M&M: Poltergeist

Dear reader,

welcome to another “Movie of the Month! Today: Poltergeist. The film cam out in 1982. Just now I am reminded of „The Exorcist“. But when I thought of horror films I know, the first that came to mind was “Poltergeist“. Apart from the films, there's also a so-called “Poltergeist curse“. More on that later on.

“Poltergeist” is about a family with 3 children. The bird of the youngest daughter, Carol Ann (Heather O’Rourke) dies and is buried in the garden. The brother, Robbie (Oliver Robins) and the older sister, Dana (Dominique Dunne) make a bit of fun about that. In the night Carol Ann sits in front of the gray, static transmitting tv and announces her famous line, “They're here!” There are other strange (for now) harmless things happening in the house. Chairs move by themselves and Carol Ann can slide on the kitchen floor, but fast as if moved by some force. One night a big tornado makes the family wake up and Carol Ann disappears. She's sucked into her wardrobe. But she's not entirely gone. The family can still hear her and talk to her over the tv.

Of course scientists have to come and help the family. The whole thing looks like “Ghost Busters” from the characters, but the atmosphere is scary and intense more like “The Exorcist”. Strange things happen, especially in Carol Ann's room, which the family doesn't dare to enter anymore. The scientists suspect a poltergeist more than a classic haunting for starters. They call upon the help of the medium Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein) as last resort. Her rescue mission almost goes wrong, they get Carol Ann to the right side just in time. But the strange phenomenon don't stop here. In a thunderstorm night the mother goes out to get help from the neighbours when she slides into the muddy swimming pool, from which dead corpses suddenly appear. The family planned to move anyway. This night was supposed to be the last in the house. But they move to a hotel that very night.

If you don't want to know, why the ghost problems happen, skip the following paragraph. I can't help, but write it, because it's one of my favourite scenes of the film!

In the final stormy night, the father suddenly remembers a remark from his boss, a real estate broker. They planned a new estate and for that they want to move the graveyard. But the company will do it the easy way: they'll only move the headstones. The phenomenons the poor family has to endure, are the revenge of the restless souls buried under their house. So the father goes to his boss and screams, “You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn't you? You son of a bitch! You left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones! Why?! Why?!”

The final scene of the film has the whole family moving into the hotel room. The father stands outside for a bit longer and then follows the others inside, closing the door behind him. Shortly after that he opens the door again, shifts the small tv, which is on wheels, outside the room and closes the door again. A tv truly is the last thing that family needs now.

And now the “Poltergeist curse”: Like so many successful films, there were sequels to “Poltergeist”. But Dominique Dunne, who played the older daughter, never lived for them. She got killed the same year “Poltergeist” came out, killed by her ex-boyfriend. Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Ann, died in 1988, while shooting “Poltergeist 3”. She died from an acute bowel obstruction, which had also led to a septic shock after bacterial toxins invaded her bloodstream. Which makes Oliver Robins to be the last surviving child actor. William Sampson played in “Poltergeist 2”. He died after complications following a surgery. The actor Julian Beck played in “Poltergeist 2” and died in 1985, two years after being diagnosed with stomach cancer. Curse or not? You decide.

Until next blog,
sarah

Freedom Today

Dear reader,

in a time today where half of the world seems to be on facebook, I see my freedom exactly in not being on facebook. Although I do have a mobile phone (cell phone, for some of my readers) and even one with a land line number, it's the only way to contact me all the time, if you wanted. The only four exceptions are: 1) when I'm taking a shower, 2) I'm out to do some quick shopping or 3) I don't hear my phone, likely because I'm out and listening to too loud music on my ipod or 4) I can't reach it in time.

It's a bit strange that my mobile phone is the best way to contact me instantly of all possible ways. Because I generally don't like phoning that much and I prefer writing or talking to people directly.

Most people, with whom I have communicated or still am communicating using chat programs, have the decency to write me when they're leaving when they're on invisible status. Many people I know, who use that status, have their good reasons for it. I only feel sorry that they're always the one writing to me and I don't have the possibility to be the one to contact them first. I don't know if they're there or not. For all I know, judging by their status, they could just as well be gone or have turned off their computer all together, just as their status suggests they're “off”. Luckily that only happened to me on few occasions.

For me what tops off the invisible status is being online with (hooray!) smartphones all the time now. That way some people are (almost) constantly online with chat programs, but with away status. Considering their status to be true, I don't write to the very most people in that case. Either they're really not on their phone or computer or don't want to be disturbed. So I don't write to them. Which is fine with me. Honestly. It only makes me wonder, why they're online still.

The answer quite possibly is facebook. Half of the world (at least) is on facebook, so I have to be, too. Ever more people have a smartphone and with that a phone that connects them to the internet. So it's the possibility to be online, especially on facebook, where most people are online almost all the time. Or is it not? Panic, when the battery of the smartphone gives up unexpectedly and one is out somewhere without the possibility to recharge. I can't read anymore what others have written to me on facebook! Boohoo! On the wikipedia page on facebook, under the section Criticisms_and_controversies, you'll find a 2013 study on why people quit using facebook. 48% said it was privacy concerns. It is the main reason why I don't even want to register there. Followed by what can be read under reception, that companies fired employers after keeping an eye on employers facebook accounts and firing them for what they posted there. Thanks, but no thanks. I don't need that. 6% of the study on quitters of facebook said that facebook is addictive. Thanks, I'm happy with the internet as addiction already. Whoever wants to get in touch with me, can call me, write me an e-mail or chat with me with a chat program. I do not need to register on a website, to keep in touch with my friends. The real world is still out there, away from screens, where you can see the whole person and do stuff in the real world.

In the first episode of the 11^th Doctor in “Doctor Who” (The Eleventh Hour), aliens darken the sun for the humans on earth and prepare to incinerate the earth. The Doctor stands outside and watches the people, who have nothing better to do than taking pictures of the sun or filming it on their cameraphones. The comment of the Doctor to all of that personally makes me very sad, “Oh and here they come. The human race. The end comes, as it was always going to... down a video phone.”
Call me egoistic, arrogant, old fashioned or whatever negative description you can think of. But I myself do not want to be part of a society, in which I have to be on call online always and all the time and even though I write this blog here online, I do not have to record every single tiny bit of my life online. In the episode “The Bells of Saint John” (season 7, episode 7) in a quiet moment, the Doctor describes the situation so far, the way he understands it as follows, “This whole world swimming in Wi-Fi. We're living in a Wi-Fi soup! Suppose something got inside it. Suppose there was something living in the Wi-Fi, harvesting human minds, extracting them. Imagine that. Human souls trapped like flies in the World Wide Web, stuck for ever, crying out for help.” Clara's comment on that, “Isn't that basically Twitter?”

Everybody vanish in the internet. Everyone, register yourself on facebook and twitter. I won't know what's going on for you then, because I'm not registered on either of that. But what the heck. If communication today gets reduced to facebook and twitter, then this here is my good-bye to you. Maybe we'll see each other again when the world stops existing or maybe already when the third world war broke out. I have a hunch neither of that might happen online exclusively.

Until next blog,
sarah

Better Be Many

Dear reader,

before the movie "The Silence of The Lambs" there was the same-titled book by Thomas Harris and before that book was the book "Red Dragon". (The latter being filmed twice, by the way, once in 1986 with the title "Manhunter" and William Petersen as the lead role of the investigator and Brian Cox as Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The movie from 2002 has Edward Norton as the investigator and Anthony Hopkins in his staring role as Dr. Hannibal Lecter.) "Red Dragon" is about the former FBI agent Will Graham. He became famous after helping identifying Lecter as the offender and then catching him.

The former supervisor visits Graham and seeks his help in the brutal murder of two families. He notices that during the intense conversation, Graham uses more and more of the rhythm and syntax of his dialogue partner. Graham doesn't do that intentionally to build a good connection between them, but unconsciously.

I noticed that and it happened to me, too. Once I was at my aunt's in Hamburg for about a week and after two or three days, I noticed, that I was talking in a different way. Back home I was talking my own usual way again.

Budding people of the social field, such as therapists, are told to notice the voice, rhythm, speed and use of words of their clients and adjust their own way of speaking accordingly. It creates sympathy on an unconscious level and a connection between the people talking to each other.

There's this saying that dogs often look like the owner. Which is no surprise, especially if they had been living together already for a long time. Adjusting doesn't only happen on a verbal level, but also with looks or gestures and body posture. Sometimes consciously, more often unconsciously.

Trends are set that way, too. We like a person and we like what he or she is wearing or how they are wearing it, so we start to do as they do. For many years I used to wear my wrist watch with the face on the inner side of my wrist. I had seen Bruce Willis wearing his wrist watch that way in many movies and also Matt Smith in his portrayal of the 11th Doctor in "Doctor Who" in at least two episodes, checks his wrist watch with the face on the inner side of his wrist. For some weeks, also analog to the 11th Doctor, I'm wearing a pocket watch. I don't wear my wrist watch anymore at this moment. No, it's not the owl wrist watch I have bought in april. It's a proper pocket watch with clipper to clip it to the brim of the pocket and a chain. I was especially thinking of Derren Brown and hypnotists generally, of whom you'd almost expect to waggle a pocket watch in front of your eyes to make you go into a trance. So my pocket watch has nothing to do with the Doctor!!!

Such things can work like little lucky charms or nervers. At least they do for me. Wearing a scarf the way Benedict Cumberbatch does as Sherlock Holmes for example. Maybe a purple scarf, purple being Milton Erickson's favourite colour...

David Calof was a student of Milton Erickson. In his audio set "Hypnotic Techniques", he starts by saying that "I'm one of those people, who believe that Ericksonianism died in 1980, when Erickson died and that we're actually in a post Erickson era." So he wouldn't stand here saying he was Ericksonian. Although he had the privileg of studying with him. He isn't Ericksonian. He is Calofian, he supposed. For starters, that's a funny thing to say and maybe a bit arrogant, too. One might argue whether or not Ericksonianism could have been done only by Erickson himself and indeed died with Erickson. The most "absolute" form of it certainly did. Erickson as a human and therapist was unbelievably complex and multilayered. Not one single person alone will completely "get" him and internalise it for themselves. To be like him for the sake of his genius and to act like he did, would only be a copy. Erickson was very creative and revolutionised the psyotherapy and hypnotherapy of his time. It's certainly worth checking out his way of working and how he did things. In the end however, everybody should find their own way of doing therapy. It would be sad, only to be a cheap copy of somebody else. Especially since there isn't just Erickson, who did good works with his approaches. Calof said it, too, that he learned the limitations of Erickson's model. (Sadly, for me anyway, he doesn't go on about what those limitations are. I would like to know, where he thinks the limitations are.)

Also, as much as you as a therapist might prefer one therapy over another or one method within a certain therapy over another, not every person responds to this one method the same positive way. That would be boring for therapists, too, because then they would all only learn this one kind of therapy and then treat everyone this same way and heal and help them that way. That would be boring, wouldn't it? As Betty Alice Erickson, one of Milton Erickson's daughters, put it in an interview with Paul Anwandter, " You can't have a rule of psychotherapy that applies to everyone."

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession." That same way we should respect the other person's individuality and not want to be like one single other person. At its worst, we'll be a "cheap copy" quite literally and at best people would still talk about as as some one like xy.

When I was a kid I had a blanket with all sorts of squared samples sewed together. One beautiful, colourful patch work blanket. That's what I wold wish for us all, that we become a colourful patch work person in the things we do, our way of thinking and the way we look. Taking individual aspects of many, different people and utilise them in a useful way. Everything else would be boring, cheap copies. Nobody needs those.

Until next blog,

sarah

Sleeping fast... if you want it and remember...

Dear reader,

how about this: a night owl writes about how to fall asleep fast. Well, that's me right now, right here! I like the night, because it's quiet, calm and peaceful. The hectic of the day is gone. I get creative a lot of times at night.

Actually much like with my current way of dealing with pain, my fast sleep method is borrowed. It's an idea I heard from Richard Bandler. He says, the problem insomniacs have is that they give themselves bad suggestions. They talk to themselves in their head in a fast and hectic voice ("Talk to themselves in their head? I don't do that!" That's exactly the talking in your head I'm writing about.) and go on about "can't get to sleep" on and on. Of course you're never going to get to sleep that way! It comes close to the old "don't think of a pink elephant". Okay, you may also keep yourself awake thinking about the past or the future or both. Whatever it is, it's no good, because you're keeping yourself awake when you should sleep!

So Bandler's idea is to slow down your inner voice. I don't think I've talked about this to someone face to face yet. It was always online somehow. Lately what I think worked best as an explaination is to remind people of when one person starts yawning, you start yawning, too. So if you talk fast, you can't get to sleep. Slow down your inner voice, make it sleepy and you'll fall asleep with it.

If people say they have trouble falling asleep, I always ask them what's going on in their head. So I don't right away go into "slow down your dialogue". I had one person, who told me that she saw images in her head. Like a movie where she'd "replay" the day or see what would be happening the next day and stuff like that. I told her to slow down the movie. Make it slow motion, like they did with the Matrix movies in the fight scenes. Slow it all down. I don't know if Bandler ever suggested that. I only remember him talking about the dialogue. But it made sense to me to tell her to slow down the movie, if she had pictures in her head.

I sometimes lay in bed late at night and can't get to sleep, mind you. This technique is something that requires discipline. When I can't get to sleep, I don't look at the clock. I know it'll only make it worse. It'll start me going: "Oh my, it's x now. I really have to go to sleep now!" It's useless dialogue, so I don't even go there and don't check on the time. Instead I go: "There you are again. You know what to do." And even with the second sentence, I'll start slowing down. I may even go back to other thoughts I've been thinking, but it'll be slow and maybe a yawn or two as well...

Like with many other NLP techniques, it's all about hitting that point of "Stop it. I want something else." Sometimes it even takes me some time to get to that point. But when I do, I get to sleep quite fast from there on.

Until next blog,
sarah