suffering seem pointless, and she needed to prepare for feeling quite differently – for letting go of her anger, her pain and her trauma.
Who would Laura be without her trauma? She really wasn’t sure.
Determining your best hopes after a relationship break-up?
Photo courtesy Unsplash - hannah-busing-P6tBU2aqdW8-unsplash.jpg
After the Rewind, Laura felt calmer and ‘different’ in a way she couldn’t articulate. But also a little underwhelmed. The process is quite tiring and she went home for a hot bath and a good’s night sleep (part of the therapy as far as I am concerned).
Feeling less fearful
But a few days later she texted me to say she did feel quite different. She felt less fearful. When people didn’t answer her messages straight away, or made an excuse to stop a conversation, she didn’t immediately think people didn’t like her and start ruminating. She even found some old photographs of her ex and found she felt pretty neutral – no crying, no triggered fear or anxiety.
So now Laura had a firm foundation on which to build.
Best Hopes
In our next session, Laura was ready to begin her journey by focusing on her Best Hopes. Her life had been disrupted and she needed to take one step at a time. After ten minutes of questions and thoughtful answers, Laura articulated her Best Hopes: finding a place of her own, getting a job that suited her skills and starting to paint for pleasure again. She detailed all the things she and others would notice about her… she went out more, she laughed more, she got over upsets more quickly, she wore nice clothes, she had her hair done and so forth.
Making steady progress forward
Over the subsequent six weeks, Laura had made great progress towards realising her best hopes.
Over the next six months, with just fortnightly, and then monthly sessions, Laura rebuilt her life and her confidence. Her anxiety became manageable and then moved down to normal levels. All without having to relive the painful past too much.
Laura’s former husband was still part of her past, but she became comfortable with her memories, even remembering the earlier part of their relationship and recognising how the signs of later abuse were evident from very early on.
Beyond grief
She was no longer devastated to be without her former partner, nor grieving over the many ‘lost’ years as she saw what she had learnt in all that time. She even began tentatively dating and enjoying herself.
She was finding out who she was again.
Laura had her life back.
NB: I do not use real names in my client stories and exclude any information that might make them identifiable.
How can Solution Focused Hypnotherapy help you?
To find out how Solution Focused Hypnotherapy might help you overcome a painful break up, whether it was a short intense relationship, a long term partnership that has had its time or a damaging marriage that has impacted your self-worth, do get in touch.
I can explain further how Solution Focused Brief Therapy with Hypnotherapy, Rewind Trauma Therapy, Time Line ™ Therapy or Solution Focused Coaching might help. I offer a free telephone consultation for up to half an hour to explore whether the therapies I offer might be helpful to you. All charges are on the Book Now page.
Coercive control, gaslighting and covert aggression
If you suspect you are a victim of coercive control, gaslighting or covert aggression within your relationship you may feel conflicted and confused. I recommend the posts and books of Christine Louis de Canonville, a psychotherapist specialising in this area. Click on Christine’s website for more clarity and guidance.
For Hollywood to Harrogate
One thing Ms Heard and Mr Depp have shown us us is that beauty, fame and wealth offer no protection when it comes to break ups.
Wherever you live, whoever you are, however you love or have loved, when things go wrong in a relationship, gentle Solution Focused Hypnotherapy cam be the ideal process help to gently ease open wounds, resolve traumas and help to rebuild a sense of psychological safety.
The SFH process gives clients back the personal agency and autonomy they may have lost. Through Solution Focused conversations, and gentle open suggestions - no commands - clients can rebuild their sense of self and self-worth. They can generate hope for a better, happier future and imagine and realise new dreams. And they can steadily, incrementally move forward with their lives.
Legal guidance
If your issues are more urgent, practical and require legal assistance, do contact Nick Rees of Thame & Wheatley Family Law, who offers a confidential consultation for a reasonable fee. Nick can guide you on your legal position. www.twfamilylaw.co.uk
To find out more about how Solution Focused Hypnotherapy might help you overcome relationship break-up Contact:
Jane Pendry for an online session through Skype, FaceTime, What’s App or Zoom.
Jane Pendry
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy & Coaching
35 Farm Close Road, Wheatley, Oxon OX33 1XJ
www.sense-ability.co.uk
jane@sense-ability.co.uk
07843 813 883
Contact Nick for a confidential initial discussion
Nick Rees
Thame & Wheatley Family Law
Unit 3 Wheatley Business Centre
Old London Road
Wheatley
OX33 1XW
01432 767426
nick@twfamilylaw.co.uk