I’m blogging today from the Sorrentine peninsula.
Esteemed people and peasants alike have come here throughout history and marvelled at the beauty of this place.
I don’t blame them. It’s hard to feel anything but rested, relaxed and contented here. Regardless that a prawn cocktail costs €12 – about ten quid.
I’m staying at the Hotel Tramontano, the same place I stay every year. This this time around though, one element of my experience here, – my ‘balcony time’ is very different from last year’s.
I need to explain something first before I tell you why, so I don’t come over as some massochistic freak.
I’m a the Hypnotherapist over at West Essex Hypnotherapy and as such, work with people to help them treat the condition they present me with. Often this is a phobia or anxiety such as vertigo or a fear of heights or high / open places.
So here’s the weird thing I did.
For the purposes of personal research and gaining better insight into understanding the structure of this problem I gave myself (or ‘installed’ into myself to use the NLP jargon) this phobic response.
Actually it wasn’t as strong as a phobia, I couldn’t manage that, probably because I wasn’t prepared to give myself such a strong and uncomfortable reference experience on my holiday. The prospect of dangling myself over the fourth floor of a balcony railing of a cliff-side hotel is not the stuff that happy holidays are made of, research or no. So while I didn’t engage the hard-wired fight or flight response (the underpinnings of a phobia), I did manage to drive myself batshit with anxiety-inducing thoughts and behaviour. I’ll spare you what those are for the sake of the safety of you, the reader.
Needless to say I had a fairly crummy time anywhere near a balcony last year.
Anxiety does work brilliantly, when practiced and compounded on a regular basis.
What the hell do I mean by this?
Well, as a general rule of thumb, you become good at what you do repeatedly. Anxiety can sometimes start as just insignificant passing thoughts. Sometimes there’s a consciously significant reference experience, sometimes not. It’s when a pattern that has been pieced together in your brain is ‘released’ out of the black box that you’re able to start paying attention to it and thereby, give power to the negative thoughts and in turn feel anxious about them.
The more you think those anxiety inducing thoughts the more they’re compounded.
Indeed a vicious cycle.
So how did I get rid of the condition I deliberately gave myself?
I self applied exactly what I do with Hypnotherapy clients who come and see me for help, namely a combination of Hypnosis, NLP and Integral Eye Movement Therapy (IEMT).
Thankfully this treatment works wonderfully too.
So there’s balance in the universe and all that.
Back to my balcony for a sunkissed nap then.