"I feel like I'm about to die," she told me. "Actually, I know I'm about to die really soon, but I don't know how that I know."
On taking Jane's particulars on the telephone her mum had told me the date of the neurosurgery-December 13-nine years previously, Today was December 11. I somehow suspected that this was not a coincidence.
"What happened ... ?" I asked slowly, as I changed the focus of my eyes, deepeniIlg my breathing as I led Jane into a calmer state, and she followed.
"Hmmmm?" she responded.
"What happened, ..., when the doctor told you that you had a brain tumour?" I used the words "brain tumour" rather than acoustic neuroma. Hospital staff are notorious at speaking a different language — on hearing "acoustic neuroma" or "glioblastoma multiform" or "left frontal benign space-occupying lesion" the patient will ask for a translation—but no matter how well the professional tries to shield it, the translation that the client makes is simply, "brain cancer" and as we all know, "brain cancer" is bad.
"I thought, 'This is it, I'm going to die' and I told the surgeon I was scared I was going to die. He told me that I wasn't going to die if I had the operation, but the operation could leave me permanently disfigured and deaf in one ear."
Legal and medical ethics state that doctors have to get "informed consent" before they can operate. Essentially what this means is that they have to terrify the patient with all the possibilities of what can go wrong, as well as what can go right.
Deepening my own state, with both Jane and her mother following me, I encouraged Jane to go on, "And then, what did he say?"
"I just freaked out" she said calmly, "I just lost it completely. It was all too much." That is, she was pushed through threshold, into a state in which she was supremely open to suggestion.
"Then what happened?" I asked, "What happened next'?"
"He told me quite sternly that my choice was simple, I'd either have a facial drop or I'd be dead within nine years.
It was up to me." It was the "It was entirely up to me (to choose between disfigurement or death)" that alarmed me most. Such choices are not made easily. Once I had an elderly patient with penile cancer; he had the choice to retain his genitals and die, or lose them and extend his survival. His reasoning was simple; at 85, he would probably not live that much longer anyway, and he would rather do so accompanied by a penis that had served him well throughout his life. So you can imagine that to present a young woman, still reeling from the shock of hearing that she had brain cancer, with the devil's choice between death and disfigurement was clearly just too much.
And so there we had it. Because very clearly, sitting there right in front of me was a heallhy 29-year-old woman, who had undergone successful neurosurgery, and who owing to the skin of the neurosurgeon had neither eye droop, hearing loss, nor more importantly, any sign of facial paralysis.
Focused, aroused, and in a highly suggestible state, she heard the doctor tell her that she could potentially suffer facial disfigurement or die. So now without any facial disfigurement, that left only one choice.
"So, when are you supposed to die?" I asked.
"Thursday!" Jane said spontaneousiy, with a more than just a hint of surprise.
"This Thursday?" I asked, encouraging her down this line of logic.
"Oh my God!" she exclaimed as she touched her face, "That's ridiculous!" And right then and there she developed a facial drop and some numbness. I hadn't planned for this, but it appeared that her unconscious had remade its choice. It only took a little further work to resolve this using a little timeline work and "change history" patterning. Follow-up one year later revealed no anxiety relapse-nor any facial paralysis or numbness.
eugzol в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)
eugzol в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)
eugzol в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)
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