How I Stopped a Dog Allergy Dead in its Tracks
A Psychosomatic Breakthrough
DISCLAIMER: nothing herein shall be construed as medical or psychological advice in any way. The following contains an account of one man’s subjective experience, coupled with speculation on the contents of said experience. I am not responsible for anything anyone may do or not do as a result of publishing this article.
A while back we had a dog move into the house, and for the first two days of living with this dog I would sneeze and hack uncontrollably whenever it came near me. My life plan at the time was to become a full time hypnotist, and when you’re a hypnotist your voice is one of your most important assets—allergies and other issues that block your voice need to be dealt with.
I have a theory that allergies work in a similar way to phobias and PTSD. This will take some explaining.
Heightened Emotions and Suggestibility
When we experience heightened emotions—such as elation, love, rage, fear, etc—we become more suggestible; put another way, we enter into a highly focused state wherein the subconscious mind more readily forms associations between things. A “trigger” is basically a deep subconscious association created hypnotically during a moment of heightened emotion. Associations created during traumatic moments tend to be very strong, because one of the prime directives of your subconscious mind is to keep you safe and comfortable.
In my estimation, a PTSD response is similar to a phobia, but much more intense. In both cases, what we’re dealing with is an over zealous protection mechanism. In A Primer on Hypnosis, we discussed the fact the subconscious mind needs to be prompted by something it sees as relevant before hypnotic suggestions will “stick”. It goes without saying that anything that your subconscious mind sees as a threat to your survival is extremely relevant to it—ergo, when we are in danger (real or imagined), the subconscious mind tends to be highly motivated to learn all it can in that moment for the sake of learning how to keep you safe.
More often than not, it does a very good job of this, but occasionally some “wires” get crossed—it happens to all of us on occasion. God gave us a conscious mind and a subconscious mind for a reason. The conscious mind can, if guided properly, “override” automatic subconscious responses. Granted, it’s easier said than done—but the point is that it CAN be done.
The Connection Between Phobias, PTSD and Allergies
Keeping all the above in mind, the thought occurred to me one day that allergies may also be another example of an over-zealous protective mechanism that could be addressed in more or less the same way that hypnotherapists work with phobias and PTSD.
If you think about it, the environment in which we live today is toxic to a degree that—as far as we know—mankind has never experienced before. It’s damn near impossible to avoid micro-plastics, toxic metals, industrial chemicals, etc even if you make a tremendous effort to do so. Our bodies have never had to fight so hard against environmental toxins as is needed today. Is it really all that surprising that our bodies become trigger happy as a result?
If you take an “average” person and put him in an environment where he must constantly stand on guard against potential assault from every direction, he will undoubtedly develop a multitude of rapid, defense responses to other people approaching him, trying to talk to him, etc. Remove that man from said environment, and those instincts will likely remain intact, even in places or with people who are safe. In a nutshell, I believe this is the predicament our bodies are in—we’re under chemical assault all the time and the body becomes overwhelmed trying to deal with the situation.
The solution is to find a way to help the subconscious mind realize that it doesn’t need to resort to an over-zealous protective response to deal with things that aren’t actually dangerous. (We all need a break sometimes!)
On Symbolism and Healing
Sometimes our “deeper” mind communicates to us using symbols and correspondences (aka associations). The subconscious mind can solve problems for you, in the “back” of your mind, while the conscious “you” is doing other things. One of the defining features of the subconscious mind is that it makes rapid and complex associations, and usually does so below the threshold of conscious awareness. This is why solutions to complex problems sometimes appear in sudden, unexpected flashes of insight.
Symbols and metaphors enable the transmission of potentially vast amounts of information in an instant, and so it makes sense that the “deeper” mind might intentionally use symbols as a means to communicate. Believe it or not, PTSD is often very amenable to a hypnotic technique known as “symbolic transformation”, wherein a given PTSD trigger is likened to as a symbol so that it may be transformed at the symbolic level—thus sparing the person from having to face the trigger in a direct manner. (See the De-traumatization Script from Hypnotically Annihilating Anxiety for an example of how such a process might work).
Change your inner, subconscious, symbolic landscape, and you will inevitably change your automatic subconscious responses.
Tying it All Together—Hypnosis, Symbolism and Allergies
People everywhere play with dogs without experiencing allergic reactions—sometimes, other people can serve as useful symbolic models for the subconscious. When we can see someone else do something, it often subconsciously suggests to us that we can do it too.
With that in mind, I simply decided that I’d try going into a trance, then call forth the “part the makes allergies happen” (this is a maneuver that comes from parts therapy which we’ll cover in more detail in later posts), and then invite it to watch movies with me of people playing with dogs and not having any issue with it. If that sounds a bit illogical then recall that we’re dealing with hypnosis and subconscious association/symbolism here, not math or science (per se). Lo and behold, my intervention worked.
The whole process took about 5 minutes to complete, and I haven’t had an allergic reaction to any other dog since.
What I Did—Step by Step
Firstly, I used what’s called a “self hypnotic induction” on myself. The book The Science of Self Hypnosis has some really good ones (the theory of hypnosis underpinning that book is different from mine, but it helps to be acquainted with many perspectives when it comes to hypnosis, and the processes it leads you through are golden). Every person is a little bit unique and may need different ways to “enter hypnosis”, so what I did may or may not work as well for you as another method would. The only way to really know is to try things out—my way of doing things is but one of many ways.
The induction I used went like this:
I sat upright in a comfortable chair and stared at my right arm, blocking out my awareness of the rest of the room (recall that hypnosis is a profound state of absorption—you could feasibly use anything to serve as a point of focus, such as a dot on the wall or a shape in the distance—see A Primer on Hypnosis).
As I felt my awareness gather to my right arm at the exclusion of anything else in the room, I said to myself, in a calm slow voice, “that arm is getting heavy, and relaxed, it lies there like a rope, feel how heavy it is…” and so on. In other words, having achieved singular focus on my arm I started delivering suggestions to myself.
The suggestions took hold instantly—my arm indeed felt like a heavy rope, just lying there on my lap—and so I closed my eyes and proceeded to suggest to myself that “that relaxed, loose and heavy feeling has a color associated with it, and you can watch in your mind as that color pours from your arm into the rest of your body, really feeling that…”.
This technique is sometimes called “color-feelings” and it’s absurdly effective for putting most people into a deep hypnotic trance.
As the “trance” set in, I closed my eyes and asked the “part that runs that protective mechanism against dogs” to reveal itself to me as a symbol. What appeared in my mind was a dog that was covered in dried blood and scars—he was extremely agitated, so I invited him to sit next to me.
Then I imagined that myself and this dog were in a movie theater, watching short film after short film of people playing with dogs and not having an allergic reaction. By doing this, I was teaching my subconscious mind that it could make a new choice—that it didn’t need to make me allergic to dogs to keep me safe.
After a few minutes of this, the dog started to change. His scars started to disappear, his agitation started to give way to relaxation, and eventually he just plopped down feeling very happy and content—as he did this, I felt my entire body respond to the change in the dog. It felt as though the tension and agitation had just completely dissipated from my body, as I watched the same process take place in him.
I let myself enjoy that newfound relaxation for another minute or so, and then I opened my eyes and that was that.
It may sound far fetched, but in truth, similar processes utilizing subconscious symbolism are employed all the time to help people with various issues. Subconscious symbolism is extremely powerful—your inner symbolic landscape is unique to you, and so if you want to replicate what I did, you’ll have to find your own symbols and transform said symbols in a way that makes sense to you. The subconscious mind is often VERY cooperative when you ask it kindly for help.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Your subconscious mind wants the best for you. If you want it to do things differently, you usually need to understand what beneficial reason it has for doing x, y, or z. If I simply told my subconscious mind, “hey quit it with those dog allergies, will ya?” then nothing would have happened. Understanding that the allergic response was trying to protect me was key to being able to work with it—I approached the above hypnotic process in a spirit of appreciation for what my subconscious mind was trying to do instead of just condemning it or attacking myself over it.
In related news, people in general tend to be more cooperative with you when you make a genuine effort to understand where they’re coming from too.
Interesting, how that works…