An attempt at wellness

The man who came to the door on a chilly, misty Autumn morning called himself Ernest Frost, NLP practitioner and wellness coach. I had booked a session with him for hynotherapy after having read an article in a monthly magazine on the subject, touting him as someone who offered the service.

Speaking to him on the phone I felt like I was talking to a plumber. Perhaps it was a combination of his accent, tone, pitch and crudeness. Perhaps he was having a bad day, I thought, perhaps he's actually a very approachable guy when you actually get to meet him, I thought.

As I mentioned, the air was crisp, and mist in Johannesburg meant one thing in the morning, even at 10am. Sitting in traffic. So I left extra early, compensating for accidents, malfunctioning traffic lights and road rage. Also, having never been to a hynotherapist before, I thought I should also get there at least 5 minutes early, in case of paperwork and the usual reception area activities.

I rang the doorbell (which didn't work,) 10 minutes before the scheduled appointment, knocked on the door - a few times - and decided to check if I had it wrong. "Hi Ernest, my name is so-and-so, I have an appointment with you this morning at 11 o' clock?" Back came the gruff, glacial so-what monosyllable:"Yes?"
"Well I'm here now."
"Hang on." Seconds later and the Trellidor slides open.
"I rang the doorbell, but I don't think it works".
"Well, it's still early, and I would have come down at 11."
I must say I was taken a little aback. I really shouldn't have been, I'd had two passionless telephone conversations with him enough to have warned me what lair I was stepping into.

Now before I go on, you have to realise that I specifically asked for hynotherapy because I know that my problem is deep-seated and stems from childhood. I am old enough to have learnt visualisation techniques and being the producer of my own movie. Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, I got dragged into a horrendous 90 minutes of neuro linguistic programming that I honestly didn't want.

So there I was, ushered like a naughty school girl into the principle's office and told to wait for the clock to strike 11am while he went off to make himself a beverage. As I sat in the corner of a leather couch that felt and looked like a black hole, Gandhi and Mandela stood side by side, Gandhi saying "A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." Mandela telling me that there is no easy road to freedom. On the opposite side of the wall, framed A4 pieces of paper. Diplomas, degrees, who knows, who cares. Only Ernest Frost himself I suspect.

The session kicked off with the general personal questions, where do you live, are you married, do you have kids. You know the kind that are supposed to be ice breakers but actually serve little or no purpose at all. So when he got to the "What work do you do" part I thought oh c'mon get on with it and told him what I was there for. What I should have repeated to him at the same time was that I was there for hynotherapy, just in case he'd forgotten, just in case he didn't write it in his appointment book. Just in case. But I didn't. So he went on, and before I knew it I was having my neurolinguistics programmed. Apparently.

He made me think of situations, asked me to tell him where in my body do I feel this and that emotion, made me imagine myself from above and below. God, it was all too much and it all went on too long, and halfway through the ordeal I detected a sign of exasperation and impatience - from him. For me, it was like I'd entered for a marathon and got an ultra. 42km in I started feeling the pain and the panic, like I wasn't going to get out of it alive. A few times I felt like bailing, but entering the race was my choice, so I continued sitting in the corner of the black hole with my eyes closed, imagining and visualising and praying never to do something like this again.

Don't get me wrong, NLP works tremendously for some, but I took to it much like a rugby player would take to a ballet rehearsal. I probably got some benefit out of it, but I would have scored more tries if I went to rugby practice instead.

100 minutes and R450 later, I walked back out into the day, the mist had mostly lifted, there was a peek of blue in the sky, and I was glad to say goodbye to the earnest man with the frosty demeanor. Perhaps these are good qualities for a hynotherapist.