Over the last few weeks I have been working together 
with a client who has long experienced a phobia of balloons ― indeed a terror of them ― specifically a terror of the balloons’ potential to burst, and of their potential to bang without due warning. This fear had, over time, attracted other fears associated with objects that may burst and bang without prior warning signs, and thereby produce sudden and scary sounds and noises. The other ‘villains of inner peace’ were such harmless but noisy things as party-poppers and fireworks.
with a client who has long experienced a phobia of balloons ― indeed a terror of them ― specifically a terror of the balloons’ potential to burst, and of their potential to bang without due warning. This fear had, over time, attracted other fears associated with objects that may burst and bang without prior warning signs, and thereby produce sudden and scary sounds and noises. The other ‘villains of inner peace’ were such harmless but noisy things as party-poppers and fireworks. My client was born and raised in a country where weddings always feature party-poppers, and where fireworks are a familiar part of religious festas held regularly and annually in every village throughout Malta during several weeks and months of the year. I had just parked my car on the day prior to the client’s arriving for her fourth follow-up session when, before me, there appeared a bright red balloon on a stick. I was more than a little surprised by its mysteriously manifesting there because — in truth — the basement car park is not a place to discover a lost balloon. I wondered and I smiled.
Fifteen years ago, a comparable coincidence had cropped up. I was working with a client who had a phobia of moths ― indeed a terror of moths. She would not, and could not, even look at a picture of a moth in a natural history textbook. This innocuous winged creature was one that could not be named, nor spoken of. Her dilemma was that she was a writer, and specifically a writer of school text books. She was a freelancer and had been commissioned to write a text book on moths! Push had come to shove, and let’s call her Jane ― well Jane had found me.
For the curious, let me relate our journey on the very first session of interactive hypnotherapy. The client as a child at age nine had suffered an extreme fever ― a fever that had resulted in hallucinations and grave concern. Her grandmother had pulled a blanket from a wooden chest in the sick-room and swaddled the damp child in its embrace. As she did so a moth, fluttered from the folds, and the child perceived it ― as a winged-monster, looming, magnified in her mind, and multiplied ― a swarm around her ― not one , but a milling medley of moths. Such were the roots of her terror and her fear. Having accessed the truth of the matter in this first exploratory session, the truth did indeed immediately set her free ― at least to begin to practise looking at black and white images of moths, and so begin her research. A week after she had completed the therapy (I saw her four times) I was returning from lunch and discovered on the door of the basement practice, where I worked, two khaki-camoflage-coloured moths, huge and rather dramatic, lying utterly still upon the door. Initially stunned, I then immediately thought of Jane, and expressed relief that they had not appeared on the occasion of her first session! And then I realised something significant must have happened to Jane on that particular day. For a professional like myself to contact a client after the completion of therapy is rare. But this was a special moment. I called her and casually enquired, “How are you doing?” She answered, “This morning I was at the Horniman Museum, examining case displays of moths.” The Horniman Museum & Gardens is an institution in South London that hosts collections from nature and from arts and crafts, and where researchers study moths and butterflies.
In the book, Jung’s Map of the Soul, An Introduction, Murray Stein recounts the story of an incident that happened with a patient of Carl Jung’s. The patient had a dream in which a golden scarab beetle had appeared. As the patient and Jung were interpreting the dream, Jung became aware of sound outside the window, and when he looked, he discovered there, a Swiss version of the same kind of beetle (Cetonia Aurate), endeavouring to get into the room.
Referred to as synchronicity, these sorts of events in which an occurrence in the outside world and an occurrence in the inner world mirror each other, seem to happen to each of us and seemingly, particularly within the context of sub-conscious work.
Initially stunned when I saw the red balloon, I then of course thought of the Maltese client, and as I wrote earlier, wondered and smiled. I didn’t need to call to enquire as to whether something significant had happened to her on any particular day, for she had already sent a text. Delighted I had read, ‘I have blown up a red balloon. I will show you when I come for the session’.
Life is full of signs. Notice them and you feel yourself a part of the wonder of the world.
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