Welcome
Welcome to my blog. I am really looking forward to sharing my experiences with you from both my personal life and from my work of the last fourteen years as a therapist. (hypnotherapy and hypnotherapist). When you read the section about me it tells you how I was led to my work as a therapist by panic/anxiety attacks that I experienced myself. Much of this came from my own challenging childhood but also I would like to share with you today about an event that happened when I was 19 that also contributed to negativity in my subconscious.
When I was 19 years old I was the victim of a serious hit and run accident. I was knocked down on a zebra crossing at between 60 and 70 mph (this was in a 30mph limit zone). I was thrown 130 ft up the road (landing outside a butchers, not a choice of landing for a long term vegetarian ;-)). To this day I have no memory of this accident or two weeks prior to, and, as I was unconscious, two weeks after. It was touch and go and my poor family were advised I may not survive and if I did that I may never walk again and could be seriously brain damaged. I had a serious head injury, a shattered femur and a bad back injury. “Poor you” I hear you cry! And poor me is how I felt…… For a while.
There’s nothing worse than lying in hospital feeling sorry for yourself though. After regaining consciousness I obviously felt very low. Questioning myself. “Why me?” “What have a done to deserve this?” Being in hospital, however, gives you plenty of time to think. Even though too much thinking can be a bad thing I really had to question why this had happened. I have always been quite spiritual in my thinking and believe that everything that happens, happens for a reason. So where I began almost punishing myself by thinking that I must have done something bad for this to happen I actually started thinking maybe there was some other reason for this happening. After all I had always done my best to be a good person and to look after other people around me. I honestly couldn’t think of anything that I had done bad enough to warrant this. I then started reframing the situation in my mind. I think you can only go so low before you can take no more negativity and with all that time to think I realised that it was on my OWN thoughts making me feel like this. If I was to get through this, walk again, be coherent in mind again, I had to change my way of thinking.
Sitting in that hospital bed day after day, week after week really made me realise how powerful thoughts were and how they could make or break. If I carried on thinking the way I was I would prove the doctors right. I wouldn’t walk again and maybe I wouldn’t have my full mental capacity back. I wasn’t prepared to do that. I had to change my thoughts. Something inside my mind told me to think of this as a challenge and a lesson for my own good. It has happened for a reason but a good one. Not a punishment. Who knows where this came from? Was it some higher force? Was it something I had previously read being triggered? Something said to me that one day I would look back and be able to see the reason for this and actually be grateful for it happening. Although this was quite hard to believe it did give me some hope. I began raising to the challenge and a couple of days later the physio came round to get me on my feet. This wasn’t easy. I couldn’t be fully weight bearing but he managed to get me up into a sitting position and onto my feet with some support. The pain was so bad I blacked out. The positive thing was though that that was pain. It would have been far worse had there been no feeling at all. Rising to this challenge and thinking positively definitely got me moving again. Within six weeks I was out of hospital and back at home on crutches. Recovery took me years, both mentally and physically. Did I ever look back and realise that this happened for a reason? Was I ever grateful that it had happened? When I publish the next part of my blog you will find out! 😉