Look Into My Eyes
It was New Year’s Day. A good day for a new start, surely. I woke early and listened to a hypnosis MP3 I’d downloaded from the internet. This was my fi rst experience of hypnosis. The closest I’d come before was at university when my friends went to see a stage hypnotist but I went out on a date. If I’d not been in pursuit of romance I might have started this profound journey of self-realisation two decades earlier. The sad thing is, if I had my time over, I’d probably do the same again.
I was driven to the MP3 by my bird phobia. Let’s look at that language. My bird phobia. I could have said ‘I didn’t like birds much’ but no. I owned it, as evidenced by the word ‘My’. And it was definitely a ‘phobia’. That gave it status. The NHS claims that 10 million of u s in the UK have a phobia. How on earth they work that out is a little hazy, but there’s no doubt that fear is big business.
I don’t know how mine got started. When I was eight years old, arriving at a holiday cottage with my family, I ran into the sitting room and there was a small bird trapped inside. It went crazy and flew in my face. I was upset, of course, but every time I told that story in the years that followed, I wasn’t sure it was enough to have triggered off this huge legacy of panic.
There are so many stories of me compromising my life to my fear; never eating outside, not being able to go into a building because a bird was loitering in the doorway. That time I was alone on a Circle Line train leaving Edgware Road. Just as the doors were closing a pigeon hopped on. I didn’t cope. Paddington was light years away. The pigeon was oblivious. I was deranged.
I had asked my psychotherapist to help me with this fear. She would say, ‘I wonder what the bird represents? Is it your parents? Is it me? Is it your nihilism?’ She thought it was my super-ego that was trapped and unable to fly. I said I just wanted to go on a picnic without crying.
I don’t know where I got the idea to download the self-hypnosis MP3. It was cheap and less of a commitment than paying to see someone. I didn’t think hypnosis was much more than a joke but I knew something had to be done. So, while sceptical, and with the rest of the household asleep, I listened. I remember having a lot of negative thoughts in my head: ‘How embarrassing is this voice-over? How pointless will this entire exercise turn out to be?’
Before the hypnosis started the voice said, ‘There are thousands of people walking down every street who used to be afraid of birds.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll become one of them then.’ I had never role-modelled being okay before. Our culture celebrates people who elevate dysfunction into art. But a positive role model? I didn’t even know who that would be.
The hypnotic session strengthened my resolve to not be afraid of birds. It melted away and dissolved the fear that I would feel so much panic, the world wouldn’t be big enough for my pain. I could feel it working. I could feel myself letting go of the panic that I made habit. The mysterious aspect of the hypnotic process allowed me to see beyond the pain that is involved in letting go of pain. And it was so easy. I became someone who used to be afraid of birds. It really was that simple.
Later that day I walked into a throng of pigeons on the canal towpath and they got out of my way. They didn’t hate me. They weren’t trying to ruin my day. They were smelly and a little bit disgusting and they fl apped in a way I didn’t like but I didn’t panic.
Because I’m the kind of person who overthinks things, my head started to run away with itself. So I overreacted, and three years later I qualified as a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist.
I put that knowledge, together with my training in stage hypnosis, and the research I did while being the artist in residence at the British Library, into creating a new stage show, The Singing Hypnotist. He sings the audience into a hypnotic trance.
The core of the show, and my book, Overpowered! The Science And Showbiz Of Hypnosis, go back to that moment, listening to the MP3 and embracing the possibility of change. Friends had a hard time adjusting to the fact that I was no longer afraid of birds. We can be held back by the protection of those who love us. But one went the other way and suggested I celebrate my lack of bird phobia by having my photo taken covered in birds in Trafalgar Square. ‘Do you want to join me?’ I asked. ‘God, no!’ she replied. ‘They are disease-ridden, dirty vermin.’ So I didn’t do it. I’m not bird phobic any more but I’m not an idiot either.
Overpowered! The Science And Showbiz Of Hypnosis, by Christopher Green, is published by the British Library, priced £14.99.
I was driven to the MP3 by my bird phobia. Let’s look at that language. My bird phobia. I could have said ‘I didn’t like birds much’ but no. I owned it, as evidenced by the word ‘My’. And it was definitely a ‘phobia’. That gave it status. The NHS claims that 10 million of u s in the UK have a phobia. How on earth they work that out is a little hazy, but there’s no doubt that fear is big business.
I don’t know how mine got started. When I was eight years old, arriving at a holiday cottage with my family, I ran into the sitting room and there was a small bird trapped inside. It went crazy and flew in my face. I was upset, of course, but every time I told that story in the years that followed, I wasn’t sure it was enough to have triggered off this huge legacy of panic.
There are so many stories of me compromising my life to my fear; never eating outside, not being able to go into a building because a bird was loitering in the doorway. That time I was alone on a Circle Line train leaving Edgware Road. Just as the doors were closing a pigeon hopped on. I didn’t cope. Paddington was light years away. The pigeon was oblivious. I was deranged.
I had asked my psychotherapist to help me with this fear. She would say, ‘I wonder what the bird represents? Is it your parents? Is it me? Is it your nihilism?’ She thought it was my super-ego that was trapped and unable to fly. I said I just wanted to go on a picnic without crying.
I don’t know where I got the idea to download the self-hypnosis MP3. It was cheap and less of a commitment than paying to see someone. I didn’t think hypnosis was much more than a joke but I knew something had to be done. So, while sceptical, and with the rest of the household asleep, I listened. I remember having a lot of negative thoughts in my head: ‘How embarrassing is this voice-over? How pointless will this entire exercise turn out to be?’
Before the hypnosis started the voice said, ‘There are thousands of people walking down every street who used to be afraid of birds.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll become one of them then.’ I had never role-modelled being okay before. Our culture celebrates people who elevate dysfunction into art. But a positive role model? I didn’t even know who that would be.
The hypnotic session strengthened my resolve to not be afraid of birds. It melted away and dissolved the fear that I would feel so much panic, the world wouldn’t be big enough for my pain. I could feel it working. I could feel myself letting go of the panic that I made habit. The mysterious aspect of the hypnotic process allowed me to see beyond the pain that is involved in letting go of pain. And it was so easy. I became someone who used to be afraid of birds. It really was that simple.
Later that day I walked into a throng of pigeons on the canal towpath and they got out of my way. They didn’t hate me. They weren’t trying to ruin my day. They were smelly and a little bit disgusting and they fl apped in a way I didn’t like but I didn’t panic.
Because I’m the kind of person who overthinks things, my head started to run away with itself. So I overreacted, and three years later I qualified as a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist.
I put that knowledge, together with my training in stage hypnosis, and the research I did while being the artist in residence at the British Library, into creating a new stage show, The Singing Hypnotist. He sings the audience into a hypnotic trance.
The core of the show, and my book, Overpowered! The Science And Showbiz Of Hypnosis, go back to that moment, listening to the MP3 and embracing the possibility of change. Friends had a hard time adjusting to the fact that I was no longer afraid of birds. We can be held back by the protection of those who love us. But one went the other way and suggested I celebrate my lack of bird phobia by having my photo taken covered in birds in Trafalgar Square. ‘Do you want to join me?’ I asked. ‘God, no!’ she replied. ‘They are disease-ridden, dirty vermin.’ So I didn’t do it. I’m not bird phobic any more but I’m not an idiot either.
Overpowered! The Science And Showbiz Of Hypnosis, by Christopher Green, is published by the British Library, priced £14.99.