While regressing to the causes of psychological and psychosomatic problems, we sometimes find chronic adverse conditions, rather than specific traumas. These cases call for a somewhat different treatment - as instructions to relive the adverse conditions can actually worsen the symptoms.

Hans TenDam discovered the difference between traumas and hangovers from patients who did not respond well to normal trauma techniques. This distinction between traumas and hangovers seems not to have been appreciated in the literature on regression therapy, with the exception of Brian Weiss (Many Lives, Many Masters).

Dying from starvation is different from being always hungry. Cold may be traumatic after you have been assaulted, injured, and then left behind in a wood; you have pain, you are cold. But that is different from always being insufficiently dressed in a cool climate. A trauma begins and ends at a specific moment. It is a precise episode, charged with negative emotions, in which the ego collapses. A hangover comes from a situation that caused a more general kind of misery. The ego is pinched off and diminished, like a bonsai. It is almost stagnated by long weariness, pressure, despondency and depression. Fear, anger and grief are intense, acute emotions, but boredom, weariness and depression are chronic and diffuse. They do not produce a trauma, a wound, but rather a hangover, a dead weight, a "dirt skirt."

Hangovers grow gradually. They have chronic, not acute, causes. It is as if we are invaded by mist or grit or dust or dirt---or by something sticky or slimy. A hangover clings to us like a mental dirt skirt. The basic charges in many traumas are pain and fear. Basic charges in most hangovers are impotence and weariness. The tenacious, amorphous character of a hangover poses a problem for therapists. Patients often remain stuck in the reliving. We have to tug harder, the catharsis is slower. The hangover of the incarnate state is especially strong if we become old and tired after a life of toil. A good death is the greatest catharsis. A good sleep refreshes and nothing refreshes like a good death. But just as we sometimes wake up in the morning feeling broken, so sometimes we come into a new life with much of the old life still weighing down on us.

Hans will explain the concept, give examples from practice and do a group session. He will then give a few, possibly short individual sessions to demonstrate his way of working. There will be ample opportunity for Q and A.

Hans TenDam imitated the “Dutch school” of regression therapy. The author of “Exploring Reincarnation” and “Deep Healing: a Practical Outline of Past-Life Therapy”, he is currently directing Tasso’s 3-year training programme in regression and past-life therapy in the Netherlands. He organised the First World Congress for Regression and Past-Life Therapy. He is a Life Member of the International Association of Regression Research and Therapies, and a Founding Member and Honorary Member of the Brazilian Association, and is on the Advisory Board of the International Board of Regression Therapy.