|
News From Leeds |
||||||||||
| Brian Gill: An Extraordinary Success Story I am 55-years-old and have been registered blind for  the past 12 years. When my condition was diagnosed I could not come to terms with it. I had to make some tough decisions. I could give up and vegetate, I could give up work and let the state keep me, or I could fight and put up with not being able to see.I went on a course with the RNIB for 3 months and came back having seen people who suffered from so much more. Blindness was secondary to them. I became a Samaritan for some time before my sight became too bad; I felt that I could help people like me. After some time I felt that I needed to think about my retirement. I do not see myself sat by the hearth waiting for death. I still had limited vision then and I was occupied with my work. I was engrossed with my family and, with their help, I enjoyed doing all the ‘normal' family things. O.K so I couldn't drive anymore but, my wife, Linda, would take me anywhere I wanted. Suddenly I realised I had less than 10 years to work and my eyesight had gone. I was terrified. All I could imagine before me was a long, boring time sitting in a chair and being afraid of moving in case I was in the way, and that was the best scenario. The worst didn't bare thinking about. I would be dead, possibly of boredom. I could not think of any hobby that didn't involve Linda taking more than a passing interest. I had become dependent on her and I didn't even realise it. We sat down as a family, Linda, Helen my daughter aged 27 and myself and tried to think of a hobby that I could do. Not fishing, I am terrified of water and the thought of sitting drowning worms for hours on end did not appeal. I can't sit and read without taking huge machines with me so a quiet read in the garden was out. I can't go for a walk on my own and Linda's arthritis makes it difficult to walk together. There didn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel. My wife has arthritis and lived on a diet of medication and steroid injections until a friend of hers gave her hypnotherapy. I saw how she became well again and a light came on. I decided to train, all I had to do was to find a trainer. Not easy when you are blind. With help from Linda, and after contacting lots of schools who said I couldn't do it, or they were totally unsuitable, I found The London College of Clinical Hypnosis on the Internet. They accepted my application. We found organisations that offered distance learning in hypnotherapy. I could not understand how that was done so we discarded them. Some advertised via a post office box number, I am not very trusting so that was definitely not for me. I rang some organisations and they sent their prospectus, on a photocopied piece of A4 paper. I don't want a lot but what I want has to be right. Some people that I rang said that blind people had no place in hypnotherapy, “How did they expect to be able to treat anyone?" I may be blind but I will not be told that I am a write off. I tried more organisations than I care to remember, and I began to feel that I was wasting my time when Linda said that she had found the LCCH. Am I glad she did? I read what she had printed from the Internet and decided to speak to them. Just one short telephone call later I felt that I may be able to learn hypnotherapy. I felt thrilled that some one else could see that being blind was only a slight problem if you are determined and have the back up of your family. I applied for the course and, after an interview when Francis told me that if I needed any extra help I only had to ask, I was accepted. |
At the same time, Linda, who has always had links with caring organisations, received a newsletter asking for disabled people to apply to SCOPE with an idea for a scheme that would benefit the local community. If it was good enough, funding was available (Millennium Award). She convinced me to apply. Linda is always more far-sighted than me. She seems to know what I am capable of and what I want to do before I do. We filled in a form and sent it off SCOPE, asked us to go to see them. When we got there they told us that they were interested in my idea. I wanted to create a clinical hypnotherapy practice that could travel to the client's home. I know how hard it is to get around and not everyone has Linda. They offered me funding for my course and expenses. T could claim for the transport to the client's homes. For the first year I need not charge. I was thrilled. The course, which started in March 2001, was held at Leeds Metropolitan University and Linda took me to the sessions there. She was allowed to sit with me to take notes and, if there was an odd number in class, she allowed herself to be hypnotised. An experience that she says she would not have missed for the world. She loved the relaxation that she got in class. I was terrified on the first day. Could a blind man get some one to look into his eyes? How would I know if they were? How would I cope? I hadn't counted on the determination by the LCCH that I would succeed. Linda and I devised a way of her squeezing my arm in time with breathing patterns and she would whisper into my ear when eye closure had been achieved. Francis and Dorothy who trained me were superb. If I needed anything they made sure that I got it. I got all the scripts early so that I could tape them for use in class. I used a small Dictaphone that has a one-ear headset so that I could hear the rest of the class and if I needed help I had a spare ear. This worked very well until one session when Linda, for some reason best known to herself, decided to tell me that I had eye closure into the ear with the ear-piece in. When I did not react she said again, into the same ear, “You have eye closure.”Luckily this time I felt her move and turned my head so that she could see my vacant ear and tell me again. She, for the first time in her life, was almost speechless when she realised how daft she had been. I was allowed to tape the sessions on my Dictaphone and I was encouraged to practice hypnosis on my classmates. They didn't seem to mind. In fact I never got a bad comment and they all assured me that they didn't notice when I was using my tape during sessions. They could not hear me stopping and starting the tape or searching for scripts halfway through a session. The months flew by and I was faced with an exam. Linda was allowed to be my scribe and she asked me the questions and marked off the answers for me. We were in a room of our own but were supervised just like the others. I then had to answer a number of questions put by the examiner and hypnotise a classmate. I did. The examiner was very interested in how my wife and I would cope with the breathing pattern etc. After our session he made a point of saying how interested in our technique he was and how well it had worked. The wait for the result seemed an eternity - I refused to plan ahead until I knew the results. I passed. I contacted our local Podiatry centre and they offered me a room to practice in for free for as long as my sponsorship lasted. Our local radio station interviewed me and the local Press were very interested. I even got a piece in the Yorkshire Post, no mean feat. Linda even found an article about me on teletext whilst she was looking for Party in the Park tickets for Helen, our daughter. I knew she wasn't looking for anything for me. If any other blind person wants a vocation or just wants a new pastime I can recommend the LCCH course and hypnotherapy. Go on give it a try. |
|||||||||
| Go to page 6 |
|
|||||||||