Blood - Diary Of A Hypnotherapist

‘I’ll pay whatever you ask, you have to help me.’ A distraught Aileen begged, tears

trickling to her chin. I signalled gently with my arm for her to take a seat and nudged the

 box of tissues closer to her. Taking a gentle deep breath in and out, I sat down on my

 slightly more comfortable and marginally higher chair. Not wanting to break her flow,

 and in the hope that she might be able to give me some insight as to why she was in my

 office at 10.30 on a Wednesday morning, I tilted my head a few degrees to the side and smiled encouragingly.

‘The thing is, I can’t even say the word, when I hear it, I feel faint and have to sit down. If I

read it my eyes blur, I even have to order my steak well done and I can’t bear it if

someone nearby orders theirs rare, just imagining it …’

Finally, I was beginning to understand, we were here to deal with the fear of blood. Many people react to the sight of blood but Aileen’s reaction was phobic although luckily, with its very own words to describe it, I plumped for hematophobia, just to up the syllables. I was aware that unusually for a phobia, a hemataophobia  often triggered a strong vasovagal response, hence the fainting problem.

 A part of me was a little jarred. Blood wasn’t really my thing either, not a phobic response just not completely processed life events. Most recently, a loved one surviving blood cancer.  As a child, a supper of liver oozing blood when sliced. The goriest one, an experience of blooded footprints squished into the stair carpet that would never come out.

Mum had bled to death in her sleep. Some deaths are like that, just messier than others. Liver disease and varices, a pathway to heaven or hell for her. For me, a revolting mess to sort out once the paramedics and police had left. That night, I discovered the hard way that Police regularly attend the scene of a death at home, even when the person is ancient, unwell, and has probably died from natural causes. Unless someone is under the care of the hospice and all the relevant authorities have an expectation of an imminent demise, blues and twos arrive to inspect and question and report, even before the sun rises.

Of her optimum five or more litres of blood, Mum’s 90-year-old body had expelled just over two. The waterproof mattress cover had facilitated the runoff to the laminate floor until it even trickled under the door and was sucked into the beige hall carpet. As I had turned at the top of the stairs, it had looked like the opening shots of a bad movie.

 I’d finally finished binge-watching six episodes of the latest Netflix detective hit and made my way upstairs, soon after two in the morning. The last time I’d seen Mum was at supper at six. We’d fallen out, again. I had been relieved to see the back of her as she tottered to her room, sherry glass in hand.

 Truth be told, I’d handed it to her and suggested she finish it, just as she had every night for three months. A quick Google of fatty liver disease had revealed to her, that the swiftest pathway out of the world would be via the bottle. She’d been ready to leave, for me not so much, it was mostly a bloody mess to sort out physically, financially, emotionally.  I made myself pay attention.

‘But the thing is, yesterday, we were at the park, and he ran and fell over and scraped his

knee, and it oozed and he screamed and I…’

Overcome by emotion, Aileen rocked in her chair her face crumpling as she

disappeared inside herself.

‘ Aileen, let me pour you some water’   I was using her name to bring her back into the

moment, bolstered by the distraction of the action of pouring the water. I nodded

toward the glass and with a shaking hand, she took a sip, ‘Thank you’

‘You’re welcome.’ It was important to the process for Aileen to come back from a

distressed state triggered by discussing her phobia. At this stage it was also important

for me not to use the word that she couldn’t bear to hear.

‘He’s only three,’ she wailed, ‘I’m a terrible mother, he’s the one, you know, injured…and

I’m the one passing out practically, and struggling and ‘

‘Aah…’ I interrupt again,’ well that’s promising’

What’s promising? Aileen looked up with irritation.

‘Well, your mothering instincts are obviously stronger than your phobic instincts’ I knew

I was taking a chance with this approach, but I had an inkling it would be worth it. ‘You,

didn’t pass out, you did what a good mother would do, you rose above the situation,

what did you do next?’ I asked with mildly feigned, enrapt attention. With a client, one

can’t actually be enrapt; observation must remain.

‘I gagged and cried a bit and tied a scarf around his knee and took him to my Mum’s

around the corner, I couldn’t even help him properly! I’m so annoyed with myself and

well I didn’t know what to do, but I thought of you and just kind of hoped you could sort

me out again. Can you help me please?’

‘You have already helped yourself , Aileen, just by reaching out, and that anger you are

feeling at yourself, you can use that. Now, you know the score for relaxing don’t you, come on

breathe with me now just like before…deep breath in, all the way to your tummy , that’s

right, hold 2,3 and breath out 1,2 3, that’s right, and again….that’s it hand on your

tummy and feel your tummy push out against it , that’s it…and breathe out 2,3, 4 , ….’

Matching her breathing, sensing her drop back into homeostasis, normality. ‘There we

go, ‘  I was aware that Aileen had been a very responsive client to work with in the past.

Always preferring a piecemeal approach to therapy to manage her current peak issue

rather than a planned sequential series of appointments. This was also an opportunity

though, to help her utilise the tools already at her disposal to manage how she was

once again knocking herself down when she was one of the few brave enough to

confront their own fears and take action.  Aileen was practical rather than intellectual in

her approach to life and thrived on supportive routines, as well as being very

susceptible to hypnosis.

We established that there was no particular triggering event that she was aware of and

that we would use the word phobia, fear and hematophobia  and its derivatives, when

referencing the reason for her visit; her response to blood. Therapy goals were set; to be

able to use the word blood in many ways, without experiencing a phobic response, to

tolerate the sight of blood without feeling faint or gagging, and finally to be able to touch

blood or at least clean it up as appropriate, with the test being Aileen able to feel confident as a mother to manage her sons scrapes in the playground.

Many phobias can be released quiet safely and quickly in a single appointment, but not

all of these outcomes could be measured in a chair in an office with ease. Without a

single triggering event a more subtle approach was needed.

We began with release. Years previously I had spent several weeks in Arizona working

with the current scholastic head of The Sedona Method. It’s simple. I placed a pencil in  

Aileens hand and one in mine and asked her to like me grip it as tightly as she could.

Tighter still, and then, to let go of the tension. As expected, she let go in a hurry, with

vigour, almost flinging her pencil to the floor. An example of what can happen when we

put energy into pushing our fear away, adding energy to fear.

 I gently released the tension in my grip and the pencil lay in my hand. Blood in a way

was her pencil, her fear of her fear, feeding her phobia. I made a mental note to do some

inner work myself to finally release my mother’s quiet yet gory passing from life to death.

We talked about letting go of fear without effort, in the moment, fear of fainting, fear of

embarrassment, fear of not being enough, fear of being a bad mother. We talked of

using interruption, a mental STOP, to give us time. Time to breathe and release, time to

groove in an alternative emotion-based response to the idea of what an event means.

Time to bypass a physical response to fear.

 And then I began to tell her a story, just like this, close your eyes now, as you listen to

my voice, that’s right, as you begin to breathe deeply, Now. Just releasing all tension on

that outward breath…