Yesterday I drove 300 miles home to Glasgow on the M6, which is the major road artery from England to Scotland. It was a perfect autumn day, the warmest on record, and the scenery was stunning. I noticed how good I felt. Then it occurred to me that a few years ago the idea of a similar journey was utterly overwhelming. Overwhelming to the point that when my children and I were invited to holiday with another family in Oxford, which would have involved this same drive, I was completely freaked out. [In fact I developed severe tonsillitis and couldn’t go.] It hadn’t always been like that. I learned to drive young, rode a motorbike, loved the freedom of going on a trip and frequently headed off to new destinations in the course of work.
The phobia of driving long distances on busy roads just appeared one day and hung around for quite some time. It was a peculiar side effect of the chronic anxiety I was feeling at that time.
What I saw yesterday was that the passing of my M6 phobia occurred in the same way that many changes have after learning about the 3 Principles: effortlessly and invisibly.
My last road phobia occurred just as I had that life changing introduction to the Principles. I spent a week in Italy obsessing about a drive back to the airport, down a mountain road, using snow chains. My anxiety cast a big shadow over the holiday.
I didn’t discuss the issue with anyone, but about 18 months later I had to make a long journey with my kids. It was only 2 days after my mothers funeral and I had to drive nearly 1000 miles from Glasgow to Oxford to London and back again. And it was a wonderful trip. Not only was the motorway phobia gone but it didn’t even occur to me that it might be a problem. In fact it was only yesterday when I had an insight about the whole thing, that the extent of the turnaround struck me.
Now I make the trip several times a year, without anxiety. Such transformations often occur for clients and feel similarly natural and even unremarkable. Perhaps that effortlessness is one of the reasons that the power of the 3 Principles is frequently under appreciated.
If you are experiencing anxiety and would like to have a confidential conversation please give me a call.