Hypnosis to erase memory

[Amazed]

I have someone special in my life who went to the IRAQ war and has been back for a few months....We have grown to love and care for eachother for as much as we possibly can without meeting yet...The problem is she has PTSD due to trauma she witnessed.....She has been in treatment for a lil over a month now and has yet to face her issues ...We were talking on the phone the other day and something triggered her to recall the things/trauma she witnessed....her men being killed etc.....I was later told that she was hypnotized to bring her to some stability.... A couple of days later when we talked she could hardly remember things about me, or about us..or what we have shared...She was mentioning things to me that indicates that she was putback to a time period before she went off to IRAQ...We knew eachother then....but things did not get heavy between us till later....I was also told that she will be undergoing further hypnosis in a week or so regarding the war issues..my questions are:

It is possible that she may never remember or feel the things we have/had for eachother again?

If yes....would the hypnosis had to of been suggested/targetted to erase our relationship from her memory? Reason I ask.. her daughter does NOT like the fact that we are talking at this point.. and feels that I am distracting her mom from her treatment....

After her treatment for PTSD...can hypnosis reintroduce what we had back in?

[Jack]

The difficulty is that it is impossible to know whether the feelings she had were removed by hypnosis or for some other reason.

It is very unlikely that any ethical hypnotherapist would remove memories, even if that were possible. The good memories- albeit non-tactile - you shared are still there, but the emotions may have been modified.

At a distance, and without knowing you or the relationship. no-one can tell you whether or not she will remember feelings which have perhaps been modified by hypnosis, or for some other reason.

PTSD is a destructive condition and war changes people in both subtle and overwhelming ways. As an ex- serviceman who has experienced combat I can tell you that many of my friends are not the same people now as they were before the conflict in which we were engaged. Indeed, I am not.

Using hypnotherapy to help her recall feelings may inadvertently trigger unpleasant memories of Iraq and send her right back into PTSD, which I am sure you would not want.

Hypnotherapy is a voluntary therapy; it is highly unlikely that whatever her daughter wished would be taken into account by your friend's subconscious, unless her subconscious felt it was beneficial to do so.

My advice would be to try to rebuild your relationship without reference to the past. If that does not work then you may have to question on what basis the relationship was founded in the first instance, and whether it would have survived some other traumatic event.

Good luck.

Jack

[Terry]

I would agree with Jack completely, and I think I understand the daughter's problem also, and it is valid.
There's an old saying, "if you love someone, set them free. If they come back they are yours, if not they never were." The daughter feels that all contacts from the past are a barrier to her mother's recovery, and true or not it is quite valid, and not a slur on you personally.
There is something that puzzles me however, you don;t mention talking to the ladies therapist to see how best you can help in her recovery? Why would you come here to strangers who know nothing of either of you rather than consult with the locals who are much closer? Perhaps her daughter has already done this, hence her apprehension?

[Poodle]

if hypnosis was even used. I do know that science has come up with a "memory loss" medication. PSTD is easy, ethical and usually free for Iraq vets by using hypnosis to eliminate the "feelings" so the negative memories have no charge -- just neutral memories. War changes people in more ways than just unwanted memories.

[Don]

Pood is right, but I'd like to reword it a bit to make sure there is no misunderstanding.

Hypnosis can be used to eliminate the "feelings" associated with the negative memories so the negative memories have no charge and are just neutral memories.