Auto Accident – Memory Recovery
The forensic interview of an auto accident victim, held in my office this week, allowed us to recover once again the missing information needed to proceed with the claim. Until the session, the accident victim had been unable to remember the license plate and identifying details of the car following him, whose driver had witnessed the accident.
In a single session, bringing the auto-accident victim back to the day of the collision, we are able to go through the unfolding of the events, exactly as they took place.
Proceeding from the moment our subject left his office, we experience the sounds, scents, temperature he noticed around him as his day unfolded. His facial features soften as he leaves the cool air conditioned environment of his office to step into the warm summer breeze outside.
Moving to the moment of the collision, our subject relays the sequence of events: “The light turns green. A truck is cutting in front of me! There is so much noise! His muffler is so loud! He’s going to hit me!” Proceeding through the events enables us to review every sight, sound, detail and information needed for the claim as if we were looking at a videotape recording.
Glancing at his rear view mirror, our subject notices it has been shifted by the impact. Once he readjusts it, he notices the car behind him, whose driver witnessed the accident. This clear image in his mind gives us all the information we need on the driver, his car and an almost complete license plate.
Memory Functioning
Have you ever wondered why our memory often fails us when it need it most?
We have all experienced the moment when, in the middle of a conversation, we try to convey the name of a person that seems to remain at the tip of our tongue and maddeningly just out of our reach. The harder we try to remember, the more the data escapes us. Yet, the minute we walk away, the information often comes flooding back to our conscious awareness. We see this when we try to find an object we misplaced as well. The harder we try to remember where we last placed it, the more elusive the memory becomes. Only when we give up does the memory finally float back up to the surface of our mind.
There is a physiological explanation for this. As we stress, tense and intensify our efforts, our body restricts internally. Our muscles, tendons, tissues squeeze under the mental, physical or emotional pressure. Blood vessels constrict, thereby restricting blood flow to the brain. When we are under stress, cortisol levels increase. Cortisol is a steroid hormone produced by the brain and released in the body under stress, fear, tension, anxiety. Intially, in our Neanderthal times, this psycho-physiological response enabled us to bolt and run, giving us our best chance to escape predators or imminent danger. In our day and age, we produce high levels of cortisol in response to various non-life-threatening stressors and tend to function for long periods of times under sustained stress.
High levels of cortisol produce all of the things we don’t want: accelerated aging, aches and pains in the body, immune system deficiency and yes, mental deficiency as well. As a friend and colleague stated recently, while on stage during a presentation in his capacity as Adjunct Professor of Psychology: “Basically, the more stressed we are, the stupider we become.”
Memory Recovery
The process of hypnosis allows us to reverse the effects of stress on the body and mind. In the state of hypnosis, as the entire body soften, our flesh, tissues, tendons and muscles finally relax. Blood vessels loosen up. Our blood is able to resume flowing easily, fluidly and effortlessly through our entire system, flooding the brain with vital oxygen, essential for proper functioning, and nourishing our internal organs with nutrients. Our immune system is boosted. Most importantly in the matter of data recovery, our clarity of mind is vastly enhanced.
According to Senior Special Agent John Kilnapp of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, hypnosis may be the only way to recover the details of a traumatic event crime victims blocked out of their mind. Electroencephalogram and functional MRI studies of the brain before, during and after hypnosis demonstrate the chemical and hormonal changes taking place in the brain during hypnosis. As cortisol levels drop significantly, they are replaced by a boost in endorphins, dopamine and norepinephrins. This produces enhanced focus and attention, higher levels of mental clarity, better brain functioning and superior memory capabilities.
This is why we are consistently able to recover key missing information when we place victims or witnesses of traumatic events in this profoundly restorative state. Hypnosis is an ideal state for synthetic thought and creativity, functions of the right brain hemisphere. The state places us in an optimal condition to remember facts and data, memorize languages, analyze complex situations, all of which in a state of profoundly restorative calm.
Emotional Balance
In addition to enabling the recovery of determining information, hypnosis allows us to address the secondary effects left behind by trauma, enabling us to restore the emotional balance, stability and peace of mind of those we work with.
We work in collaboration with your medical team. A physician’s authorization is required, prior to initiating work on medical conditions (this includes weight management). Your physician’s authorization is not needed for the initial consultation. We will contact your medical team after your intial consultation and coordinate with them directly.
Punctuality
Medical Coordination
In November 2016, the subject, a 5’5”, 100 lbs. woman in her 30s, was invited for dinner to the home of a man she had recently resumed seeing. She had met the unemployed 49 year-old the previous summer. Her initial lack of interest was met by his whirlwind attempts to win her over. It ended abruptly in August, when she accepted to meet him at his residence and found herself brutally pinned, face down, both wrists trapped in one of his hands, while he assaulted her with his other hand, deaf and oblivious to her repeated pleads he was hurting her. She interrupted all contacts with him. Months later, the 49 year-old resumed his romantic attempts to win her over, stressing what had happened over the summer was a misunderstanding, and ensuring he never meant to harm her. For weeks, he worked relentlessly at regaining her trust, until she eventually accepted to visit him again.
The medical, police and forensic teams that responded to her in the following days, examining her, taking photos of the bruising and documenting the facts, were adamant. The partial consumption of a glass of red wine is unlikely to produce symptoms of this severity within 15 minutes of sipping it. Even in cases of alcohol intoxication, the reasonable question that follows is who would disrobe and have sex for the first time with a partner whose judgment is impaired and who might even be unconscious. The combination of the complete amnesia of an eight-hour block of time and total anesthesia from all physical sensations she experienced indicates a likely benzodiazepines poisoning, a medical emergency that could have proved lethal for the 100 lbs. woman without previous exposure to synthetic drugs or sedatives.
Genvièv Martin-Bernard, President of the Oregon Hypnotherapy Association, is Board Certified and a Certified Instructor with the NGH, a Valedictorian from the Ivy League Sorbonne University of Paris, and an Emergency Medicine First Responder with the Wilderness Medicine Institute. She has decades of experience researching, practicing, and teaching the concepts and applications of working with brain plasticity and forensic hypnosis in the U.S. and overseas. With specialized training in forensic discovery, and years of expertise in the legal field, she acted as a communication liaison in complex and critical situations, including duties for the Department of Homeland Security and the US Court System.
A straight-A student through the course of her youth, she never worried about exams and succeeded effortlessly until she suddenly became plagued by acute anxiety shortly after starting medical school. She couldn’t comprehend what caused such radical shift in her abilities and performance. Her symptoms were so severe, she experienced debilitating panic attacks during examinations, paralyzing her capabilities and rendering her unable to think, process the information and perform appropriately.
Once the root cause is unveiled, in a state of hypnosis, we are able to analyze the situation in a logical manner, with a clear, detached frame of mind, freed from the confusion of unnecessary emotions. We are able to reflect upon the fact the professor did not know her personally, was not aware of her lifelong academic track of excellence and therefore had no way of knowing whether or not she had the ability to excel in this field. There is no logical reason for a bright student, who always excelled in her studies, to suddenly lose the ability to continue excelling in her field of choice. Having no personal knowledge of this student, the Professor’s comments could have just as well been brought on by her own self-doubts, inner-fears or preconceived limitations. This student having excelled effortlessly throughout the course of her education had long demonstrated the ability of her mind to comprehend, memorize and put courses into proper application. Analyzing imprints at the subconscious level of the mind, while in a state of hypnosis, enables us to delete the negative programming left behind by authority figures, restore our self-image and renew our original potential.
She attended her anticipated Board Exam the following week, for the third year in a row. This time, she passed with flying colors. The root cause unlocked, shifted and released, the paralyzing panic and anxiety, which had plagued her since medical school and caused her to fail two years in a row, were permanently disconnected. The exam techniques enabled her, she reported later, to prioritize her responses efficiently and make excellent use of her time in a calm, focused and goal-oriented manner. She completed her morning session with one and a half hour to spare and her afternoon session one hour early.
A week later, coming back for his follow-up visit, he beamed: “The problem is completely resolved. The change is miraculous. And it’s not merely the procrastination that has disappeared. My attitude, the way I’ve been interacting with my family, and others around me … everything has changed. My wife even asked me if I was the same person!”
Symptoms
Our emotions are there for a reason. They act as a flag, a signal, letting us know a specific wound below the surface needs to be understood, addressed and resolved. 
On the other hand, someone whose sense of self-worth was shattered during the identity development phase of their life, tends to rely on the relationships they have with others to fill the gaping void left behind by the lack or absence of self-worth they acquired in early life. In this case, when the relationship ends, the early childhood wounds of despair, abandon, betrayal and terror are reopened and compounded. The fractures left behind, having never been mended, are re-triggered.
Anxiety, depression, acute stress, survivor guilt, sleep disorders and 
Any event involving a threat to our life, our safety, our physical body or emotional well being can lead to emotional and psychological trauma. Life-altering events such as accidents, physical or psychological attacks and abuse, natural disasters, battling with a life-threatening illness, surgeries, the loss of a loved one, either through death or a breakup, severe injuries, as well as life experiences that left us feeling humiliated or deeply disappointed, can all lead to post-traumamic symptoms. Trauma does not always have to involve physical harm. Any experience that left someone feeling frightened and helpless can lead to post-traumatic sequels. The deeper the sense of fright and vulnerability experienced, the more likely the sequels will be.
When we are faced with intense physical harm, fear or terror we are unable to avoid, escape or shield ourselves from, our central nervous system can respond with a self-protective mechanism called peritraumatic dissociation. In a state of dissocation, we find ourselves disconnected from our physical and emotional responses. We are no longer able to feel pain, shed tears, access or express emotions or interact with others.
While most therapeutic methods work at the conscious level of the mind, the power of