My Personal Experience

of  P.S.H. Therapy   (George Gintilas)

At that third month I remembered my second P.S.H. session. (My conscious mind caught up in a way.) I remembered at one point noticing that my left temple began to burn, very hot. It felt like it was glowing at one stage and I felt embarrassed that the therapist would be able to see this. He didn't of course, it was all happening internally, it just felt that way. It felt like someone had placed a blow torch to my temple from the inside and turned it on. It didn't feel like it was me doing it. Of course it was me, a deeper part of me that my conscious mind was not tracking.     

When I would have migraines they would start off like a little headache in my left temple, grow till they were like a hammer hitting there, then spread to the whole of my head and that would be the end of my day. And until I threw up the pain would remain, and if I didn't throw up, it would linger for three days.  

I realised three months later that the burning sensation in my left temple was probably the migraines healing. I'm not sure, but that's the conscious mind's analysis of it and it doesn't matter. Whether I ever know how I created them and what the cause was doesn't really matter at this time. They are practically gone and it feels real. I have some very good theories about what causes them but in P.S.H. terms, the theory is not what's healing them.   

After noticing the change with the migraines it became a little easier to give the P.S.H. sessions twelve months to work themselves (myself) through.

Four months went by, five, six, seven, eight, I was beginning to think the fear would never go. It was still there like always, trembling away, up and down my spine. I had begun to plan what else I could do after twelve months to free myself of this fear/anxiety. But I was still committed to allowing twelve months to see what could fully happen. There was no sign of anything shifting so even though my conscious mind had given up I was still going to give it the full twelve months. 

After nine months I woke up one day and I'll never forget this. I sat up in bed and thought to myself, "everything seems quiet". Something was different. Then I realised that my whole spine up and down my body was 'still', like a placid lake. Totally calm!

And it's been that way ever since. Over three years later.

The only way to explain it, is that what was probably happening over the nine months, bit by bit, very subtly, things were releasing, changing inside myself. I was doing it, but I didn't know how consciously. After a brief subtle sense of it in my belly in the first few months, I can't recall much else happening. Yet all I can assume is that it was still happening. I was doing it, very subtly, in the way it needed to be done and in the time it needed to take. And nine months later, seemingly 'overnight', it was gone. 

A few weeks after this fear had gone I was invited to be the guest speaker at a Rotary Club meeting, to talk about P.S.H. and what it was. I was the after-dinner speaker. I had never been to a Rotary club meeting, the only person I knew there was the person who invited me. Normally I would be a nervous wreck, trembling over the dinner not being able to converse very much as I'd be rehearsing the first few lines of my talk in my head, so it could come out parrot fashion, because I knew as soon as I stood up my mind would go blank. 

Normally giving a public speech, my legs would turn to jelly, my breathing would choke in my chest, my voice would quiver (this was the worse because people could hear it!), my mind would go blank, and I'd sometimes go a bit red. Overall, I'd just be SO NERVOUS! all over. 

I did three public speaking courses over the years to combat it and they helped tremendously. I highly recommend them. They gave me a very good 'shell' to cope with the nervousness. So good that many times if I'd prepared right, no one would tell that I was nervous. The outer me would look great, but internally the fear would be raging, but in check, taking a lot of energy to keep it together. 

Speaking courses are not designed to deal with releasing the real deep down emotional causes of anxiety. They are not therapy.  

Again, this talk, I'll never forget. I was completely relaxed over the dinner, eating away with not a nervous bone in my body. My conscious mind was thinking, "this is weird, what's going on? why am I not nervous? what's happening?, this isn't me!". But my body had other ideas now, much better ones.

There were no nerves at all. It literally felt like I was waiting for someone else to give the talk, where all I had to do was just sit there all cosy, safe and snug and be entertained.

I got introduced, I got up, faced the audience and waited for all the skills and my coping shell to kick in to cover the fear. It wasn't needed for the first time ever that I can remember. I was so relaxed I didn't know what to do for the first 15-20 seconds. My mouth was slightly 'dropped open' in awe, taking in this new experience of just 'being me' up in front of an audience, especially one I knew little about.   

I began to talk and the talk flowed. I was probably too relaxed because I hadn't yet adjusted my 'doing' behaviour to my new 'feeling' behaviour. 

With all the courses and books I'd read about public speaking fear, I kept coming across the concept of the 'butterflies in the belly' how they are normal and not to worry about them. I had no idea what the experience of that was even though I'd heard it described over and over. Well at the Rotary talk I finally knew for the first time what it was. I finally felt the butterflies in my belly and quickly realised why I could never feel them before. Because in the past MY WHOLE BODY WAS SHAKING BUTTERFLIES!  

These 'new' butterflies were normal. They related to the audience here and now, where there were about thirty-three business people, and I only knew one. I had never been to a Rotary Club meeting, had I prepared right? would it all make sense? were they too conservative to 'get it'? Normal questions creating normal butterflies in the belly. Keeps you on your toes to adjust to your audience at a moments notice. But anything more nervous than that is purely old patterns from the past playing out in a way that helps nobody. 

That Rotary experience confirmed for me that the fear and old anxiety was gone. Without thinking about it I had cured myself of my fear of public speaking. I had no idea that the everyday inner trembling fear that I experienced daily and wanted to clear had anything to do with the fear of public speaking, or with confidence, or with sexual drive.  

These were all 'side benefits' that came with the therapy. 

Everyone's experience of P.S.H. therapy is of course different, 
this was mine.

Update 2010: Fear of public speaking is still nonexistent, 10 years on. I have given many talks to much larger audiences, around the world. And the above results still apply.