I was devastated when I read a news story about a young Dutch girl only 17 years old who chose death Sunday through an assisted suicide in the Netherlands. Her reason for ending her life was her inability to deal with the emotional pain resulting from being molested when she was 11 and 12 and raped by two men when she was 14. Emotional pain is a reason for getting help in resolving whatever is causing the emotional pain. Emotional pain is self induced and if you’re capable of creating it, you’re also capable of resolving it. The best way I’ve found for resolving emotional pain resulting from childhood abuse of any kind or more recent traumas is NLP and Hypnotherapy.
I don’t blame the girl, Noa Pothoven, who simply wanted to give up after deciding that her suffering over the past few years was unbearable and that suicide was a way of “letting go”. She was way too young to make such a decision. I blame her doctor who signed off on the plan after concluding that her suffering was not only unbearable but was likely to continue. What kind of doctor would come to that kind of conclusion? How could he possibly know that it couldn’t be resolved? There is no way that Noa tried every therapeutic alternative available to her… not in only 3 years. And what about her parents? What kind of parents would support such a decision and give up on their child at such a young age?
Noa claimed it was her way of just “letting go”. It wasn’t just letting go of the emotional pain she was suffering.. she was also letting go of every dream and goal she’d ever had since she was a little girl.
While I’ve never personally been sexually abused or raped, I’ve worked with countless women and men, both young and old, who have experienced the horrors of sexual and physical abuse along with the devastating betrayal by parents and other elders who should have protected them. Some of these cases, based upon what I’m reading about Noa’s case, would make her’s seem like a walk in the park by comparison yet none of them chose suicide as a solution. It’s a good thing too because suicide doesn’t solve any problems.. it only transfers the pain to others still living who must deal with the grief of loss and the waste of a beautiful life so full of potential.
Certain techniques used in Hypnotherapy and especially NLP can be very effective in helping a person resolve past trauma.. whether recent or in the distant past. In doing so, all that emotional energy that keeps people hanging on to these painful memories is released and the events take a more appropriate and less painful place in your memory.
The human mind is a wonderful thing and the unconscious part of your mind is always working to make things better for you. If you suffer some kind of minor trauma say.. a broken arm… or a minor car accident, or if you get in a fight as a teenager and get beat up a bit, chances are within a short period of time that event looses it’s emotional energy and it just becomes something else that happened in life. If the trauma is greater, like molestation, rape, emotional or physical abuse as a child or something more serious later on in life and your unconscious mind is unable to resolve it right away, it will keep bringing it back to your attention along with those painful emotions until it can be resolved.
While I can’t tell you that Hypnotherapy or NLP works to cure the effects of trauma 100% of the time or that I can most certainly help you let go of the emotional pain from your childhood or more recent traumatic events, what I can tell you is that, based upon my experience in working with people who come to me for relief, generally speaking most clients will experience meaningful improvement after their first session and can resolve most of their trauma issues within 3 to 5 sessions.
The processes and techniques used in NLP and Hypnotherapy simply create the space for you to interact with your unconscious mind in a way allows that part of your mind to resolve or reframe experiences in such a way that the emotional pain connected to those events is lessened or eliminated quickly and comfortably.
I will forever believe that Noa didn’t need to die and that everyone around her failed her by letting her opt for a way out that a pained mind can imagine but can never think all the way through. That’s why studies have shown that among survivors of suicide they generally reveal that the moment they jumped or took whatever irreversible action that was supposed to result in their death, the first thought they had was they wished they could take it back.
If you are still suffering from the emotional pains of an abusive childhood or some other trauma or you know someone who is, please check out NLP and Hypnotherapy before you surrender to something drastic like Noa did or even to the fog of drugs or alcohol. There is hope and your unconscious mind is always ready and willing to work with you to free yourself from the pain and the guilt and the shame.