Recommendations and illustrations for combining hypnosis and EMDR in the treatment of psychological trauma

Three experienced therapists, trained in hypnosis and EMDR, distilled same tentative hypotheses about the use of hypnosis in EMDR from fifteen cases, two presented here. When a therapist uses hypnosis with EMDR, it seems that the client is having difficulty or the therapist anticipates that the clie nt will have difficulty managing the experiences processed with EMDR. Hypno sis initiated either during the introduction to EMDR or within a therapy se ssion prior to the initiation of EMDR seems to have served two functions. T he first function is to activate inner work that prepares the client to use EMDR successfully, and the second function is to facilitate overtly the pr ocessing of the traumatic experience. Clients might have two kinds of diffi culties in managing affect or distress: (1) they may have a long-standing, irrational and strongly held belief that interferes with managing affect or distress, and (2) they may never have developed the capacity to tolerate i ntense affect, distress or pain. Should a therapist use hypnosis during the closing down phase of a session without preparing the client with hypnosis during the introduction to EMDR, the therapist should seriously reconsider the pace and focus of EMDR and the client's resources to manage affect and distress.