I want Paul McKenna to cure my fear of flying

I like Paul McKenna. He has good taste (I saw him eyeing up my then girlfriend at the Notting Hill Carnival a few years ago.)

Paul McKenna I can change your life  Sky 3 late (2am). Tonight he attempted to cure a woman of her agoraphobia (apparently she’s been alone for only 10 mins total in the last five years). Paul went up to Hull of all places. He must be dedicated. Or they paid him a lot of money. What worked, the NLP or the hypnosis? He does speak very fast and uses a lot of gestures and taps.

NB She had CBT which didn’t work…

Later after he left, the panic came back. How much the original cure was it down to the force of his personality. Interestingly she says ‘Im panicking so I can’t remember all the thing she told me to think about’. She comes down to London for a second session (obviously Paul’s dedication didn’t stretch to another visit to Hull . She ends up cured but still living in Hull so swings and roundabouts really.

Also, he treats a gambler. He explains the Serotonin high due to gambling. He treats this by changing the association for gambling to a negative one. It seems quite simplistic. Reminds one of a weakened version of the treatment in A Clockwork Orange. Rewiring the brain.

Seeing the agoraphobic helps me because I can see that it’s just a condition that needs treating. It’s not something unique to me.

The best for me is the flying phobic who says ‘I just see that as an accident waiting to happen’. That’s just how I feel. I managed a short flight at Christmas but together is the fear of having an attack the other end, being so far from home He is resistant to Paul’ s initial NLP stuff but the hypnosis does it . After an hour he is good to go and flies. Paul McKenna is my new hero. The kind of change he manages in people in such a short space of time is pretty miraculous. I will blog more about his methods later (on this entry) when I have time.

My other blog is a …

My other blog was here http://my.opera.com/addman but that one didn’t seem to get any visitors either. I like Opera Community and keep other blogs there but I think the whole thing where you have to sign up for an Opera account just to leave a comment is too hassly. Plus it’s not that easy and I find surfers are put off anything that is not immediate. I experimented between keeping a paper journal and a blog. I will probably try to do both, transerring paper thoughts onto here. Ideally I would dictate into software that wrote for me but the last tim eI tried it, the software wasn’t up to it. Perhaps things have improved?

Anyway, today I was just thinking how much I’d improved; no anxiety while just pottering around the flat. I could watch TV without any ’stomach rising’ feelings. I spoke – or thought – too soon. After an argument with the girlfriend O was rewarded with the whole stress reaction. Going into the ‘zone’ where reality seems altered which I recognise as a precursor to a panic/anxiety attack. Normally this feeling would persisit for many hours and not relieve until either I went to sleep or took some medication. However, when I’m in ‘the zone’ I don’t want to take medication as by then I’m paranoid. Valium or Larazepam don’t seem to work particularly fast for me and because I’m often getting worse, I associate those feelings of getting worse with the drug.

Watched Copycat last night which had Sigourney Weaver as a Psychologist suffering from agoraphobia/panic attacks. It was interesting to see the visual disturbances which can accompany panic attacks being portrayed on the screen. There is a review here http://tinyurl.com/3bgdag . (I also didn’t rate Sigourney Weaver until I saw het in a Sci-Fi comedy -I fill in name later!). I think they tried it in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. When I last watched that I didn’t know anything about panic attacks so didn’t pay any attention. In fact I was totally unsympathetic about anxiety/panic attacks/funny turns and the like and just thought people should ‘get a grip’.