An Apple a Day by Emma Woolf

Author:Emma Woolf [Woolf, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781593765590
Publisher: Soft Skull Press

Chapter 8

Miracle Cures

Dear Emma, I have been following your columns with interest. I am a clinical hypnotherapist working with clients on “mind over matter” challenges. I wonder if you might be interested in a free session of hypnotherapy to support you? I think this could provide a safe environment for you to experience some powerful transitions . . .

Powerful transitions, eh? Another day, another email out of the blue offering help. After all these years of keeping things locked up inside, I’m amazed how much support there is if you ask for it.

As I mentioned, my obstetrician friend says that slowing down could be the key to recovery. My mindfulness guru tells me I need to stop saying sorry and to stop feeling guilty. My mother says I need more cheese, healthy fats, and oils in my diet, and my boyfriend says I should move in with him. A woman from Paris emails that I should start eating meat and fish again, a professional cyclist from Scotland writes that “seven pots of cottage cheese per week” has been the key to his physical rehabilitation. My little sister tells me about EFT, the emotional freedom technique, my aunt about EMDR, an eye movement desensitization therapy. Some people swear by meditation, yoga, or Ayurveda, others have recommended nutritional supplements. I attend a six-week insomnia course, I have weekly acupuncture sessions and visit a homeopathic doctor, I try to do my morning visualizations, I skim-read The Power of Now, I plough through a 600-page tome called Miraculous Healings, I look into Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

All these miracle cures and still I find the hardest thing is eating.

Over the years I’ve tried all these things and many more . . . and, as I’ve said, I don’t think there is a silver bullet. If you’ve ever tried giving up smoking you may have experienced this kind of support overload and still found yourself reaching for a cigarette at the end of it. The truth is, all the hypnosis and Allen Carr books and nicotine gum won’t help you quit if you still want to smoke. I smoked from the age of sixteen to twenty-nine, and I never thought I’d be able to kick it. The simple fact was, I loved it. I’ve heard it said we’re born as smokers or as nonsmokers: my big sister, Katie, for example, is rabidly antismoking, and it’s impossible to imagine her with a cigarette in her hands, whereas my other sisters and brothers are all either smokers or ex-smokers. And my parents too: Dad is a reformed ex-smoker but in his heyday he smoked cigarettes, cigars, pipes, cheroots, and took snuff. He gave up forty years ago but he admits he still sometimes misses an after-dinner smoke with a glass of brandy. My mum, on the other hand, just like Katie, has never even tried a cigarette.

For me, the turning point with smoking came when I began actively to dislike it. I was sick of stinking like an ashtray and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.