At last, I’m happy again. The dust I kicked up around me aged forty is finally, finally settling. I have moved to a top-floor flat, so there is no zealous German above me performing esoteric crack-of-dawn exercises. There are no rats. No rogue fishermen. I do, however, live above the north London legend that is Sylv, a septuagenarian peroxide and perma-tanned powerhouse who spends nine months of the year in a boob tube.
Sylv’s modus operandi is to greet you with a threat.
‘I’m going to rip your fucking head off if you don’t take them bins out … Morning, darling!’
‘If you don’t wipe your boots when you come in I’ll carve off your ear ’oles and fucking post ’em to you. Now where you been? I’ve missed ya …’
I love Sylv. We keep an eye out for each other. I find her cheap antibiotics on the Internet and she power-hoses journalists off the top step. It’s a perfect symbiotic relationship.
I am now with my new partner, Anna. There’s that old adage: you don’t know how long you’ve been contending with the gloom until someone turns the lights on. Well Anna didn’t just turn the lights on; she brought several spotlights, a couple of flares and a glitter ball for good measure.
She has balls of steel, a heart of gold and a pancreas of pewter (though she’s having an op for that). If you want to know what kind of a person she is, then consider that this is the woman who organized a full-on thirty-strong rounders match in the park, just so I, aged forty-five, could finally know what it’s like to be picked for a team. I’ll always love her for that.
Anna is not only excellent at her television job, she’s also training to be a cognitive hypnotherapist. On the one hand, this is wonderful – I now have a first-hand resource when life is difficult. On the other, it’s a total and utter nightmare. Now every time we have a row, I find myself put in a trance-like daze with my subconscious self being informed that it is a total and utter arsehole. A lot like my conscious self.
After one such row Anna suggested (see also: demanded) I might want to do some timeline regression, a process which involves going back to a difficult past event, amending it, then leaving it well and truly behind. I say she suggested; in truth, I no longer know whether I have anything approaching free will or if everything I do is being subliminally influenced (see also: demanded) by her. Maybe I’ve just become her mind-bitch.
I like hypnotherapy – it works for me. It helped me quit smoking, dulled my tinnitus and calmed my PTSD (gifted to me by that second break-in). These were, however, sessions conducted by qualified healthcare professionals in a dispassionate environment. It’s an entirely different ball game when that professional is
Much as Anna has the makings of an incredible practitioner, she is only halfway through her diploma. At the moment her technique consists of lots of swearing and flicking through manuals, the flow of the therapeutic process slightly jarred by the constant, exasperated, ‘Oh wait, I haven’t done that bit yet.’
Would you let a trainee hairdresser loose on your fringe? Maybe.
Would you let a hobbyist accountant loose on your VAT return? Possibly.
Would you let an unqualified hypnotherapist tinker with the darkest recesses of your mind after doing only half of the required reading? I did.
As part of her studies Anna needed a guinea pig to practise on. And apparently I was it. Our first few sessions together were something of a mixed bag, although they started well enough. It’s fair to say Anna had mastered the art of getting me into a trance state, but was less confident about getting me out of one. In the first session Anna suggested (see also: demanded) that I should examine the feelings I still had for an ex and our excruciatingly painful break-up through a technique known as visual squash.
We settled down on the sofa – me lying prostrate, Anna sitting by my side. As I feel shattered most of the time, the induction bit was easy.
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Anna: |
You are feeling sleeeeeepy … |
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Me: |
Yes, I am … |
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Anna: |
You are feeling nice and relaaaaaaxed … |
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Me: |
Why are you doing that weird voice? |
It has suddenly become soft and silky. And more than a little bit posh.
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Anna: |
Shuuuuut uuuuuup. |
And off I went, down an imaginary flight of steps, each tread sending me deeper and deeper into trance.
I listened to her voice, felt my muscles relax and my bones melt. My body felt like warm syrup in a drawstring bag. If you’ve not experienced it, the hypnotic state is hard to describe – in that moment you are both a particle and a wave, resisting and complying, acquiescing and questioning. A dance between the self you live with and know and the one behind the scenes, pulling the strings, that you don’t.
Anna asked me to imagine the break-up as an object. Immediately I felt my left hand sag with the weight of a large spiky metal ball. She carried on talking. The weight in my arm grew more intense. She carried on talking. I could feel the prickles of the ball digging into my palm. She carried on talking.
And then she stopped.
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Anna: |
Shit! |
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Me: |
[struggling to speak] What’s going on? |
I am still in a dream state but slowly become aware of the frantic flicking of pages in the background.
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Anna: |
Oh God, I think I’ve done it wrong … |
My consciousness scrambles to attention. I sit up, suddenly taut with anxiety, my eyes still closed.
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Me: |
What do you mean ‘done it wrong’? |
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Anna: |
I can’t remember what you do after that. |
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Me: |
What are you talking about!? What … What am I going to do with this?! [I moan, struggling to raise my leaden arm] |
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Anna: |
I don’t know. We haven’t got to that bit yet. |
The imaginary ball feels heavy and cold in my hand.
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Does that mean I am going to have to just carry her around with me? |
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Anna: |
For God’s sake! Yes! Probably! |
Since then I’ve been a weekly guinea pig. Every Sunday night I’ve had sessions in metaphor therapy, positive and negative hallucination, future pacing – all in an effort to stop me, and these are Anna’s words, from being a ‘massive dick’. It got to the stage where I became frightened of the sound of her key in the lock. Until she hypnotized me out of that.
One particular Sunday night Anna came back, the familiar textbook a little more thumbed and nearly completed. This week, I was informed, it was time for the Time Tunnel.
I assumed the position.
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Anna: |
Right, so what would you like to achieve? |
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Me: |
I’d like … Gosh, that’s a big one. Well, I’d like to be more free. More creative. Confident. Socially adept. I’d like a house, if I’m honest. I like the flat, but I’d love a house. I’d like not to be blocked. I’d – |
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Anna: |
Right, Sue – do you want to pick just one? |
[It really is impossible to underestimate how annoying she finds me.]
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Me: |
OK. I’d like to be more creatively free. |
We established that my life’s timeline was above me, running from left to right, like a zip wire. I’m a fairly visual person, so I could see it clearly and it was easy to hop on board. Using this zip wire I could scoot along to points in my past and look down from a position of safety.
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Right, Sue, if you’d like to travel back to a point in time when you feel you are being blocked. |
There’s a nagging itch in my big toe. I can’t move to assuage it. I am too busy, too busy travelling down my own personal zip wire to the past.
And I am there.
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Anna: |
Where are you? |
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Me: |
I’m over my bedroom. |
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Anna: |
How old are you? |
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Me: |
I’m eight. |
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Anna: |
Who’s in the bedroom with you? |
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Me: |
My mum. |
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Anna: |
OK, do you want to go down into the room … |
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Me: |
I’m in the room. |
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Anna: |
Right … |
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Me: |
She’s SO annoying … |
My hands move to my hips and my jaw juts out like a chicken. I am the very model of petulance.
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Anna: |
And what are you talking about? |
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Me: |
I’ve done a project. On the Romans. |
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Anna: |
Right … |
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Me: |
I could do a project on anything I wanted. That’s what the teacher said. So I’ve done it on Roman food. I’ve done a bunch of papier mâché grapes and a papier mâché dormouse. |
There is the sound of a snigger. Both levels of my consciousness choose to ignore it.
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Mum’s saying that it isn’t right. That the perspective isn’t right and that the dormouse is way too big. |
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Anna: |
OK, Sue, listen to my voice. Now let’s try to turn the colour down on the scene … |
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Me: |
Shut up! I’m busy talking to my mum. I am SO angry. I can do a project on anything I want and I want to do it on Roman food and it doesn’t matter that the dormouse is three times the size of a bunch of grapes because I have been told I can do anything I want … |
Fifteen minutes later I am hoarse, arguing with a mother in a tight perm and pink jogging suit who hasn’t existed for thirty-five years. Anna’s interventions are now becoming desperate.
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Anna: |
And now let’s move upwards, can you do that? |
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Me: |
Yes. |
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Anna: |
OK then, let’s go upwards – back to your safe place, and look down on the scene from above. Does that seem better? |
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Me: |
Yes. |
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Anna: |
[palpable relief in her voice] Thank God. |
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Me: |
Oh, hang on – no. |
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Anna: |
Christ! [Now despair] Do you want to go back down? |
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Me: |
Yes. |
And I’m in my childhood bedroom again. Hands on hips, locked in an eternal battle of wills with Ann Perkins.
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Me: |
It doesn’t matter that the grapes are blue! I can do anything I want! I can do anything I want! The teacher said! The grapes could be orange or red or white … |
Another ten minutes pass. I am exhausted and grow quiet. Anna leads me back onto the zip wire and I look down at myself and my mum. I feel calm. Resolved.
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Anna: |
OK, now let’s move along the years. |
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Me: |
Stop! |
We’ve barely moved six months or so.
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Anna: |
[muttering] Give me strength … What is it? How old are you? |
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Me: |
I’m eight and a half. |
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Anna: |
What’s happened? |
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Me: |
I’ve done a project on drums. I can do anything I want, and I’ve chosen drums. She’s saying the snare drum’s too big … |
We never did timeline regression again. Shortly after that Anna stopped using me as a guinea pig and started practising on her friend Lesley. Now she is fully qualified and will be the most amazing therapist. Even better, I no longer have to be the trial-and-error brain she practises on. These days, when we row, I don’t have to spend hours in a trance state – I can just be like everyone else. I can storm off to the pub, have a drink and crawl back later full of regret.
But every so often I get the strangest feeling, like a ball of heavy metal in my left hand, weighing me down.