Musings

Today the Times brings out the list of the 100 richest people in Britain. If you’re one of them and like to read about yourself, fine! If you are not one of them and find it all a little depressing here’s a list that’ll do you some good: The Independent on Sunday Happy List profiles of people who make Britain a better and happier place to live.

A few examples:

John Cunningham; Charity fundraiser
Area of excellence: Charity

A retired painter from Durham who has raised more than £1m for charity, walking more than 100,000 miles in the process. He began in 1986 with a 1,000-mile marathon – since then he has covered many long-distance walks including Land’s End to John o’Groats. Has also collected for charity at a local supermarket for 29 years.

Clare Parry-Jones; Clown doctor
Area of excellence: Mental well-being

Aka Dr Ding Dong. Each week she dons a red nose, purple hair and a giant turquoise stethoscope to administer the best medicine. One of Britain’s longest-serving clown doctors, she visits more than 4,000 children a year, is a specialist and teacher of drama therapy, and adapts her play according to a child’s personality, age and illness.

Megan Blunt; Author and charity campaigner
Area of excellence: Mental well-being

A 16-year-old bone cancer survivor, she is the author of ‘Chemotherapy, Cakes and Cancer’, an A-Z guide for children living with cancer which includes tips for treatment and easy definitions of medical terms. As well as studying for her GCSEs she is also a young people’s ambassador for the children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent.

If you can’t read this list without feeling better then I respectfully suggest you need some help, or better still, go help someone else it’ll do you good.

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For those of you that like the big picture: World Clock

(spotted on the NLPhilia Blog)

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A few days ago at at the first part of an EFT Level 1 training we were practicing our abilities to neutralise unpleasant memories with EFT by using the example of disagreeable film clips. Film clips have the advantage of being short, specific, unpleasant experiences that are not about us.

One of the participants chose the ’shower scene’ from Psycho as an example of a distressing film memory. She commented since seeing the film she had felt uncomfortable when taking a shower when she was alone in her house. It’s a ‘compliment’ to Hitchcock’s film making skills that he could have induced a fear of showers from a few minutes of film. It’s not just Hitchcock, a large number of people felt it wasn’t safe to go back in the water after watching Jaws.

The conversation reminded me of the effect of one traumatic incident on me. When I was four and a half years old President John F Kennedy was assassinated. We had a black and white TV in one corner of our sitting room and I remember watching the news footage of the shooting in Dallas.

After the film of the assassination there was a discussion between the TV presenter and some sort of expert (he probably had a white coat) using a model a brain to explain the effect of the fatal shots. That image sticks in my mind.

Although I would have been too young to make much sense implications of that event I must have picked up on the anxieties of my parents. I imagine it was one of those ‘oh-sh*t, what now?’ moments in world history much like 9/11 nearly thirty years later. Fortunately the world survived and life moved on.

However in my late teens and twenties I noticed a vague feeling of apprehension when I sat in that chair by the window watching the TV. I had the feeling that there was a sniper somewhere in flats behind the house getting ready to shoot me in the back of the head.

Logically the idea was ridiculous, the flats were mostly inhabited by little old ladies who didn’t seem to be very interested in sniping. In spite of that the feeling persisted. Not enough to stop me watching the TV but enough to be noticeable. I didn’t connect at the time the assassination of JFK with that anxiety.

Now I see it as an example of the (inadvertant) installation of an anxiety by TV back in the days of poor quality black and white television. I wonder how many phobias have been installed by modern high definition full colour coverage of destruction and atrocities? How many 4 year olds (and others) watched the repeated coverage of airliners crashing into the World Trade Centre? How might it manifest in their lives?

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Most of the time when I use EFT with clients they are tapping on themselves as we work on their issues. However some subjects can be very upsetting and clients can tune into intense emotions and not be able to tap for themselves. At such times I ask if I can tap on the release points for them. These clients often comment that being tapped on clears the issue more quickly than when they are tapping on themselves.

I suspect one of the reasons is that EFT is like tickling. You can’t tickle yourself because you know where the touch is going to come from and it’s no surprise. You need someone else to get that effect. When someone is tapping on you it is going to be at a rhythm and place that you can’t unconsciously predict, just like tickling. So it’s going to be more disruptive to the problem pattern and get quicker results

I wonder if anyone has invented ‘Tickling Therapy’ yet? It would be quite simple: Just hold the problem in mind whilst being tickled. If anyone tries this out please let me know what happens.

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 It was a beautiful day. February sun in a clear blue sky; cold, but with the promise of Spring. Walking with good friends along Hadrian’s Wall. Making our way down through the trees from the ridge about Crag Lough my mobile rings.

I don’t recognise the number. I answer and my sister tearfully says “You’d better sit down” and I know the news isn’t good. My Mum’s body was found by the district nurse this morning slumped in the hallway of her home.

It’s a shock, but not a complete suprise, in her 79th year her health had been bad for some time. I comfort my sister as best I can from 200 miles away. I hang up and tell my friends, who are as shocked as I am.

The walk back is strangely calm. The sun continues to shine, the sky is still a delicious blue. People pass enjoying the day as we walk back to our cars. My senses are very clear and I feel quite peaceful. I wonder if perhaps I should weep or wail, neither seems to fit my feeling so I just keep walking appreciating the space my friends give me to feel the way I feel (my friends are very good friends). At the car park we hug our goodbyes.

I drive home to Gateshead to get ready for the five hour drive to my Mum’s home. Along the country roads I marvel at how beautiful it is, how extraordinary it is to be alive and to have this experience of a beautiful day.

When I get home I do what needs to be done to put everyday life on hold for a while, pack my bags and start the long drive home. The first part of this journey passes through some of countryside my mum loved. It’s at it’s best and I drink it in for her, she would have loved to be here on a day like today.

After a little while I pass the place where I decided 10 years ago, on the drive home the day my father died, that I would do my best to be open to what ever happened and what ever I felt and do my best to honour him by how I handled it. I already knew that I would do the same for my mother. I want to be fully present through all this and beyond. The long drive home is a mixture of sadness and gratitude.

Being alive is an amazing improbable gift. It was her great gift to me and I want to make the best of it.

Thank you Mum for the gift of my life and for all your kindnesses.

Rest In Peace

Joan Hunt (neé Thompson)

1928-2008

(Experienced on Saturday written on Tuesday)

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We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

Buddha

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Gretchen Berland began a project to videotape the experiences of life in a wheelchair from the perspective of being in the wheelchair. She writes in The New England Journal of Medicine.

They began by filming processes related to activities of daily life — buttoning a shirt with an antique bootlace hook, using a grabber to retrieve a bottle cap from the floor. Wallengren’s footage of the preparation of his breakfast drink puts the viewer in his wheelchair; we see his hand falter as he lifts the milk from refrigerator to counter. The participants filmed events related to their passions: basketball, camping, disability rights, music. They filmed their loved ones. Each used the camera as a confidant; sitting alone in his bathroom, Wallengren talks about his progressive symptoms and the choices he faces.

When I first heard about this video I thought it might be a useful way of exemplifying some NLP principles including rapport and second position. When I watched them I got much more than I bargained for.

The first segment filmed in a doctor’s office is an excellent demonstration of how not to do rapport with a patient. In the second segment the same patient speaks to the camera about what is on his mind, perhaps the kind of thing that the doctor might have heard had he connected with him.

One of the segments is just a wheelchair’s eye view of someone making breakfast. As someone who has never been in a wheelchair it gives a small insight into just what a laborious task something I take for so much granted can become.

Finally in a segment that beggars belief we watch someone stuck in a stalled wheelchair just 10 feet from her door. As Berland says:

Moments of extraordinary frustration were also recorded, a scene captured by Elman being a striking example. After 20 years of living with multiple sclerosis, Elman required a power wheelchair. One afternoon, her regular public-transportation service picked her up from an event, and during the ride home, her wheelchair stalled inside the van. Although it’s officially against the rules, most riders say that a driver will sometimes bring them into their homes. That day, however, Elman wasn’t so lucky. The driver parked her 10 ft from her front door, where she stayed and waited. But she had brought the video camera. The first time I screened this tape, I was horrified. I watched Elman try to call for help on a cell phone that had no signal. I watched her wait for a car to drive by, hoping that someone would stop and help. I watched as the afternoon light faded in the background.

You can read the full article and watch the video here: The View from the Other Side — Patients, Doctors, and the Power of a Camera (scroll down to the bottom of the article for the video link).

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