Most people who contact me first discovered regression therapy through Brian Weiss, Michael Newton, or Dolores Cannon, or via podcasts, documentaries, or conversations with friends who described meaningful experiences. By the time they reach my office, they are rarely asking whether regression therapy exists. They are asking a different question: “Is this the right next step for me?”
These are the seven conversations we usually have before deciding whether to move forward.
Regression Therapy Is Not About the Past
One of the most common misconceptions about regression therapy is that its purpose is to recover the past. In my experience, that is rarely why people seek it, and even less often where the real therapeutic value lies.
Whether someone experiences memories from this lifetime, symbolic narratives, or what they believe to be past lives, my clinical focus remains the same: Why has this experience emerged now?
Regression therapy is not an escape from the present. It is another way of approaching it.
Many people arrive after years of psychotherapy with greater insight into their lives. They understand their childhood. They recognize familiar relationship patterns. They know why they react the way they do. Yet something remains unchanged. The same fears return. The same relationship dynamics repeat themselves. Grief lingers. Emotional reactions continue to feel disproportionate. A persistent sense of being “stuck” refuses to yield to insight alone.
That is often when people become curious about regression therapy. Some come because they are struggling with recurring relationship patterns. Others because of irrational fears or phobias, unfinished grief, recurring dreams, identity questions, unremitting behaviors, or a longing for meaning that feels difficult to articulate. Regression therapy does not replace psychotherapy. At its best, it deepens it.
The question is rarely, “What happened then?” The more important question is, “What continues to live inside you now?”
Age Regression, Past Life Regression, and Life Between Lives Are Not the Same Thing
The term regression therapy is often used as though it describes one technique. It doesn’t. Rather, it serves as an umbrella term for several distinct therapeutic approaches, each with a different focus.
Age regression explores emotionally significant experiences from your current lifetime. Sometimes these are memories that have been forgotten or minimized. More often, they are experiences that have never been fully processed emotionally and continue to influence present-day thoughts, relationships, or behaviors.
Past life regression (PLRT) involves experiences that some people understand as memories from previous lifetimes and others experience as symbolic narratives arising from the unconscious. Regardless of how they are interpreted, the therapeutic value lies less in proving where the experience came from than in exploring why it emerged and what it may reveal.
Life Between Lives (LBL) focuses on what some individuals describe as the period between incarnations. These sessions often center on questions of purpose, significant relationships, life lessons, grief, forgiveness, or a broader sense of meaning.
Although these approaches differ, they share an important goal: creating a state in which deeper emotional material can emerge and be explored thoughtfully rather than analyzed intellectually.
I do not begin with assumptions about what someone should experience. There is no script, no predetermined destination, and no expectation that everyone will have a past life experience. Each person’s unconscious unfolds differently. Some people revisit childhood experiences. Others experience symbolic imagery. Some describe what they believe are past lives or Life Between Lives. Others do not. My role is not to determine which experience is “correct.” It is to help you make thoughtful use of whatever emerges.
Why Choosing the Right Therapist Matters More Than the Technique
Many practitioners are highly skilled at helping people enter a hypnotic state. My work begins long before hypnosis ever does.
As a psychologist, I am less interested in whether someone can experience a regression than in whether regression therapy is the right intervention for that particular person at that particular point in their life.
Whether someone comes specifically seeking regression therapy or we arrive there through the course of psychotherapy, my clinical thinking is informed by psychoanalytic/psychodynamic psychotherapy, attachment theory, trauma treatment, EMDR, and nearly four decades of listening to how people organize emotion, relationships, loss, identity, and the unconscious. Regression is not practiced in isolation. It becomes one of several therapeutic tools that may help access emotional material that has remained outside ordinary awareness. The technique matters. The clinical framework matters even more.
Preparation Matters
One of the biggest differences in my approach is that the work begins well before the regression session itself.
Unlike many regression practices, I require two consultation sessions before we decide whether to move forward. One may be conducted by Zoom for those traveling or living outside the area.
These consultations are more than an intake. They allow us to explore your history, clarify your goals, discuss expectations, and determine whether regression therapy is the right approach for you at this point in your life.
They establish the therapeutic foundation for the work ahead. In my experience, the quality of the preparation often shapes the quality of the experience.
Careful preparation is not a formality. It is part of the therapy.
Not Everyone Is a Good Candidate
One of the most common misconceptions about regression therapy is that anyone who is curious should experience it. I don’t believe that. Regression therapy asks people to engage deeply with emotional material that may be unfamiliar, symbolic, and, at times, profoundly moving. For that reason, curiosity alone is not enough. Psychological readiness matters.
In general, the people who benefit most are emotionally stable, psychologically minded, interested in self-exploration, and able to tolerate uncertainty without needing immediate answers. They are curious rather than seeking certainty, open rather than rigid, and interested in discovery rather than proof.
Regression therapy is generally not appropriate for individuals experiencing active psychosis, severe dissociation without adequate stabilization, acute substance dependence, or for those hoping regression will provide certainty, prove reincarnation, or tell them what to believe.
Perhaps the most important quality is the willingness to remain curious.
Some experiences may feel deeply familiar. Others may seem symbolic. Some may challenge the way you think about yourself altogether. The goal is not certainty.
It is openness to whatever emerges and a willingness to explore its meaning thoughtfully and responsibly.
What Will I Experience?
One of the questions I hear most often is, “What will I experience?” The honest answer is that neither of us knows. No two regression sessions unfold in exactly the same way because no two people arrive with the same history, emotional landscape, or therapeutic goals.
Some people revisit childhood experiences. Others encounter symbolic imagery, recurring emotional themes, or what they experience as past lives or Life Between Lives. Some sessions are vividly visual. Others are primarily emotional or intuitive. There is no script, no predetermined destination, and no expectation that everyone will have the same type of experience.
The process itself is straightforward. After our consultation work, I guide you through a clinical hypnotic induction and a gradual deepening of attention. From there, the work unfolds naturally rather than being directed toward a predetermined outcome. My role is not to tell you what you are experiencing, but to help you explore whatever emerges with curiosity, psychological depth, and without suggestion.
For many people, the most meaningful part of the experience comes after the regression itself. Together, we reflect on what emerged, consider how it relates to your present life, and determine whether it offers new perspectives on the questions that brought you here in the first place.
The Regression Session Is Only Part of the Work
The regression itself is rarely the treatment. It is the beginning of one. Whether the experience is understood as memory, symbol, past life, or something that resists easy explanation, insight alone rarely creates lasting change.
What matters is what happens afterward. Together, we examine the emotional themes, recurring patterns, relationships, conflicts, and questions that emerged during the experience, not to determine whether they are literally true, but to understand why they matter. Sometimes a regression confirms what a person has long suspected. Sometimes it offers an entirely different perspective. Occasionally, it raises better questions than answers.
My role is not to tell you what to believe. It is to help you make thoughtful use of whatever emerges.
After nearly four decades as a psychologist, I have become less interested in proving and more interested in understanding. Some experiences fit comfortably within what psychology already knows. Others invite curiosity.
Perhaps the better question is not whether regression therapy asks us to believe too much. Perhaps it asks us to remain curious about aspects of human experience we do not yet fully understand.
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To read more about regression therapy, check out this blog post.