The Test(?)

Dear reader,

three days after my birthday, September, 9 my mom had a bad bike accident. She and my dad and friends were out and she fell. At the moment she's still in an induced coma, which is normal after heavy head injuries and the usual way to go, putting her in an induced coma. I can't say much more at this moment and I also don't want to write about this at this moment now. Not because it would be bad, but to spare me the continued updating with details about her condition.

I think, in bad situations, crisis, people try to make sense of it, so that the bad situation isn't totally "senseless". The situation with my mom brought me back to hypnosis and trance. That's why the condition of my mom is worth mentioning for me here and now. Because I think that a coma is in some ways similar to a trance. (Although "trance" and "hypnosis" aren't the same, some of you may understand better if I wrote about "hypnosis" rather than "trance". I'll soon write about my favourite therapist Milton Erickson and explain more about trance, hypnosis and other related things then.) Trance and coma are in any case an altered state of consciousness. Both are states in which we filter less of what others tell us and accept it more easily than we would in a waking state.

It took some time for me to think those things that way. At first she was in france anyway, because they were doing their tour there and she only got back here to germany in a neighbour town on the night of the 17/18th. So there was hardly anything I could have done, even if I wanted to. And even now I can't quite help her the way I want to yet. I've got a cold now. Since my mom is still at the intensive care unit in the hospital, I don't want to risk infecting her.

Here is my thought: a coma is a special state of consciousness, at least in some parts similar to a trance state. Also it's very possible that doctors, nurses and now also visitors like my family and friends, may talk directly to my mom or talk among themselves in her present and use words that don't help her in the healing process. For example someone might mention the possibility of her being paralysed or something. Yes, the possibility of that is real. But in her state it's dangerous to hear something like that. Even if she doesn't sense the things around her on a conscious level, I do believe she senses them somehow in some way unconsciously still.

Therefore I'd like to tell her something I'd tell other people, who want to work with me with hypnosis and tell her something like this, "Some people say that you can't her. But you have two ears, which work well and you hear many things other people say. Either they're talking to you or among themselves in here. I want you to only keep in mind those things you think are important and true and which help you now. All the other things you can easily ignore and forget."

I think it's important to say something like that before starting to do hypnosis with someone. Because it gives the other person the opportunity, the legitimation(!), that not everything I tell that person has to be accepted. It may well happen that I unconsciously or unknowingly tell things the person doesn't like. With those few lines the person can ignore just those selected things and feel good about it, and without disregarding everything else that follows, just because a part of it didn't fit in their values and way of thinking. I therefore think it's an important protection for my mom now. Especially now. Even if she's not consciously aware of it and I may have to repeat something like that several times, as long as she's in the coma.

I don't believe in (a) god. But the thoughts I thought about those things I described here over the past days. Maybe they're some way of nudging me back to hypnosis. After I wanted to make two friends hypnotically drunk and it didn't work on one of them and only a bit on the other, I sort of gave up hypnotising other people. Even though I know this was nobody's "fault" that the experiment didn't work out well. It still made me feel bad and I unfairly blame myself and thinking many too many negative thoughts about it. Now is my new chance with my mom and to truly help her.

Until next blog,

sarah