Phobias, Disappointments and Grief: A Fast Remedy. Andrey Ermoshin

      Highwaymen

      Boris was on his way to the countryside when he was falsely accused. As he was changing lanes to the right, he heard a strange noise. It was unclear what exactly happened. A black car, which had been moving behind him, started signalling with its headlights. Boris stopped.

      Two people got out of the car saying that Boris had scratched their vehicle and broken a mirror. Boris got out of his car. He saw a small scratch on their mirror, but it also looked rusty and old. While Boris was talking to one of the men, the other made a couple of steps along the car and made a mark with sandpaper on the side that Boris had allegedly scratched. Boris thought that they must have thrown a plastic bottle at his car earlier, and now they were falsifying the rest of the evidence.

      One against two; both men were wearing black leather jackets and definitely looked like veterans of the Afghan war.

      He tried to phone friends for help but they didn’t pick up. Moreover, Boris was a thirty-minute drive away from the city. He couldn’t even say where he was exactly. Even if anyone could have helped him, that would have taken time.

      Intimidated, Boris made a decision to buy them off. After some negotiation, he paid them $300. His troubles were over, and he was able to continue his trip, but what were the consequences?

      During the psychotherapeutic session Boris feels that some “darkness” has entered through his spine, at the level of kidneys. Something that looked like a saucepan full of dark beetroot soup. It was then when Boris realized that he stopped enjoying going by car to the country.

      In the process of self-regulation Boris let this “dark soup” spill out away from his body. His spine become “whole” again.

      He also created a backup plan for possible similar situations. Should he carry a gun? That would be too much. Should he call the police? Sounds much better. Should he call the authorities or should he just deny all the demands of these racketeers? While Boris was considering his options, he went back to his feelings. In his inner vision toads and crocodiles begin to jump out of his back. These were his fears which he had been accumulating about meeting strangers on the road. Then there were numerous pictures of corpses coming from the back of his head. These were the words of eyewitnesses, coming mainly from TV programmes. During the “tough” nineties in Russia one heard endless stories about highwaymen. Their trick was to use falsified evidence as an excuse to intimidate their victims.

      Closer to the end of the session Boris made a sensible decision:

      “If I ever meet such people again, I will be firm, write down their number plate, call the police and tell them that my insurance will cover it.”

      These words are the evidence of the reverse process: that “dark soup” was pouring out of his kidneys, those “toads and crocodiles” were coming out of his spine, and the “pictures of corpses” were “flying out” from the back of his head.

      After the session Boris felt like a new man.

      1.4. Other ways of working with phobias

      Hypnosis and archaic practices

      Once a woman who was suffering from a fear of planes came to an appointment with the famous hypnosis specialist Milton H. Erickson. The doctor sensitized her for an imaginary flight and made her believe that if she landed safely, her fear would slide off the seat and be gone. When the patient realized that, she jumped up from the seat screaming “It’s contagious!” and wouldn’t let the doctor’s wife, Mrs. Erickson, sit on this seat, trying to protect her from the danger. This is another way of working with phobias. One more example is the practice of “ebbing the fear” which comes from traditional practitioners. They part from the idea that fear goes into the body. Then the healers create a special condition to remove fear from the body. The healer pronounces the spell and pours melted wax into a bowl filled with water that is held above the patient’s head. Both the healer and the patient expect the fear to move to the wax. When the wax solidifies in the water, the form it takes should reveal the real former fear of the patient. For example, if the patient was afraid of dogs, the wax might take the shape of a dog’s face. This also serves as proof for the patient that the fear is gone. When I went to Bashkiria, I learnt how fear was understood in the local shaman practice. During the seminar, there was one participant who was really interested in the customs and traditions of her people. According to her, the moment the person is frightened, he or she loses a part of their good soul, and a dark spirit settles inside.The task of the shaman is to find the lost part of the soul and send away what wrongfully entered the body. I would say it partly looks like what we witness during the psychotherapy sessions. What is the difference then?

      Expecting a miracle

      In the above-mentioned examples a patient is looking forward to the fear moving away, be it sliding on the seat, pouring into the wax or going to the centre of the Earth (which is what shamans in Siberia do). Expectation should trigger some sort of work in the body which will eventually lead to the healing. However, neither hypnotist, nor healers nor shamans tell you how exactly this result is achieved. It is impossible to trace what is hidden in the core of the process. There’s only the expectation of the miracle.

      Both parties, the healer and the patients, hope that liberation will take place. This is an option of “righteous expectation therapy’: if you hope for something positive, it will definitely happen. Nevertheless, the result is not at all guaranteed because the whole process is delegated to the subconscious, and it just cannot do all the work by itself. The patient cannot just play a passive role in this process.