There are at least three distinct schools in the field of emotional clearing work taught in hypnotherapy schools in California.

The first of these, developed by Milton Erickson, involves the use of hypnotic suggestion in which the hypnotist feeds "new" childhood experiences or ideas directly into the client's subconscious mind, while the client is in a regressed state. The therapist takes complete control of redesigning the client's childhood.Erickson even used deliberate amnesia to prevent the client's conscious mind from interfering with or negating the process, although this step has not been found necessary by modern practitioners of his technique.

A second more interactive strategy ("interactive" means that the client and therapist work together in the process of healing) involves the client setting up a new ending for the injured child's experience. This modality, described by Frieda Morris in Hypnosis for Friends and Lovers, involves the therapist helping the client relive a traumatic event first. Then therapist and client together decide on a new experience which is a positive one to replace the original memory. For example:

Therapist: "Well, what can we do differently now with this experience with your mother?"

Client: "I'd like her to be nice to me. She could say, 'I love you. I'm sorry I lost my temper. It's not your fault'."

Then client and therapist together re-create the memory as a series of positive words and images while the client is in a regressed state. This allows the client to feel love, bliss and nurturance.

These two methods work well for many clients, but often fail to address the client's underlying feelings of frustration, helplessness, anger, guilt, or abandonment. If the client, for example, feels angry about mother's behavior, neither Erickson's nor Morris' technique provides a complete solution. Also, many of my clients experienced such a poor relationship with a parent that it is impossible for them to imagine their mother being a loving, understanding parent.

As a third method, Alchemical Hypnotherapy combines the best features of emotional release and emotional clearing therapy. It creates a dramatic encounter between the client's adult personality, the hurt, traumatized child and important people in the client's past. This process, called the "rescue mission", allows the expression of feelings which stem from the incident, as well as empowering the client to heal himself. Here's an example:

The client is feeling helpless and angry in the midst of a memory of being beaten up by father in a traumatic regression.

Now, I interject:

Therapist: "Let's imagine your adult self is entering the room right now. What would you like to say to your father, Mr. Adult?"

Client: "I'd like to shake some sense into my father! (grabs an offered pillow) Now you listen to me, you jerk!"

Therapist: "Good! What is his response?"

Now the client has the opportunity to release all of his repressed feelings toward his father (including grief, abandonment, admiration, etc.) and clear the way for a new level of understanding with him. Often this dialogue moves the client towards forgiveness as he begins to hear about his father's stressful life and underlying love for his son.

Most important, however, is that the client is empowered to rescue his "inner child" from the past. This nurturing relationship between the adult and his inner child can continue between therapy sessions. This considerably reduces the time needed for therapy by giving the client an opportunity to heal and revise his own childhood during a few minutes of every day.

In Alchemical Hypnotherapy, this self-nurturing process can be expanded to include "inner parents". A new mother and father are discovered in the child's own subconscious mind who fill the child's needs while providing both love and wisdom to the client's adult self. This allows the client who has a seriously disturbed childhood (and therefore no knowledge of what parental love feels like) to recreate a happy childhood from scratch with a minimum of time spent in therapy learning to contract the sources of love and healing in his own subconscious mind.

Any way you look at it, emotional clearing is therapy that creates the solid foundation of love, support, and positive nurturing necessary for emotional security and happiness. In the complex world of modern therapy, emotional clearing is the wave of the future!