Hypnosis and Therapy for a Case of Vomiting, Nausea, and Pain

Abstract

In this case study the author illustrates the treatment of idiopathic gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms that practitioners sometimes encounter and for which none of the usual medical explanations apply. In this case, the symptoms have deeply personal and intricate causes that are explicated for the reader. A 20-year old female was vomiting six to eight times a day, accompanied with pain and nausea, for 2 years. She had medical intervention for almost that same duration. She had numerous uneventful medical tests, her gall bladder removed, and had exhausted hope for a medical cure. Working with a resource-building approach in therapy her vomiting was stopped within 6 weeks and her nausea in the following 7th week (or 13th session). Hypnosis was used during each session along with a protocol referred to as Self-Image Thinking (Lankton & Lankton, 1983/2008, 1986/2007; Lankton, 2008) to rehearse novel experiences and behaviors that she would implement in her social environment each week. She provided yearly follow-up phone contacts for 3 years and the latest contact was 1 month before this article was written. She remains symptom-free.

Keywords:

• resource-building therapy
• family re-organization
• hypnosis
• hypnotic rehearsal
• nausea
• self-image thinking
• vomiting

Notes

1. “A script is an ongoing program, developed in early childhood under parental influence, which directs the individual’s behavior in the most import aspects of his life” (Berne, 1970, p. 418). “The script, then, is a decision the young person makes by choosing between his own autonomous needs and expectations, and the pressures of injunctions he encounters in his primary family group” (Steiner, 1974, p. 68).