With Hypnotherapy for PTSD You Don’t Need to Relive Your Trauma to Release It

The Science-Backed Rewind Technique Hypnotherapy for PTSD

The Debilitating Fear That Keeps People Suffering

One of the biggest misconceptions about recovering from PTSD is that you have to talk through every painful detail of what happened. For many trauma survivors, this prospect is so daunting that they avoid seeking help altogether. They fear that ‘going there’ will simply re-traumatize them, leaving them worse off than before. They are often right, as I spoke about in this a Substack post. The fear of reliving trauma is one of the primary reasons people with PTSD delay or refuse treatment. 

Groundbreaking Research Show a More Effective Way to Treat PTSD

A recent randomized controlled trial published in PubMed (PMC11921860) has provided strong scientific evidence for an approach known as the Rewind Technique. This landmark study found that the technique significantly reduced PTSD symptoms, and it did so without requiring clients to spend hours narrating their trauma or exposing themselves to prolonged distress.

The research, conducted by Astill Wright and colleagues at Cardiff University School of Medicine, demonstrated remarkable results:

• Large effect size (Cohen’s d: 1.05) – comparable to traditional trauma-focused therapies
• 12.64-point reduction in CAPS-5 scores compared to waitlist control at 8 weeks
• 48.4% symptom reduction from pre- to post-treatment
• Lasting improvements maintained at 16-week follow-up
• Only 1-3 sessions required, compared to 12-20 sessions for traditional approaches
• No adverse effects reported during the study
• High treatment fidelity when delivered by trained therapists

Perhaps most importantly, 10 out of 20 participants who received immediate Rewind no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD after treatment, a clinically significant transformation in mental health status.

Why Traditional Talk Therapy Often Falls Short for Trauma

Traditional talk therapy targets the prefrontal cortex, the logical, analytical part of your brain. This approach makes sense for many psychological issues, but there’s a fundamental problem when it comes to trauma: traumatic memories are not stored as logical stories.

Instead, they’re stored in the limbic system and the autonomic nervous system as raw, sensory data. Fragments of sights, sounds, smells, physical sensations, and overwhelming emotions. When you’re triggered, your brain doesn’t think ‘I’m remembering something that happened in the past.’ Your brain believes the event is happening right now.

The Nervous System’s Brilliant But Sometimes Stuck Design

If you grew up in a challenging environment, particularly in a narcissistic or abusive family system, your nervous system was likely ‘wired’ for high alert from a very young age. This is not a pathology or a defect. It’s a brilliant survival mechanism. Your brain learned to prioritize safety over everything else, constantly scanning for danger to keep you alive.

The issue is that once the threat is gone, the ‘software’ often keeps running. The freeze response becomes a permanent state because the message that the danger has passed never reaches the involuntary parts of the brain that control these automatic protective responses.

The study participants reflected this reality. They had experienced an average of 36.6 months of PTSD symptoms (not counting the time since the original trauma), with 82.5% also meeting criteria for major depressive disorder. These weren’t people with mild symptoms, they were significantly impaired, yet the Rewind Technique still produced substantial improvements.

The Revolutionary Science Behind the Rewind Technique

The Rewind Technique works because it utilizes what researchers call Visual-Kinesthetic Dissociation. Instead of being ‘in’ the memory, experiencing it from your own eyes as if it’s happening to you. You are guided to observe it from a safe, detached perspective.

A Different Way Forward

I do not believe in pathologizing people who have survived difficult experiences. You are not a diagnosis. You are a person with a nervous system that is doing exactly what it was designed to do: keep you alive.

If you have hit a wall with traditional therapy, it might be because you are trying to solve a biological problem with logic. By using the Rewind Technique and permissive language, we can speak directly to the parts of the nervous system where the “freeze” is held.

I have been using this specific approach for years. In fact, I developed a guided recording based on this protocol six years before this latest RCT study was even published. It is rewarding to see the formal clinical research now confirming what I have seen in my work for a long time: that this method is a highly effective way to process traumatic memories without the need for verbal disclosure or re-traumatization.

You can experience this process for yourself through the recording I developed. It allows you to apply the Visual-Kinesthetic Dissociation protocol in a safe, controlled environment. You do not need to share your story to begin updating how your brain perceives the past.

The goal is to update your internal software so you can finally exist in the present. If you are ready to stop managing your symptoms and start releasing them, I am here to help, book a free consultation call to find out how online hypnotherapy can help you. 

The Cardiff University study (PMC11921860) provides scientific confirmation that this process facilitates what’s known as memory reconsolidation. This is the neurobiological process of taking a ‘hot’ memory. One that triggers intense emotional and physical reactions and cooling it down into a simple historical fact.

How Memory Reconsolidation Actually Works

Here’s what happens at a neurological level during the Rewind Technique:

1. Memory Activation: The traumatic memory is briefly activated (approximately 2 minutes in the study protocol)

2. Safety Pairing: While the memory is active, you remain physically relaxed and emotionally detached, observing from a distance

3. Information Mismatch: Your brain receives contradictory information—you’re remembering the event, but your body is signaling that you’re safe

4. Neural Rerouting: This ‘mismatch’ allows the brain to move the memory from the amygdala (where it triggers the alarm system) to the hippocampus (where it’s stored as a quiet, historical fact)

5. Lasting Change: The memory becomes integrated as something that happened in the past, not something threatening you in the present

Importantly, you still remember what happened. Traumatic memories cannot be erased. The difference is that the memory no longer has the power to hijack your body with panic, hypervigilance, flashbacks, or dissociation.

The study found that this process worked rapidly. Participants attended an average of only 2.35 sessions, with many experiencing sufficient symptom relief to not require all three offered sessions. This stands in stark contrast to traditional trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, which typically requires 12-20 sessions.

What Makes the Rewind Technique Different from Other PTSD Treatments

Several key features distinguish the Rewind Technique from other trauma therapies:

1. Minimal Verbal Disclosure Required

Unlike trauma-focused CBT or prolonged exposure therapy, the Rewind Technique does not require you to verbally narrate the details of your trauma. This makes it particularly appealing for survivors who find the idea of detailed disclosure overwhelming or re-traumatizing.

2. Brief Treatment Duration

With only 1-3 sessions typically needed (versus 12-20 for traditional approaches), the Rewind Technique offers a more time-efficient path to recovery. The study protocol involved sessions of up to 60 minutes each.

3. Remote Delivery Capability

The entire Cardiff trial was delivered remotely using video calls, demonstrating that this treatment can be effectively provided via telehealth. This increases accessibility for people in rural areas, those with mobility challenges, or anyone who prefers receiving treatment from home.

4. Emotional Distance During Processing

The technique uses metaphorical framing (imagining you’re in a cinema watching a film of the event) to create psychological distance from the trauma while it’s being processed. This protective buffer helps prevent re-traumatization during treatment.

5. Rapid Memory Reprocessing

The ‘rewinding’ component involves mentally reversing through the traumatic memory very quickly (about 10 seconds in the study), which may facilitate reconsolidation without prolonged exposure to distressing content.

The Clinical Evidence: What the Research Really Shows

The Cardiff University randomized controlled trial (PMC11921860) represents the most rigorous scientific evaluation of the Rewind Technique to date. Previous studies had shown promise but lacked the methodological rigor needed for definitive conclusions.

Study Design and Participants

The research team recruited 40 participants through NHS mental health clinics who:

• Met DSM-5 criteria for PTSD from a single traumatic event
• Had experienced symptoms for an average of 36.6 months
• Were significantly impaired in daily functioning
• Had not received adequate trauma-focused treatment previously

Participants were randomly assigned to either immediate Rewind treatment or an 8-week waitlist before receiving treatment. This design allowed researchers to compare outcomes against a control group while ensuring all participants eventually received the intervention.

Primary Outcomes: CAPS-5 Scores

The study used the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5 (CAPS-5), considered the gold standard for PTSD diagnosis and symptom severity assessment. Results showed:

• 8-week comparison: 12.64-point difference between treatment and waitlist groups (p = 0.019)
• Statistical significance: This difference was statistically robust and unlikely to occur by chance
• Clinical significance: The magnitude of improvement was large enough to meaningfully impact daily functioning
• Diagnostic changes: 50% of immediate treatment recipients no longer met PTSD criteria at 8 weeks

Broader Mental Health Improvements

Beyond PTSD symptoms, participants experienced improvements across multiple domains:

• Depression (PHQ-9): 6.63-point difference between groups (p = 0.022)
• Anxiety (GAD-7): 6.48-point difference between groups (p = 0.018)
• Functional impairment (WSAS): 11.83-point difference between groups (p = 0.027)

These findings suggest that addressing the underlying traumatic memory creates ripple effects throughout mental health, not just targeting isolated PTSD symptoms. PTSD symptoms should not be viewed as defects that need to be fixed, they should be understood as protective mechanisms that are no longer needed but haven’t yet received the update.

Why Traditional Approaches Sometimes Fail

If you’ve hit a wall with traditional therapy, it might be because you’re trying to solve a biological problem with logic alone. The parts of your brain that store traumatic memories: the amygdala, the hippocampus, the autonomic nervous system don’t respond well to logical arguments or conscious reasoning.

These primitive brain structures respond to experience and sensory information. They need to be shown that you’re safe, not told that you’re safe. This is precisely what the Rewind Technique accomplishes, it provides your nervous system with experiential evidence that the threat has passed.

Present-Moment Living

The goal is not to spend years talking about the past, dissecting every detail, or trying to cognitively restructure your thoughts about what happened. The goal is to update your internal software so you can finally exist fully in the present.

When your nervous system no longer perceives current reality through the lens of past danger, you can:

• Respond to actual threats rather than perceived threats
• Experience emotions without overwhelming intensity
• Form healthy relationships based on who people are now, not who hurt you before
• Make decisions based on current circumstances rather than historical danger
• Reclaim the mental and emotional energy currently devoted to hypervigilance

From Managing to Releasing

For too long, many people with PTSD have been told that the best they can hope for is symptom management, learning coping skills to make the symptoms more tolerable. While coping skills have value, they shouldn’t be the end goal.

The research on memory reconsolidation and techniques like Rewind suggests something more profound: the possibility of actually releasing trauma rather than just managing it.

This means:

• Not just coping with triggers, but reducing their power over you
• Not just managing hypervigilance, but allowing your nervous system to recalibrate
• Not just avoiding reminders, but being able to encounter them without overwhelming distress
• Not just surviving, but genuinely living

Ready to Stop Managing and Start Releasing?

If you’re tired of managing symptoms and ready to explore whether you can release them, the evidence suggests that change may be more accessible than you thought. You don’t have to spend years in therapy. You don’t have to relive every painful moment. You don’t have to explain or justify or defend your experience.

The goal is simple: to update your internal software so you can finally exist fully in the present moment, free from the alarm bells of the past.

Not Just for Trauma

This isn’t just for PTSD. I use this same “software update” for clients struggling with:

• Social Anxiety
• Fear of Blushing (Erythrophobia)
• Generalized Panic

When you de-link the trigger from the physical response, the “loop” breaks.

You are not a diagnosis. You are not broken. You are a person with a nervous system that did exactly what it was supposed to do to keep you alive. And now it’s ready for an update.

Key Takeaways

• The Rewind Technique demonstrated a large effect size (Cohen’s d: 1.05) in treating PTSD in a rigorous randomized controlled trial
• You don’t need to verbally narrate traumatic details to process and release traumatic memories
• Treatment typically requires only 1-3 sessions compared to 12-20 for traditional approaches
• The technique works through memory reconsolidation, not just symptom management
• 50% of participants no longer met PTSD criteria after treatment in the research study
• Remote delivery via telehealth was effective, increasing accessibility
• Further research is needed, but initial results are highly encouraging
• PTSD symptoms are protective mechanisms that are no longer needed, not permanent defects

Scientific Reference

This article is based on the peer-reviewed research study: Astill Wright, L., Barawi, K., Kitchiner, N., Kitney, D., Lewis, C., Roberts, A., Roberts, N. P., Simon, N., Ariti, C., Nussey, I., Muss, D., & Bisson, J. I. (2023). Rewind for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomised Controlled Trial. Depression and Anxiety, 2023, 6279649.

Study available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11921860/

The study was conducted at Cardiff University School of Medicine and represents the first rigorous randomized controlled trial evaluating the Rewind Technique for PTSD treatment.

If you’re struggling with PTSD and are interested in exploring whether the Rewind Technique might be right for you, schedule a free no obligation call. Remember: seeking help is a sign of strength, not weakness. Your nervous system deserves the update it’s been waiting for.