3B
Wednesday, Janurary 25th, 2017 // The Statement
Golden State Worrier: Just Keep Tapping
B Y H A R R Y K R I N S K Y, DA I LY A R T S W R I T E R
COVER DESIGN BY CLAIRE ABDO AND KATIE SPAK
ILLUSTRATION BY CLAIRE ABDO
I
’ve been to two therapists in my
life. The story behind the first
guy isn’t that interesting. I was
a nervous 11-year-old; like, a really
nervous 11-year-old, and I was lucky
enough to go to a therapist and even
luckier to have therapy who actually
helped.
My second therapist is a more
interesting story. I found her by
Googling “Ann Arbor Hypnotherapy”
and choosing between the two options
that came up. The deciding factors
were some combination of the two
websites’ aesthetic, their testimonials
and the ease with which I could locate
their email addresses. For some reason,
technological wherewithal was a quality
I valued in a hypnotherapist.
It was toward the end of my
sophomore year of college. The anxiety I
had worked so hard in my youth to keep
at bay was creeping back into my life, in
part because I had actual worry-worthy
things to worry about. It was the type of
nervous cocktail that created thoughts
like “If I don’t get this internship, I’m
going to contract a fatal respiratory
infection and die.”
I don’t exactly know why I pursued
hypnotherapy instead of other, more
mainstream types of therapy. I know a
guy who tried hypnotherapy and said
it worked, and as a kid was obsessed
with “Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of
Hypnotism,” but other than that, I have
no affiliation with hypnosis. Weird flex
by me, but whatever.
I emailed my prospective therapist,
the one with the better website. I
will call her Molly for nostalgia and
anonymity. She responded quickly and
we set up a time to chat.
During our first meeting, she showed
me her gold pocket watch, a family
heirloom that had been passed down
through generations and embedded
with magical hypnotic powers. She told
me to sit back in the chair, relax and
follow the watch with my eyes. What
felt like two minutes later, I woke up,
with almost no recollection of the event.
I’m kidding — there was no pocket
watch, or magic, or loss of memory.
Though I would be lying if, prior to my
first meeting, some percentage of me
legitimately thought something like
that would happen.
It didn’t. At our first meeting Molly
probably asked me 50 questions about
my life, taking detailed notes and
giving some feedback on my responses.
The most notable piece of advice from
this session was that if I drank more
water, that would solve all my anxiety
issues. I chuckled when she said this,
before quickly realizing she wasn’t
joking.
In truth, hypnosis only describes
a fraction of what Molly does. She
really is an oracle of all things related
to spiritual and alternative healing.
In addition to hydration tips, Molly’s
repertoire
of
healing
practices
includes teaching me a set of yoga
breathing
techniques,
facilitating
guided meditations tailored to my
specific anxieties, and assigning me
homework assignments like “spend
three hours this week doing something
that exclusively benefits other people.”
Shoes
are
forbidden
in
her
cramped office, so we’d make casual
conversation as I removed my boots
and placed them outside her door
before entering. I’d sit on a tan
reclining chair with a partially broken
lever and she’d tell me about Chi, and
natural energy, and traditions that pre-
date any ibuprofen by an uncountable
number of lifetimes.
For most of my life, I was a staunch
skeptic of all things related to the
spiritual and alternative. That is,
I would guess, pretty normal for
being an American-born 21-year-old.
Western medicine is built on the trust
in empiricism and some alternative
healing practices simply don’t have
the data to back up their performance,
or don’t have the data that the Western
world trusts. It also might just be
Western arrogance, it really might just
be Western arrogance.
In any case, I was happy to
indulge Molly’s conversations about
Chi and natural energy flow, but
I always thought of them as more
interesting mental exercises, rather
than anything actually altering an
iota of my body. I’d think of them in
terms of more mainstream mental
health
practices,
reflecting
my
learned American exceptionalism.
I’d commend Molly’s practices on
reaching the same conclusion as
the clearly more “correct” Western
medicine therapies.
When she first brought up “tapping,”
the skepticism remained. Tapping,
or emotional freedom therapy, is a
style of healing that involves tapping
on certain points of the body that are
believed to stimulate one’s life energy,
or Chi. Molly told me that anxiety and
depression can be caused by a stoppage
of energy flow. She said there are more
than 100 spots that could be touched
on the body to stimulate the flow of
energy; she gave me 11 of these spots
to start with.
Even a year later I remember her
final words on the technique: “The
best part is, you don’t need to believe
it’s working for it to work.”
So, in the tan chair with the broken
lever, I hesitantly began tapping. She
adjusted my form, because apparently
I was missing the imaginary spot on
my body that was going to stimulate
the imaginary life energy going
through my body.
I tapped and thought about what
was overwhelming me. I thought
about how certain I was about all the
terrible stuff coming my way, and how
uncertain I was about what my survival
plan was. Then, rather quickly, some
of those worries began to slip away.
The muscles in my neck unclenched
and the wave of impending things to
do and things done wrong started to
seem farther and farther away from
me.
I let out something like a gasp when I
was done, embarrassed at how pleased
I must have looked, and how clearly
not sold I was prior to the exercise.
“See?” she said, giving me a smile
that was equal parts I-told-ya-so and
glad-I-could-help.
To this day, I still tap. I tapped last
week when I heard norovirus was
back. I tapped on Jan. 20, for some
reason. I tap before plane rides, tests
and hard conversations.
Molly and her tapping therapeutic
powers helped me in two ways. The
first being the obvious one: giving me
this new tool to combat anxiety. The
second gift was a lesson in humility.
When I tap, it reminds me of how little
I know about how my body works.
It reminds me that maybe there is
Chi in my body that gets clogged up
sometimes, or maybe some of the
“certainties” in my life are things I’m
not so certain about at all.
I often get caught up in anxiety
about what my future holds. Tapping
is a much-needed reminder that more
often than not, I don’t actually know.