Facing Some Fears | An Update
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So, if you've read that last post you'll know that the main objective of my hypnotism sessions were to get me to a point where the normal, routine scans and pretty much any needle based procedures that i'm going to have to have in the future, aren't as much of a trauma as they have been up until now. Effectively, we wanted to get me to a point where I could have them at all, without cancelling, without completely freaking out and without it descending into it's usual chaos. The second bit was to try and get my anxiety and panic attacks a bit more under control as they were beginning to have a much bigger impact on my life than I would have liked them to have and in a lot of ways, taking over my life entirely.
So, a few weeks later and weekly sessions have turned into fortnightly sessions. Thats the first good bit. The second good thing is the fact that my daily panic attacks have reduced dramatically. I'm dealing much better with things, i'm not having absolute meltdowns about the tiniest of things and most importantly, i'm not having panic attacks on a daily basis. In fact, at last count, I was nearly a month completely free of panic attacks. Thats not to say that I don't still suffer from anxiety, but i'm finding the anxiety I do get a lot more easy to get a handle on and it's not leading to full scale attacks. To say that it's a huge weight off of my shoulders is an understatement.
In terms of my needle phobia, we've been doing work around Rapid Eye Movement, and basically, working through a particular traumatic experience involving needles from when I was much, much younger (which it turns out we think was probably the root cause of all of this...) and reprocessing my brain to think in a different way about it. Like my hypnotist said, it's almost like giving my brain a re-boot. It's really quite draining, both mentally and physically on my eyes, obviously going over and over an experience that you've tried to block out for the best part of 16 years is tricky at best but we finally seem to be getting somewhere. We've been using a scale, with 0 being no anxiety at all and 10 being hugely anxious when working through the process of the remembered experience and where we started with me being about 9/10 we're now down to about 5/6 - so, a huge improvement. I even managed to look briefly at a needle on the TV the other day, which as anyone close to me will know is a huge step in the right direction and is going to make my family and friends lives so much easier as they might not have to be on edge constantly, ready to warn me when theres a needle coming up and when it's gone again. Progress.
We're even at a point now where actually getting the ball rolling on getting a date for a scan is in the pipeline. I felt like I needed something tangible to work towards and for the first time in over a decade and a half I feel like I might actually be able to do this. Like my hypnotist has said, this isn't magic and it's not miracle work, i'm never going to be ok with needles and thats totally ok. All we're trying to do is get me to a point where I can control my anxiety and my fear enough to be able to go through with what is in effect a 5/10 minute process. My hypnotist has been amazing, truly. As someone who is synonymous with my doctors as being hugely sceptical about anything vaguely counciling or hypnotism based (believe me, i've been through A LOT of mental health professionals over the years and done a lot of storming out... ) many people are just pleased that i'm yet to dismiss this all and carry on as I was in my little scared Sophie-bubble. To be totally honest, I'm pleased with myself and i'm happy that I get on so well with my hypnotist as it's been so helpful so far.
So thats my little update, I hope some of you are finding this useful. I really have changed my mind about hypnotism quite dramatically and really do think it could be something to pursue, certainly if like me you have anxiety or panic attacks because i've seen such a huge difference and i'm much happier for it. Give it a go, it really might help.
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