Rewind Therapy Leeds

When you suffer flashbacks, panic attacks, or high levels of anxiety, a small part of the brain called the amygdala is responsible. This is part of the brain which helps activate the fight, flight, or freeze response when we are in dangerous situations.

The amygdala is a primitive part of the brain which doesn’t have a time tag and flares up every time we remember about the traumatic event, even if we experienced it years and years ago. It happens because this event is unresolved and the negative emotions around this event are still there.

If the feeling of fear is trapped in the amygdala then any trigger can cause you mentally to come back to that again.

Rewind Therapy allows another part of the brain called the hippocampus “to calm’’ the amygdala down and results in neutralizing the negative emotions around the event. So as a result the anxieties, flashbacks, panic attacks, nightmares and irrational fears disappear within a certain amount of time. This usually being within a month.

The beautiful thing about the Rewind Technique is that the therapist doesn’t need to know any details about the traumatic memory if the client struggles to talk about it. We don’t need to make the client speak about the event.

In fact, the client can keep it all to themselves. In this case during the rewind therapy, I personally would refer to them as “that old memory #1, “that old memory #2’’, etc. As long as you know what that memory is, and work through it using your imagination, I do NOT need to know what it is. It’s up to you if you want to share the story. Thank goodness the modern therapy allows us to have a successful therapy even if we don’t want to go there in details.

It would be enough to say to your therapist. (just as an example)

“I have this horrible memory; I feel so ashamed of it that I don’t want to talk about it. All I want is to be able to forgive myself eventually and to look at that experience with the different pair of eyes.”

“I would like to feel nothing when I remember about that old event. I am ready to let it go.”

So, in this case I would look at the list of the negative emotions the client might experience when they remember that memory. Let’s say it could be:  Feelings of Guilt or being ashamed of themselves.

Their self-negative belief could be: I am hopeless or I am worthless or I am a terrible person etc.

I would ask them “What you would like to feel INSTEAD?”

And

“What would you like to believe about yourself INSTEAD?”

They might say: “I want to feel free and forgive myself”

Or

“I want to believe that everybody make mistakes, we learn and grow having these experiences.”

Or

“I want to feel proud of myself.”

Then having collected this information and created the aims for the therapy we can proceed in a safest possible way for client.

Little extra information.

This technique has originated from NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and is also known as the Visual Dissociation technique. The rewind therapy can help reduce or in some cases remove the following PTSD symptoms within a short period of time (from the same day the client had a therapy up to a months time)

• Flashbacks
• Intrusive thoughts or pictures/images
• Repeated Nightmares

It can be used as a stand-alone treatment for phobias such as fear of needles or flying,

One-time traumatic incidents.

Such a car accident, trip or road incident or any one particular traumatic event/memory which might require a 1 off session.

Or it can be used for more complex multiple trauma such as:

1) Sexual abuse

2) Mental / domestic abuse /traumas

3) Recovery from a traumatic separation /divorce

4) Being a witness to something tragic or shocking

In these cases, the REWIND THERAPY would work better when integrated with Psychotherapy and Hypnotherapy or EMDR therapy.

Please don’t hesitate to book an initial assessment appointment with me to explore if this treatment is suitable and if so, how many sessions might be required.