An expression of physical pain, tears also have a social and cognitive role aimed at triggering empathy in others, who then become more inclined to grant certain requests. In hypnotherapy, it’s important to distinguish tears shed during trance from those shed outside of it. While the latter are as common as they are spontaneous, the former are both passive and inconsistent. Here’s an explanation.
Freud and Breuer’s abreaction
Between 1893 and 1895, Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer studied hysteria and its possible treatment through hypnosis. The way a person reacts to a traumatic event creates a more or less significant pathogenic affect, which will shape their capacity to act and their ability to be happy.
For Freud, abreaction is a normal and healthy emotional discharge that allows a person to react to an event while avoiding the build-up of an overly strong pathogenic affect. While this emotional release isn’t always associated with tears, he considered it cathartic nonetheless.
A few years later, Freud came to favour the path of expressing and representing the pathogenic memory through language. A gentler approach to the issue, through speech.
The two types of crying in hypnotherapy
Tears during the hypnotherapy session
During the anamnesis, the first stage of the hypnotherapy interview, tears, which are entirely spontaneous, are shed very commonly. The patient consciously explains their problem, their feelings, and their suffering.
These crying episodes then follow the classic physical process: crying is accompanied by a tightening of the throat, giving the sensation of a lump in the throat that prevents the patient from swallowing. These emotional tears have the power to release nervous tension (stress-related toxins), but they also release feel-good endorphins (natural painkillers).
During a hypnotherapy session, it’s not uncommon to see patients with sobbing spasms, a tight throat, or a runny nose, physical symptoms that are just as classic as they are common in therapy.
Tears during trance
Tears that occur during hypnosis are quite different: distinctly passive, they don’t come with the physical symptoms described above. Trance is a state with its own codes and manifestations. As a result, crying within this state also has its own code and resonance.
Its use is debated: some professionals consider it necessary to trigger an abreaction as a marker of change, while others see neither the necessity nor the obligation to do so. A complex and powerful process, trance tears can sometimes be entirely spontaneous: the person doesn’t necessarily have an explanation for them after the session.
In the Ericksonian hypnosis approach, a hypnotherapist may use the art of permissiveness, inviting the patient to make use of their tears, if and only if, they help relieve their suffering and allow them to reach a positive feeling after the session…
Don’t hesitate to speak openly about crying and tears with one of the hypnotherapists on the Ora Visio platform, to find out their stance on the subject and its role in their therapeutic approach.
