As Published In Whole Life Times, May 2000

The Sixth Sense and How We Deal With Fear
Judith Simon Prager, Ph. D.

Some say there are only two emotions or states of being from which spring all the others (anger, pain, loss, joy, envy, etc.): only fear and love. The value of love is well-known and yet inestimable. The price of fear -- well, that too, is beyond measure.

As a hypnotherapist working with clinical issues at major hospitals and with medical doctors, I see my share of fear. It is an emotion so overwhelming that it drains a person of energy, life force and power, as well as rational thought and wisdom. As soon as we are frightened of something, it calls the shots, it owns us.

In the motion picture The Sixth Sense, a young boy, Cole, is tortured by the appearance of ghosts who come at him from all directions and sometimes harm him. He hides in fear, but his condition worsens with each encounter. His psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe, asks the boy what the ghosts want from him. The boy considers the question and whispers, "Help. They want help." Crowe then suggests to the boy that when he sees them, he ask them directly what they want, and find out what he can do for them. *This is an elegant turn in the plot for many reasons, not the least because, without revealing the ending, it can be said that as Dr. Crowe helps the boy, the boy also helps him.

The major reason why this was such an important suggestion is that asking for communication with that which we fear switches the balance of power. It reduces the feared thing to a thing with a need. Our asking also presupposes that there is something we can do - an entirely different situation from the paralysis and helplessness of fear. And that communication can lead to healing.

When my clients are haunted by cancer and other life-threatening illnesses, they are wrapped in fear and believe themselves caught in an eternal battle in which they are the victim. This perception all by itself ultimately hurts them.

When they are in trance, I suggest that they commune with the cancer, ask it what it wants from them.

This approach can be accomplished even without trance, when one calls on the creative abilities with which we all were born -- before we "learned" to color within the lines and that there were no such things as imaginary friends. Becoming quiet, following the breath, one can get into a meditative frame of mind which allows questions to be asked and answered non-rationally, non-consciously. Here are two suggestions for reaching that part of you, if you wish to connect with and dialog with your fear.

Approach #1: Follow your breath, make it ribbon smooth, in and out, allowing thoughts and feelings to drift silently past as you go quietly inside. Now count down "three, two, one," tap yourself on the forehead between your eyebrows, and imagine whatever you "see" in your mind's eye as a representation of the thing that you fear. Whatever pops into your mind first -- and don't screen it or discount it -- will be the thing you use to have the discussion.

I'll show you how it works. One client of mine, whom I'll call Melissa, required allergy shots on a regular basis, but has experienced anaphalactic shock and now went into a panic every time she even thought of having the procedure done. When I counted down and tapped her forehead, she saw an apple, just a regular old apple. When we talked about it and asked the apple why it made Melissa faint and tremble when she had to get her allergy shots, it said in her mind, "Because I'm a rotten apple!" This opened the conversation, which led to a revelation that freed her of the phobia forever.

Another client actually saw her cancer as a kind of red Superman costume, which asked her to dance. She was shocked, but I encouraged her to do so, and so she said yes. They danced and talked, she learned what the cancer was trying to tell her, what she had been ignoring all these years, and they negotiated the possibility of its leaving if she changed her ways.

Approach #2: ask the question in a meditative state and write the answers with your opposite hand. At first, it might seem to be gibberish, or you might be struggling to form the letters, but let it keep coming and consider it another part of you that needs a voice and is finally getting one.

You may think this concept is fanciful, but I will tell you that in my presence, at least three people have reported that, using processes like these, when they went for their operation or final check up, the cancer was no longer there, much to the surprise of their surgeons. "I swear I had cancer when you came into my house, and that it was gone when you left," one said, asking her doctor, "didn't I have cancer?" when her operation proved there was none. "We thought so," was all he could reply. How the physical part of healing in an instant can happen, experts like Deepak Chopra have explained elsewhere -- that the body is really primarily void, with very little solid material in it, that each cell is renewed regularly and that we are 99% rebuilt every year. And, what's more, that the healing begins with a thought -- a thought that translates through neuropeptides into chemicals which lead to physical, material change.

A shift in thought happens when we allow our fears their needs and listen for their input, the message in the misery.

There are native tribes which use dreamwork in much the same way. If someone is chasing them in a dream, they are taught to stop and confront it with a question. Albert Einstein's major contribution to mind/body medicine was that he established that everything is relative to the observer. That has come to mean, in consciousness-parlance, that there is no reality "out there," but only our interpretation of it.

The Sixth Sense used the drama of ghosts to get broad public attention, but the message in the movie is very profound for freedom from fears of any kind. I have known of cancer patients who discovered that their cancer was a blessed wake-up call. "If I hadn't had to stop and see how much my family meant to me..." they muse, crediting what might have been the enemy with a positive meaning. Not only cancer, but as I suggested, phobias, other chronic illnesses and maybe even ghosts can be seen in a new light. Then, priorities change, every day has a unique value, and healing and curing can ensue.

We put the fear into the situation and we can take it out, by opening up the possibilities. The Sixth Sense made ultimate sense in suggesting that when we dialog with our fears, we open the door to transformation and healing.

Judith Simon Prager, Ph.D., is a clinical hypnotherapist who has designed a pilot program of pre-intra-and post- surgical CDs for the cardio-thoracic surgery unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and has trained physicians, firefighters, police officers, nurses and EMTs in healing language. She is also an instructor in the UCLA Writers' Program and believes that creativity is a key to a life worth living.

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