Roger-Luc Chayer
As part of our chronicles on hypnosis, in collaboration with the École de formation professionnelle en hypnose du Québec, we are happy to answer questions from readers. You can contact us directly at edito@gayglobe.net. The question for this edition is:
Can hypnosis be useful in bereavement? What is the main benefit of hypnosis in simple or complex grief?
When we talk about bereavement, it can be the death of a loved one, financial loss, professional loss, job loss, etc. Grief manifests itself in a variety of ways, but the bottom line is that sometimes the pain is insurmountable, or so some people who are affected by it believe.
Chantal Collin is a hypnotherapist and is particularly knowledgeable in the field of bereavement. « It’s all in the reception in my opinion, we are not in a culture where we have tamed mourning in general. A lot of people don’t know what to do with that, they don’t know the process and the various stages of mourning,” explains Chantal.
“Hypnosis allows you to look at the situation from another angle because people know the meaning rationally, but they still have pain. In our society, we get very close around the bereaved person, but after a while, we tend to think that things are going better for the person, whereas the mourning can last for years. And this kind of abandonment of loved ones indirectly makes the mourning continue. »
Mrs. Collin explains to me that mourning has been a completely natural process since the world began and that it is made up of more or less long and more or less easy stages to face such as shock, effects on health mental and physical, and there are also the steps to try to recover with the assistance of hypnosis such as regaining calm, finding your internal bearings, regaining self-confidence, the courage to face difficult feelings or try to understand their grief by gently de-dramatizing it.
Grieving is not the end of everything, it can be the start of something good
A concrete example offered by Madame Collin is the fact of being able to revive, with hypnosis, memories and soothing, positive moments and certain clients, knowing that they have access again to these beautiful moments with the deceased. , feel a sense of well-being that contributes to making bereavement a less negative experience.
Not only do some clients say they have been positively transformed by the loved one, reliving that feeling, they open their eyes saying “I felt it like the first time”. Hypnosis makes it possible to see certain scenes of their life again, to feel again the feelings that they associate with their deceased loved one, believing that this feeling will not return in view of death. Hypnosis allows you to relive these beautiful moments in the first degree and when you know that you can relive something so beautiful, it feels a lot of good. Thank you Mrs Collin.