What Is Regression Hypnosis (Age Regression)?

Age regression is a hypnosis technique in which a practitioner guides you back to an earlier time in your life, so that you recall or re-experience past events and the feelings attached to them. Its practitioners use it to look for the roots of a present problem. The central question for anyone considering it is whether what surfaces is a memory of the past or a reconstruction made in the session.

What happens in an age regression session?

The Wikipedia article on age regression in hypnotherapy describes the basic method. A person is hypnotized and asked to recall a past event or to go back to an earlier age, and may then recall or relive events from that time. If the hypnotherapist suggests a particular age, the person may begin to talk, act and think in ways that seem to fit it.

Hypnotherapists who use the technique claim it helps people remember the perceptions and feelings left by past events that affect a present problem, so they can reinterpret their current situation with new insight. For example, imagine someone with a lifelong fear who is guided back to the first time they remember feeling it, then helped to see that moment differently as an adult.

Sessions vary with the hypnotherapist and the client, and, as the research below shows, what is suggested during them can shape what is recalled.

Are the memories that come up accurate?

This is where the method is disputed. Two experiments by Joseph Green, a professor at Ohio University, summarized in the same article, show why caution is warranted.

In the first, 48 students who were highly responsive to hypnosis picked an uneventful night from the previous week, one with unbroken sleep and no dreams they could recall. Under hypnosis, they were asked whether they had heard a loud noise at 4 a.m. that night. Afterward, 44 percent of the students who had not been warned about false memories said they remembered the noise. Among students who had been warned beforehand that hypnosis can create false memories, the figure was still 28 percent.

In the second, 160 students were told their routine would help them recall their earliest memories. One group used self-hypnosis, one deep relaxation and one counting exercises. Forty percent of the hypnosis group later recalled something from on or before their first birthday, compared with 22 percent in the relaxation group and 13 percent in the counting group.

These were experiments with students, not clinical sessions with patients, so they do not measure what happens in therapy directly. What they do show is that a suggestion delivered during hypnosis can produce a memory of something that did not happen, and that in the first study a warning reduced the effect without removing it.

What are the risks?

The main risk is acting on a memory that may not be accurate. WebMD’s medically reviewed overview of hypnosis risks notes that using hypnosis to bring back memories linked to a mental health condition is controversial, and that with someone who is not a trained professional it could create fake memories that further confuse the person’s mental health problems.

That risk attaches to using the session to answer a factual question about the past: whether abuse happened, who did something, what “really” occurred. Work that stays with a present-day feeling, and does not ask you to treat what surfaces as evidence, avoids that particular use.

How should you approach it?

• Decide what the session is for. Working on how you feel about a remembered moment is a different task from establishing what happened. Say clearly which one you want.
• Do not treat a new memory as proof. If something you had never remembered surfaces in a session, hold it as a possibility to explore with a licensed therapist, not as a fact to act on.
• Ask about method and training. Ask whether the practitioner uses open-ended or leading questions, how they handle memories that seem new, and what clinical training they have.
• Keep major decisions out of the session. Do not confront family members, make accusations or take legal steps on the strength of a memory that first appeared under hypnosis.

If you are dealing with trauma, a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist with trauma training is the safer starting point, and can advise whether hypnosis has any place in your treatment.

This article is general information, not medical or psychological advice; talk with a licensed clinician about your own situation.