by Donald Pelles, Ph.D., Certified Hypnotherapist
“I’m being stalked.”
Lillie, age 60, called me to ask about hypnosis.
“Tell me more,” I said.
“I’m being stalked by people who follow me around making bird sounds.”
She told me that young people, a brother and sister, had lived in the apartment above hers. Gang members, she thought. They stomped on their floors and had run cameras down into her ceiling fans. Lillie had taken them to court, but had no success. Two years ago she felt forced to move out, and she did.
Then, a year ago, they found her again and begun stalking her, making bird sounds – two kinds of birds – blowing into some kind of bird callers. They also imitated cicadas. They followed her wherever she went, honking at her when she came out of a store, making their bird sounds, making Lillie miserable.
“Have they done anything to you?” I asked. “Have they threatened you?”
“No,” she replied. “I’ve seen them a couple times. They scare me. I’m afraid to go out, afraid to sit out on my deck, to walk my dogs.”
Lillie was suffering panic attacks every night, her heart racing, afraid she would die; she was grinding her teeth and was unable to sleep.
I listened. When she finished I asked her how I could help her, what did she want - hypnosis for anxiety?
“Hypnotize me to think they are really birds,” she said.
“Hmm,” I said. “Maybe we can do that, or maybe we can’t. Because since you feel threatened, your protective function, the part of you that protects you and keeps you safe, may not allow it.”
“It seems to me,” I continued, “that the real problem is that this bothers you. Is that right?”
“Yes,” she replied, “a lot.”
“What if it didn’t bother you? What if you just didn’t care about it?”
“Oh, that would be great, yes.”
We agreed to doing six hours of hypnotherapy work, broken into three 2-hour sessions.
Lillie’s intake form revealed that she was highly medicated, taking drugs for depression, migraines, high blood pressure, her heart, allergies, and a sedative to help her sleep, all prescribed by her psychiatrist and other doctors. Her most critical concern was “I want to get to the point where the birds don’t make me anxious and nervous.” In order to accomplish that, she was willing to give up her panic attacks, heart palpitations, and her anxious thoughts. Being a Christian and very spiritual, she would not be willing to give up Jesus Christ as her lord and savior (“Quite the contrary,” I told her: “God will help you with this, working through me and through you.”). Lillie had been in psychotherapy since 1986, for the last five years for problems with the stalking.
Our first session was four days after we talked on the phone. My dowsing rods showed her heart chakra open but all the others blocked – I was not surprised.
She told me how being stalked made her feel; I asked her “How would you like to feel instead?” “Complete, joyous, happy, and freedom!” I had her step into those feelings, to amplify them more and more and even more, and then go back to hearing the bird sounds but feeling this way. Lillie’s whole aspect, her whole affect changed; suddenly lighting up my little office.
I taught her a couple of anti-anxiety exercises and led her through The Zone, the 2-minute self-hypnosis exercise I teach all of my clients. Then I asked her to take herself again into The Zone and visualize herself exactly the way she wanted to be – her Power Self – then step into and be that person for a few minutes. Lillie named her power self “Super Girl” and that persona proved to be very important to her over the next few weeks (and continuing). I asked her to every day take herself into The Zone several times and do the Power Self exercise at least once.
Affect Bridge, following that feeling of fear back as far as she could, took Lillie back to being a child hiding from her mother (who would hit and slap her and pull her hair). I invited Lillie to go back as her adult self and comfort the little girl, to bring her back into the future with her, to love and protect her.
I took her through the Fast Phobia Cure (aka V/K Dissociation) with the first incident like that and then (unconsciously) through all similar incidents, all the way to the present. The result was, “Who cares!”
We finished the session with a conversation about Fear and Change.
Starting Session 2 a week later I measured her energy field as way out beyond her outstretched hands. All chakras were open now except 2 (sexuality/creativity) and 5 (voice). Lilly reported walking around the block without headphones and sitting out on her porch for two hours. “I don’t care anymore!” she told me.
We did some metaphor work (after Andy Austin): in response to “What is it like?” Lillie described herself in a closed room, lying on the floor beside her bed, moving quietly “to ignore them,” and looking down a lot. I said she was “prone to stillness,” “floored,” and “tiptoeing, walking on eggshells.” "What would be a better way to handle this?" I asked her. "Stand tall, let it go, and choose to be happy, joyful, and freedom,” was her reply. Her first step would be to “open the front door and a window.”
I guided her through The Wholeness Process (after Connirae Andreas), addressing the feeling she had when being stalked. We also worked on the bruxism – clenching and grinding her teeth – with mouth-stretching and clench-release exercises and some direct-suggestion hypnosis, and we had a conversation about Truth.
We began Session 3 with Aligning Perceptual Positions (from Connirae Andreas), having Lillie take, in turn, Observer, Self, and Other (the stalkers) positions and guiding her to make subtle adjustments in how she was seeing, hearing, and feeling in these interactions. In particular, Lillie was able to face her stalkers eye-to-eye, address them directly (“Fuck you! Leave me alone! Go Away!”) and return to them voices and feelings which really were theirs but that she had internalized as her own.
We finished with a long and difficult Core Transformation (from Connirae Andreas) session, exploring the Fear, the part of Lillie that made her afraid, which she experienced as a female voice in her brain. Repeatedly asking the part, “What do you want?” the answers were negative and threatening: “to annoy you,” “to destroy you,” “to have your soul,” “revenge,” “to destroy your marriage.” Only after a long time did they turn positive: “to be satisfied,” “contract with the Devil fulfilled,” and finally, “Complete,” which was the part’s Core State. Entering into Complete as a state of being and going backwards, all the negative outcomes were transformed, along with the original fear. The part turned out to be four years old (matching what we had found in the regression two sessions back). It readily grew up to Lillie’s current age and expanded to fill her body, mind, and spirit, so that Complete became Lillie’s own Core State of being.
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Two months after our last session I received this email from Lillie:
I just wanted you to know that you
Helped me so much. I would think
About being super girl and I
Walked my dogs freely around
The block. U also gave me the
Courage to sit outside on my
Deck and read my book … .
U gave me back my freedom.
I can go anywhere and walk anywhere
And nobody bothers me. I am
Also cutting down on my medications[1]
Since I don't need them anymore.
U were a God sent. Thank you
So much for your support without
Judging me as being insane. I
Am Truly grateful for your service.
May God continue to bless you
As u help your clients.
And again, two months after the first one, she sent me another email:
You are a God
Sent. I cry just as I type this note.
I would be in a prison of life if it
Wasn't for you.
Thank you again for giving me
Strength.
This is why I love doing this work!
[1] We had not discussed this.callers.
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