The bar scene in my head

So now I’m down to the business of trying to heal. I still don’t know exactly what I’m doing wrong, or have done wrong, and still don’t have a good handle on what’s wrong with me, but the symptoms I’ve been enjoying since late July persist, so we press on. This week, it’s acupuncture, massage, yoga and a brand new holistic doctor, Bernadette Saviano. I even made an appointment with a hypnotherapist for October 18. Out-of-pocket healthcare tally thus far: just over $3,000.

The neurologist’s diagnosis of anxiety, while a great relief, was only a diagnosis. It wasn’t a cure. For better or worse, my “condition” remains vague and seemingly untreatable by any direct means, save perhaps psychoactive drugs, which option I reject. Besides, the symptoms are physical. Whatever.

Thinking ahead to hypnotherapy, I did some research and found a great description of how it works …

Imagine your mind as the neighborhood bar. The thoughts, memories, concepts, information and so on are the people inside the bar. Everybody there is getting along well. They’re diverse, but compatible.

Other people are lined up outside the bar waiting to get in. There’s a bouncer outside, too, and he sizes up the people in line to determine if they’d be a good fit for the scene inside. Some get in, others don’t.

There’s a bartender inside. He knows his customers and he’s very adept at mixing their favorite drinks. The drinks are the chemicals in the brain … seratonin, endorphins, adrenalin, etc. He keeps a ready supply of the drinks that his customers order most often.

A hypnotherapist goes into the bar and checks out what the bartender is serving. “It looks like you’re serving a lot of fear these days,” he might say. Then he’ll order a round of calm for the house. The people in the bar like the new drink. They start ordering it for themselves. The hypnotist then starts inviting a new kind of customer to join him at the bar. They order the new drink, too. The bartender learns how to make this new drink and changes the chemicals he keeps out front accordingly. The bouncer recognizes that the scene inside has changed, too, and he begins to screen out the old kind of guest while admitting the new kind of guest.

And so it goes.

Which means that I need to figure out what’s up with my bartender and my bouncer because my guests don’t seem to be getting along with each other very well. At least I assume not since the bar is in such bad physical condition. A better clientele wouldn’t be so abusive of the bar.

Like today … I have a headache on top of the now all-too-familiar pressure in my head. Quite real, it is. 90 minutes from now, I’ll be talking to the holistic doctor, an “intuitive,” she calls herself. Will she spot the bad apples in my bar? I do hope so.