Cure your Emetophobia and Thrive – Chapter 12 preview..
Chapter Twelve: The Dream Technique
Throughout this book, all the exercises and ACTION!s are aimed at equipping you with the skills to ‘manage your thinking’, so that the needle on your metaphorical Stress-o-meter (Chapter 10 ‘Anxiety and Stress’) never goes anywhere near the red area (7-10) and therefore you stay calm, happy and in full control. However, nobody is perfect and everyone is capable of pushing their needle into the red from time to time. So, I set out to develop a simple technique that anyone can use once the shit has hit the fan! I developed this technique in 2009 specifically for ME/PVFS/CFS and chronic pain sufferers, but it soon became obvious that its uses were far more reaching.
The following technique will enable you to substantially reduce your anxiety and stress levels and stop specific behaviours and symptoms before they ever really appear!
When you have raised your Stress-o-meter needle into the red by not managing your thinking very well, it becomes impossible to have much perspective over your situation. This is because when we create stress, we become very focused on the perceived cause of the stress to the point where nothing else matters. When your needle is in this ‘danger zone’ it usually becomes difficult for you to escape this state, because once stressed, your unhelpful thinking styles (e.g. negative, obsessive, catastrophic etc.) become heightened.
The DREAM Technique™ is a very simple and quick process that you can use when you have created some anxiety and stress, in order to rapidly calm yourself back down again, regaining perspective and clarity. The beauty of The DREAM Technique™ is that it doesn’t need to be hard work, anyone of any age can do it and the method is incredibly easy to learn.
The DREAM Technique™ can also be used to tackle specific problematic behaviours and symptoms, such as smoking, overeating, drinking, ME, PVFS, chronic pain, self-harming, tic disorders and panic attacks. It is particularly helpful for those with the compulsive thinking style, when feeling a need to carry out a particular (destructive) behaviour to help them feel good/better in the moment.
Have a look at the drawing on the next page; what do you see? When I think of this road, I think of the yellow brick road in ‘The Wizard of Oz’. Your life is stretching out ahead of you like the road, and at the end of the road is everything you could possibly want in life: health, happiness, success, love, wealth, friendships, self-esteem, confidence, energy and inner peace. All you have to do to achieve all these things is to follow the road and navigate your way around the potholes that litter it. The potholes are your negative thoughts and feelings. Once you have learned how to avoid all the potholes, it is a simple question of staying focused on your goals and desires.
The DREAM Technique™ re-writes and re-routes the hard wiring in your brain that dictates how you perceive and react to situations in life. It builds your self-esteem and self-reliance, allowing you to ‘trust yourself’ more by recognising ‘potholes’ and then rewarding yourself for doing so. You are training yourself to respond positively to experiences, rather than critically. You are building self-esteem by continually praising yourself for making the effort to make changes in your life. It allows you to deconstruct familiar ‘patterns’ in your brain; patterns that tend to be repeated every time you find yourself in a similar situation (like a smoker always associating a cigarette with a cup of coffee. Imagine how much easier it would be to stop smoking, if the ‘connection’ between a cigarette and a coffee just wasn’t there anymore). It gives you control over your emotions and allows you to choose HOW you want to react in any given situation. Many people feel they have absolutely NO choices in their lives – they feel they are powerless to fight their situation. This process puts you back in the driving seat, and helps you to create an internal locus of control.
This process is going to help you to change your physiological responses to stress, anxiety and fear, making your immune system stronger, creating a more positive ‘energy’ within you, and developing a strong internal locus of control that will allow you to bounce back from ill health, ill-fortune, and the stresses of modern living. Finally, it allows you to really imagine what you WANT to happen in your life, and not just be a slave to what you FEAR will happen.
Possibly the most amazing thing about this technique, is that you don’t need to believe it will work, you just need to do it. You don’t need to have faith in it, just do it.
It’s a bit like joining a gym. If you join a gym and go three times a week, whether you believe you are going to get fitter, healthier and slimmer or not is irrelevant, you will. Whether you WANT to get fitter, healthier or slimmer or not, is irrelevant, you will. The same is true of The DREAM Technique™. It is a training programme, much like going to the gym. Whether you believe it or not doesn’t matter. It WILL change your life.
Going to the gym is a good analogy, because, like The DREAM Technique™, the more frequently you go to the gym the quicker you see significant changes occurring.
It’s your CHOICE…
Want to know more…….Get Started Here