Sorting Out Childhood Memories of Trauma

Question
I am a 24-year old woman. I have a strange childhood memory and would like to find out more about it, like if it is true, or I just imagined it. I have had some very traumatizing things happen to me, which I cannot fully remember, and I was wondering if hypnosis could help me. I feel these problems are the root of other problems that I have in every day relationships, and how I feel about myself.

Answer
Hypnosis can be very helpful in releasing memories of long ago. You have within you all of the events that have ever happened to you. Most of them are not remembered because they aren't important. But there can be memories that are of such a nature as to cause extreme discomfort. For some people, it seems easier to "forget" them than to deal with them. However, I feel that dealing with them is the best way to have them cease being some problem to you as an adult. It is important, in dealing with memories, to have a skilled counseling hypnotherapist who knows how to ask very non-directive or non-suggestive questions that will elicit real memories, rather than possibly creating unreal ones. The imagination is strong. When you're young, you may have an event happen directly to you, or you may observe something that makes you "feel" it has happened to you. A good hypnotherapist, especially one also skilled in counseling, can help you sort out what is real from the unreal.