Health and Psychology

I drove by my old apartment.  I was mugged and beaten there years ago.  For a long time I had symptoms of trauma:  nightmares, recurrent vivid recollections of what happened (flashbacks), looking around to see if anyone was watching me, suddenly startling if someone came up behind me.  Then someone taught me a technique to stop the symptoms.  I had had the symptoms for three years at that point and I thought they would never go away.  The technique was simple, too-good-to-be-true simple, but I had nothing to lose by trying it.  

"Run the movie in your head backwards."

That's it.  So everytime I had a nightmare I played it in reverse-the bad guy going away and me being safe and uninjured.  Every time I had a flashback, I played it backwards.  Within 2 months of doing this it all just stopped.  I no longer had nightmares or any symptoms of trauma.  I drove by the apartment remembering what happened.  I've had no symptoms for 23 years.  The apartment was just a place I used to live.

Sometimes flashbacks aren't flashbacks.  The movies in your head are just movies that get stuck there.  Here's another simple technique that can help.  

You have a life-size scene you imagine as vividly as if you were actually there.  Take that scene and start making it smaller.  Move it away from you off into the distance.  Drain the color out of it.  Take all the voices and sounds of the picture and fade them away together with the brightness.  Make the picture so small you can no longer see it.  Then just brush it away like a flake.  If the picture comes back just repeat it until it's gone.

We treat trauma and other psychological problems.  Contact us to make an appointment.