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Of course heights is not a bad phobia as they go. heights are
dangerous. They can kill. I know – I nearly died myself in an accident
fifteen years ago. I have therefore convinced myself that I don’t
actually need to see the view from the Duomo in Florence
first-hand. I send my partner up there with a digital camera while I
wait in a nice safe caf? And somebody needs to sit at the bottom
of the Eiffel with everyone’s bags...
But I can’t help feeling I’m missing out. Things reach a head
visiting Alfred’s Tower in Wiltshire, from which one can apparently view
three counties.
“I will do it this time,” I say to myself. “I will feel that fear –
and do it anyway, like the self-help book says…”
Twenty steps up the narrow, uneven spiral staircase, with no
handrail and no idea how high I actually am (about ten feet, I discover
later) I am spread-eagled against the wall, feeling my way down step by
step, my legs shaking and with a lump the size of Portugal in my chest.
Suddenly, the need to do something about my fear becomes urgent.
New Age nonsense?
I have always been cynical about hypnotherapy. How could someone
intelligent allow someone else to take over their mind? It’s all
New Age nonsense. But in the absence of anything else, I check out
hypnosis sites on the internet, studiously avoiding any beginning “Dear
Friend…”
I try tapes, but feel daft sitting wearing headphones listening to a
cheesy American voice telling me to relaaaax…
I make an appointment with someone who turns out to be a beardy man in a
cardigan who plays wafty New Age music and produces some inexplicable
diagrams.
So it is with advancing cynicism that I knock at the door of
Claire Cox, of Woodberry Stress Management. I am now unconvinced that my
vertigo can be cured, and I’m not sure I even want it to be.
Encouragingly, Cox doesn’t immediately try to put me into a trance
– and even asks if I like New Age music. I expect to snigger at
the sight of a couch, but when she asks if I would like a blanket,
despite the warm summer day, I realise I would.
“There is no set format to how I work,” she says. “I never know
what I’m going to get when someone walks through the door. I take what I
am presented with and we work it out as we go along.”
Going for the “therapy cocktail”
Cox tells me that she draws on many disciplines to create a kind of
‘therapy cocktail’ unique to me.
“We will use hypnotherapy,” she says, “but I would also like
to try some metaphor work. We need to teach your body a new response
system; to override blind panic”.
We discuss what I want to get from the sessions. To me it’s obvious – to
cure my fear. But Cox is keen to whittle this down to something
specific. I realise that I have no intentions of going free-running or
bungee jumping – but I would like to face safe heights “like normal
people”. I decide I would prefer “not to avoid heights”.
We devise a programme of goals – starting small – St Paul’s
Whispering Gallery. If I manage that, I’ll tackle The Monument, which
even people with a head for heights sometimes find daunting. Finally, my
b?e-noir - Alfred’s Tower. Cox asks me how I will feel if I achieve
those goals.
“Proud,” I say dreamily.
NEXT MONTH : Sandra goes for the goals
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