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More Healing Tales
My client, "Vicky," was pregnant and was going to be seeing a lot of doctors' offices and taking a lot of shots. She had a terrible fear of shots and bad associations with doctors' offices. A doctor had once informed her that she was going to die. When she returned for a follow-up visit, he nonchalantly informed her that he had been mistaken: he had confused her test with another's. This was not her only traumatic experience with a doctor, either: she had had bad luck in this arena. Now she wanted me to hypnotize her to help her over her fear and dread of needles.
We agreed that it was not likely that she would feel no pain when she took a shot, but if she felt, say, an annoying prick and nothing worse, and no fear or dread, she would be satisfied with the result.
Since she had once said about her husband, "He's the one person who would never hurt me," I asked if he would be there with her when she was getting her shots. She said yes. When she was in a relaxed and receptive state, I asked her for a comforting memory of him: she remembered him holding cookies. His presence was big and strong. In order to give her another focus, I offered the suggestion that during her visit to the doctor, she would be very focused on Dan, and on the comforting feeling of his being there, and she might remember him holding cookies.
Some time later she reported to me that although I had said she would feel an annoying prick, I had been wrong. She was at the doctor's office, calmly chatting with the people there, and said, "When am I going to get my shot?" The doctor said, "You already have." She hadn't felt it. After that, she simply stuck out her arm and said, "Here," and had no more fear of needles or doctors.
Working together through Vicky's unconscious, we had experienced an unbroken string of successes. This gave her a certain confidence in her ability to learn new things without ever knowing how she was doing it. What helped her overcome her fear of being hurt by doctors was the suggestion to her unconscious that, You will be focused on the one thing that would never hurt you (Dan). A deeper healing suggestion that neither of us were aware of was that the doctor who had nonchalantly and mistakenly rendered her death sentence would be replaced by her loving, comforting husband, and thus not only her fear, but even the annoying prick would disappear.