to go tell a phobic not to be afraid, you have to teach them what makes fear dissipate.
For almost four decades, I’ve gone through and I’ve studied everything about people with all kinds of problems. I’ve worked with people who were schizophrenic and have learned from people who weren’t schizophrenic and who were able to do specifically what a schizophrenic was unable to do.
One of my more famous cases was brought to me by a psychiatrist a number of years ago. This was a lady who couldn’t tell the difference between fantasies and memories. Every time she would come in to the psychiatrist, she would cry and moan about having killed her parents. He would bring in her parents and she would chat thoughtfully with them and when they left she would claim she had killed them.
Why she fantasized killing them isn’t important. The fact is she couldn’t tell which memories were real. So, I turned to the psychiatrist and asked him how he knew which one of his memories was real and which ones were fantasies. I had them both make up a memory on the spot. They both made up a fantasy of how they got to my office and put in all the necessary details and then I asked them both how they got there.
The psychiatrist answered me calmly. The patient screamed and moaned that it was one thing and then it was the other and then it was one thing and then it was the other. She couldn’t tell them apart. It turned out that when I asked the psychiatrist how he knew, he told me that his fantasies had a black border around them and his memories didn’t. This was a very precise way of knowing which images were created and which images were remembered. I’m sure he had no problems telling his fantasies from his reality.
I hypnotized this lady into a deep altered state and had her lift up her arm and go through the fantasies she had made up and put black borders around them. She had to do so with everything from killing her parents to any other fantasy, including the one that she had made up in the room for me. I then told her that when her brain had gone through and recoded all this information, she could let her hand come down. When she opened her eyes, I asked her if she’d killed her parents and she calmly said no.
This approach is about being able to teach people as opposed to ‘therapize’ them. The truth is that after all the years of giving people insight and change not occurring, the lesson to be learned was that insight was a great idea, it just didn’t work. Communism was a good idea but it didn’t work in practice.
When ideas don’t work, you have to put them out in the backyard with the square wheels because when something isn’t working, it’s just not working. So, what I’ve tried to do over the years is find out the things that work in human beings, simple things, teachable things. Some of them are taught better in the waking state and some of them are taught better in a hypnotic trance. To me, it doesn’t matter which it is, it only matters that people get to where they want to go. It matters to me that they have the freedom to live, the freedom to be happy and the freedom not to waste their time with bad habits. I believe the truth is that most ongoing problems are just a manifestation of having the same bad habit over and over again.
People with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder have the bad habit of building rituals to try and stave off their anxiety. Every single ritual may give them a little bit more comfort but in the end it continues to build more fear.
The more comfort you have to build the more fear you have to have. It’s a vicious cycle and most stupidity works in this way. I’m not saying stupid in the sense that it’s bad. If you discover something’s stupid and you laugh at it and you stop it and build something more effective, life just gets better. I’m a firm believer that you can learn to get over your problems.
For thirty-five years, people have walked in my doorway miserable and walked out with more freedom. They have walked out happier and continue to walk out that way. People have always said, Well this phobia cure is good but what if it comes back in six months? Simple, you just take another twenty minutes and then you banish it again.
The truth is that it will only come back when you start doing the same things that you did before and thinking the same things as you did before. Otherwise, it will stay gone forever. In fact, something wonderful will happen. You’ll have more time to get to enjoy your life.
All of the time you spent feeling bad, you could be feeling good. That doesn’t mean that bad things don’t happen. People die. Horrible things happen. Sometimes, people get into car wrecks or they go into debt. There are horrible things worth feeling bad about but those are things worth doing something about so that you get on with your life as quickly as you can and become the best person that you can be. You can look at yesterday and say that you are a better person today, even if it’s just a tiny bit, then you’re still headed in the right direction.
This book is about how you do just that. The outline of the book is very simple. First, I have outlined an inventory, which will explain the basics and help you to take stock of the tools you have at your disposal.
Next, I will discuss many of the problems that you might face in your life. You’ll learn about how to get over problems such as bad fears, memories and relationships. You’ll find out how to get through things like bad habits, recovery and the times when you feel like giving up. You’ll discover how to get to the things that make life worth-while such as fun, love, sex and making big decisions about your life.
Throughout the book, I’ll be sharing certain stories and insights I have gained working with each problem and challenge I deal with. You’ll also find plenty of techniques and tips outlined in a step-by-step guide so that, as you read, you can change instantly. Again, it’s critical that you follow the steps and you do them thoroughly.
I got a postcard one time from the Grand Canyon. When I first wrote the book The Structure of Magic, I didn’t get too many postcards. However, when I wrote the book Frogs into Princes that laid out ways that people could get rid of fears and anxieties, I got a postcard from the Grand Canyon.
Somebody wrote me a postcard and it simply said the following: ‘I’m hanging off the side of the Grand Canyon. I had a height phobia for many years. I spent lots of money on therapy. But for just $8.95, my problems disappeared. Thank you.’ When I decided to write this guide so that people could get over their own problems, what I had in mind was something that would allow you all to write me a postcard.
It’s time to take some mental inventory. In order for you to make changes, I want to make you aware of a few mental tools that you already have at your disposal. As you proceed through this book, you’ll discover more and more how you can use these tools to achieve freedom from your troubles. Once you understand how your mind works and how your thinking works, you will become aware of why you’ll be able to make such powerful and permanent changes in your life. To start with, let’s examine the role and the power of the unconscious mind.
THE POWER OF YOUR UNCONSCIOUS The Freeway to Change
Think of your mind as being made up of a conscious and an unconscious portion. Your conscious mind is the part of your mind that analyses, criticizes and thinks logically all day long. It is where you put your attention. Your unconscious is the part of your mind that controls your bodily functions, from your heartbeat to your breathing. It is where all your memories are stored and where your wisdom, creativity and problem-solving capabilities reside.
When you are asleep, your conscious mind is resting and not really doing too
