Sometime ago, I discovered (along with doing hypnosis over the phone),
that the mind catagorizes events based upon first times. The first time
you taste something, the first time you give your love, the first time
you go on an airplane, etcetera.
What I noted is that the mind uses this first-time memory to evaluate
every following event of the same type. That is when I stumbled upon the
truth.
One patient was in an age regression. He had told me that one of his problem in life was that he didn't trust people. I asked him to identify that feeling of not trusting. Then I asked him to go back to just before the very first time he ever felt this feeling, and to tell me about it.
He said,"I am on top of a jungle gym at a friends' house. Me and two other kids were playing. I told my friend that I needed to pee. He said for me to pee from up there. When I did, they laughed at me, and I then felt this feeling."
I asked the patient to go back to the beginning point again. This time, I asked him to relive the event, but this time, let what he thought was going to happen, actually happen, and then tell me about it. He started to laugh and laugh. I asked him,"What's up? What is happening?" In a giggly voice, he said,"They are writing their names." Apparently, they joined him and all were peeing from off the top of this jungle gym, and using the streams to write their names.
I asked the patient,"Is this a better memory than the one you had." He brightly said,"Yes." So I asked him to replace the memory and to throw the old on out in the garbage can, of which my last letter to you entails.
Since doing this session, I have found more success for smokers, of whom I hate doing that type of repetitive work. Once they change their decision factor, they are left with an addiction and a habit, but no longer the emotional factor of "I am smoking because I want to fit in, be accepted, loved," or other such nonsense.
The false memory system is EXCELLENT! with use on transsexual patients. I did a session with a patient who was pre-operative. For all her life, from as early on as I could get her to go, up to the present, I asked her to re-evaluate every decision, statement, or situation that had male or masculine overtones, and to remember them with either androgenous or female overtones, and to change all references to her from Dan to Cindy (not the real names, but for example). The session took over an hour but the person has done well ever since, and she has credited the single session to me. She has done followup with a local hypnotherapist. Her therapy, too, was over a speakerphone.
Give patients a supporting basis for this type of thinking. "You are not a historian. You are not creating novels on your past. You have the power to both overcome your past and to change it. It is not living a lie. It is controlling the truth." I find these statements justify the therapy to the patient, so the effect lasts.
I forged what I thought was a new concept in false memory therapy when I started all this stuff. It's nice to know that parallel discovery still goes on. It reminds us that, such as in simple machines, given a need and a problem, eventually the logic will pass through the same point and conclusions, but not from the same steps.