I was recently reading about Bravemind’s interesting posttraumatic stress therapy. By using virtual reality, soldiers, under the care of qualified therapists, are dropped back into a virtual similar situation that caused their PTS so they can address it again with hindsight.
The results have been very promising and I find it enlightening that something that in the past would have seemed preposterous as exorcising one’s demons by being exposed to those exact fears, has today become a viable therapy.
I guess in a small way it’s what my wife and I did with our dog. Before we had her, we’d had an unfortunately difficult neighbour who made our life quite stressful for a short while. So much so that every time we mentioned her name, we would feel stressed.
To overcome this, we decided to call our new dog Trudy. Low and behold, two years later, the name is now a joy, only reflecting positive and loving thoughts and no longer raising the negative connotations it once held.
Immersing oneself into past challenges, time and time again, is an interesting way of resetting the power it holds over us. NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) claims a similar form of ‘reprogramming’ and I saw how powerful if was when used in an apposing way on Darren Brown’s The Heist some years ago.
We all have gone through times when life has taken us by surprise and unless we find a way to exorcise those negative emotions, they could build to become an ever-present obstacle for us.
Our brains are complex and eminently re-trainable organs and it’s a brave person who takes their issues by the horns and faces them head-on. But those (and I count myself as one) that have done so have benefitted enormously.