Can Hypnosis Unlock Memories of Childhood Abuse?

Key Takeaways

• Hypnosis is not proven to help recover forgotten or repressed memories of childhood abuse.
• Hypnosis can make people open to suggestion, leading to false memories.
• People with certain mental health conditions should not try hypnosis.

If you have challenges in adulthood, you may wonder if there were traumatic experiences from your childhood that you have forgotten or repressed. For example, could sexual abuse have occurred, but the memory was blocked out? You may worry that what you can recall is incomplete. Remembering some events and considering them from an adult’s perspective might be confusing or uncomfortable.

Not being able to clearly remember something from your life can be frustrating and distressing. If you are reflecting on your childhood and asking yourself, “Was I sexually abused?”, you may worry that you’ll never know the truth.

Techniques like hypnosis have often been touted as the key to unlocking memories, especially traumatic ones. However, it’s important to learn about the origins of hypnosis in psychology and understand how memory is affected by trauma.

In this article, we’ll talk about traumatic memories and the claims that hypnosis can help people recover them.  

Memory and Dissociation

Some adults who were abused as children forgot about or dissociated from the experience as a protective mechanism. By shutting the trauma out of their consciousness, a child (and later, an adult) can cope with current problems without being overwhelmed by memories.

Not everyone forgets or dissociates from trauma. For some people, distressing memories come up regularly and can be extremely disruptive and distressing. Both dissociation and intrusive memories are features of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Spontaneous Recall of Abuse

Some people who may have forgotten trauma later recall memories of abuse. The memories can come up in therapy or get triggered when a person’s physical or emotional state changes, which could include hypnosis. However, recalling abuse can also happen even if a person is not undergoing therapy.

A person who spontaneously recovers memories of abuse might be able to verify what happened to them. Knowing the truth may give them relief and help them understand themselves better.

However, not all memories are clear and easy to interpret. For some people, trying to find evidence to confirm that their memories are accurate proves impossible and leads to negative relationships with family members.

Can Hypnosis Bring Back Childhood Memories?

Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness. It may sometimes make memories more accessible. However, it is also a state where the mind is open to imagination, making it hard to determine if a memory of childhood abuse is real or imagined.

Hypnosis techniques claim to help access forgotten or repressed memories. Many hypnotherapists even claim that people can recall past lives under hypnosis. However, there is no scientific evidence to support these claims.

Memory is a process of reconstruction, not an exact recording like a video camera. It’s more like a scrapbook, where memories are assembled with sensory experiences and interpretations.

During hypnosis, people are very open to suggestion, and this suggestibility is key to how hypnosis works.  Sometimes, false memories of abuse may be inadvertently planted in a person’s mind under hypnosis.

However, that does not mean that everyone who recalls childhood abuse in adulthood is imagining it or that all hypnotherapists deliberately feed clients false memories of abuse. However, if you do not have memories of child abuse, it’s important to understand that hypnosis is not a reliable method of finding out if you experienced it.

Regression Therapy and Hypnosis

The goal of regression therapy is to return to significant events from your past by mentally “revisiting” them. Regression therapy is often done using hypnosis.

Proponents of the practice believe that being in a relaxed state allows people to tap into forgotten or repressed traumatic events that are affecting their current mental state or behavior. By processing what happened to them in the past, a person may understand how these experiences are affecting their present life. Working through the memories and emotions of past experiences can help a person heal and focus on the future.

There are two types of regression therapy:

• Age regression therapy (to uncover things that happened during your childhood)
• Past life regression therapy (to resolve issues from the lives you lived before your current one)

Regression therapy is controversial, in part because there is not enough evidence to say whether it’s possible to repress and later recover traumatic memories.

How Hypnosis Can Help Survivors of Childhood Abuse

Even though experts agree that hypnosis is not useful for doing personal “detective work” to uncover the truth about your past, that doesn’t mean hypnosis is without benefit for people who have experienced trauma.

Certain forms of hypnotherapy can be effective for some people who have symptoms of PTSD. The practice can help survivors restructure memories of abuse to give them a greater sense of control, as well as address painful emotions such as self-blame.

Hypnosis is most powerful when it’s focused on creating positive changes in a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors for the future. Techniques like relaxation and guided imagery can help a person feel calm and centered, which can get them in a better emotional place to face their triggers in everyday life.

Who Should Not Do Hypnosis?

Hypnotherapy is not right for everyone. The ability to use and benefit from hypnosis varies, and people with certain mental health conditions like dissociative disorders, seizures, active substance use disorder, and psychotic disorders may not be able to safely undergo hypnotherapy.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

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By Elizabeth Hartney, BSc, MSc, MA, PhD

Elizabeth Hartney, BSc, MSc, MA, PhD is a psychologist, professor, and Director of the Centre for Health Leadership and Research at Royal Roads University, Canada. 

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