However, when you find certain dreams or nightmares recycling night after night, it may mean that your unconscious mind has gone on strike on that particular material. That suggests you could really use EMDR plus a guide for the unprocessed material.

Like, how did the arguments between my parents make you feel when you were younger. By gentle repetition and the combined use of EMDR, many answers can emerge. Or, what trauma do you have left over from your divorce? Or, how did school affect you when you were in kindergarden? Or, what did that nightmare mean that you had the other night? Or, what past experience keeps you from getting along better with your spouse? Why did your boss’ explosion upset you so much yesterday?

EMDR is a very versatile method limited only by your imagination and the skill of your therapist.

Generally, it works best if you use it as an open ended approach, and just welcome whatever comes up. Powerful old memories can come up, so a skilled, qualified listener is essential to give you adequate emotional support if you run into choppy emotional waters. You may be able to do this method on your own, but I recommend 10 or 20 Sessions with a qualified person first.

2. Ericksonian Hypnosis: A gentle, non-bossy method of hypnosis that builds on your own abilities. It capitalizes on the ability of the unconscious mind to be a great problem solver if it is invited in a respectful way. The method I like best is based on the work of Milton Erickson and Steve Lankton (one of his foremost students and who I studied with).

It is based on the assumption that our unconscious mind is quite friendly to us, but because it is not suffering from the ups and downs of our life, it functions mainly as an observer unless we ask it to help.

The hypnotist can teach the unconscious mind new patterns that can be automatically brought forward for use in our daily lives by the unconscious mind. Hypnosis in good hands can be quite safe and it often just feels very good to get so relaxed.

Hypnosis gives a gentle invitation to your mind to reorganize itself with the right kind of leading from the hypnotist.

Read the following hypnotic script softly to yourself, out loud and see what the effect is upon you. I want you to begin by asking your unconscious mind to protect you from the wrong kind of influence. Ask your unconscious mind to disregard anything that isn’t useful for you. And only to use those ideas and thoughts that are safe and will lead in constructive directions.

Think of some characteristic of your personality that causes problems for your self. Perhaps, it is that you get nervous when you are out to dinner with friends. And that you get tongue tied when people are paying attention to you. Imagine you are there with your friends and you feel this interesting feeling come over you. That you are able to separate from your body sitting at the table and that you are able to comfortably move behind your self so that you are watching yourself from behind where you are at the table and that the separation increases your sense of comfort because you are no longer front and center and because you are no longer so front and center you no longer feel so exposed. And the more you watch yourself from a distance, the greater is your personal comfort.

Now, I don’t know if you experienced trance to any degree, but if you did, then you may be able to imagine how much more in trance you would be able to go with someone who was able to follow your breathing and match other nuances of your behavior that would allow you to go more comfortably into trance.

3. Unconscious healing metaphorical visualizations: I visualize from my unconscious about your current issue. I leave it to our joint discussion afterwards to decide what the stories mean. There is no predetermined meaning that I put into the metaphors. It is what it means to you. And it is what comes to me from my unconscious mind.

In some ways, unconscious visualization can be the best method because it is tailor made to who you are and who you have been.

For example, a person came to see me in a state of despair. After we worked together for several sessions, I suggested the above method. As I concentrated, I had her take notes on what I said because I can’t both do the method and write at the came time. The first thing I saw was a desert and there was a man trudging through it and it was very hot and the man was very thirsty and he trudged on a long time—falling down several times and finally the blessed coolness of night came. In the distance, he thought he heard running water but he knew he couldn’t find it at night, so he slept as best as he could and he went looking for it in the morning.

Then I asked my client what she thought the story meant (I wanted to get her impressions before I gave her mine). My client thought it was a good description of how lonely she had felt recently and she felt it really connected with her). Later visualizations also connected with her underlying emotional issues in a way that dry narrative language wouldn’t have been able to.

4) Releasing/ holding on: A simple method on the surface which can have profound implications in giving you relief for difficult thought patterns and difficult emotional patterns.

5) Past life regressions: This method uses hypnosis to put you into a relaxed state of mind.Then I invite your mind to go back to the past and recover information from a past life that may shed light on a problem or dilemma in this life. Although it may seem far-fetched, it has been used to help people for a long time.

You don’t have to worry whether the information is literally true or not. If you doubt it, you take it as a metaphor and use it on that level. The real criterion for it’s usefulness is whether it sheds light on your life now and whether it gives you a new perspective about life problems and your potentials now.