Perhaps the most important single factor which gives our lives a sense of meaning and purpose is the ability to form emotionally close, long-term relationships with other human beings.  Yet many people find this difficult.  The reasons for this are often complex and difficult to untangle, because relationships involve interactions between two people either or both of whom may be emotionally insecure.

If the insecurities lie primarily within our partner then our ability to improve things may limited.  But if we suspect that we ourselves are contributing towards the difficulties – perhaps because we are beginning to notice that our relationships repeatedly follow certain unsatisfactory patterns – then the opportunity for change is much greater.

The therapy involves helping people to focus on the nature of important relationships they have experienced at earlier times in their lives, particularly in childhood.  Through remembering these early relationships and re-experiencing some of the important events we can become more aware of the expectations that we built about relationships, and the strategies (or “defences”) we developed  to cope with them.  

These expectations and strategies may have been very useful to us during our first relationships, indeed they may well have contributed to our psychological self-preservation.   But if they have become habitual or “wired in” to our subconscious minds during our early years then, without being aware of it,   we may still be using them in our current relationships when we don’t really need to - because we’re dealing with different people now.  

This may make it difficult to become emotionally close to others, and have the effect of undermining current relationships, causing them to end prematurely.  For example, if we have come to expect rejection in childhood, we may learn to protect ourselves by not  showing affection or liking, which may lead others to see us as reserved or unfriendly and avoid our company – thus strengthening our expectation of rejection in future relationships.  In this way our early expectations of relationships tend to be reinforced and strengthened in a form of vicious circle.

The key to breaking out of this cycle, and building more satisfying relationships, lies in bringing these underlying expectations and defences into conscious awareness.   This can be done  by using hypnosis to help people remember and re-live childhood relationships, or by discussing and analysing recent and current relationships.   Once achieved, increased awareness allows the expectations and defences resulting from previous dysfunctional relationships to be consciously dismantled, so that we are more able to react spontaneously and appropriately to the behaviour of others.

Because this process of bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness can be quite difficult, and because it may lead to feelings of vulnerability and anxiety,  it is usually best to proceed fairly slowly and carefully with this sort of therapy and so it can sometimes be spread over many months or even years.

Last  Updated:  21/04/2010