Day 9: In Flight With Angela Lord and the Ruby-Encrusted Seagull

Date: 2010.03.08 | Category: Uncategorized | Tags:

Angela Lord knows how to manifest. I won’t give any of her personal secrets away but I can tell you that one day she was in a certain situation – and it ended. And she told the universe how she felt and what she wanted next – and she got it the very next day. And what she got was very powerful and life-changing.

Angela is a Master Hypnotherapist, an NLP Master Practitioner, a TIME Techniques Master Practitioner, an Emotional Freedom Techniques Practitioner and Master Success Coach. Whatever. Check out her site here. She’s also a close friend of a close friend of mine and she offered me a free hypnosis session to help me end my candy addiction.

It’s always weird to get on the couch – even when it’s just over the phone – with someone you don’t really know and whom you’ve never met. Weird, embarrassing – and also full of stuff that makes me feel rebellious while also trying people-please at the same time. (See also: candy addict personal traits.)

I resisted Angela. Not that she wasn’t utterly charming. “Great,” she kept cooing in this lovely voice after every question she asked me. Angela is not fazed by my candy addiction. She doesn’t think it’s that hard to overcome.

Angela is not a believer in the 12-step tradition in which you have to accept powerlessness over your addiction and spend the rest of your life in meetings.

“I’m a one-step girl,” she says.

In fact, Angela talked a lot about the work of Allen Carr, who has written a hugely popular book about the Allen Carr “easy way” to stop smoking and other addictions.

She suggested that I could become free of my sugar cravings overnight under hypnosis. She may be right. But what I told her was that I think it’s more complicated than that. I think my candy addiction has a lot more to do with things not involving candy addiction, if that makes any sense. I know I have a loyalty to my candy addiction which makes me wonder if one hypnosis session can really cure it.

No matter. Angela and I talk a bit more and then she tells me about how she’s going to put me under. This is when I start worrying – not for me but for her. See, my concern now is that I have to make sure this works for me – so she will be happy. (See also: codependent candy addict traits.)

Also, this worrying about other people and pleasing other people can ignite a real rage in me. Which is probably why I eat so much candy.

Anyhoo, back to the hypnosis session and the calming, dulcet tones of Angela who doesn’t sound as if she ever erupted in an inappropriate rage at anybody.

She started asking me a lot of questions as I slowly went under, even though as I was going under I was wondering if I was really going under or just imagining I was to please Angela.

She began asking me what my life would be like without a candy and sweets addiction. She wanted me to project a year into the future and tell her what I saw as I looked down at my body, what I was wearing, who was watching me, what I smelled — and who else was around.

I squirmed and inwardly rebelled, even as I was going under for real. It feels so much like submission, this hypnosis stuff. Ugh. I like to be in control. (See also: candy addict defects of character.)

I forced myself to answer the questions, even though I felt fake and forced and stiff. She kept cooing in this soothing, all-knowing cool girl voice.

I did start seeing myself in my skinny jeans -which I have not worn since 2004. I did see a 4-year-old child near me in the picture. I did keep seeing myself at the beach in Santa Monica, which is 9000 miles from where I am now. And I did – sorta smell some vanilla in the air.

After about 15 minutes, I guess I really was under, despite my hyper self-awareness. My eyes were closed. I felt totally relaxed.

Because I became aware of just one thing: Angela’s voice. There didn’t seem to be anything else there.

Until the next moment.

In the universe-sky inside my closed eyes, I saw something distinctly fly by:

It was a soaring seagull with a vivid, red ruby-encrusted coat.

Not 10 seconds later I heard the wail of a real seagull, the ones that fly up from the Bay of Angels here in Nice and alight upon my terrace.

I told Angela. She wasn’t surprised. She told me about other people, places and things that her clients have manifested while under her ether — and later come true in real life.

“How do you feel?” Angela asked as she brought me out of my seagull-adorned trance.

“I feel good,” I said. “I feel lighter. As if I can already feel myself without this extra weight.”

And I wasn’t saying that just to please her.

I don’t know if I’ve been cured of my candy addiction overnight – but I do feel as if it’s never going to be quite the same.

5 Responses to “Day 9: In Flight With Angela Lord and the Ruby-Encrusted Seagull”

Michelle Locke 10/03/08 23:39

Fascinating! I don’t know that I’ll ever look at the seagulls that swoop over Berkeley in quite the same way.
Angela Lord 10/03/09 02:56

Thanks, Dana! And here’s the thing: hypnosis and other modalities will support you in choosing to make healthier eating choices. But no one can make you choose to commit to making healthier eating choices, or to honor your commitment to yourself. You get to make those choices. (Unless maybe you hire someone to hold you constantly at gunpoint, threatening to shoot you if you reach for the Reese’s Pieces. That might be kind of a stressful way to go, though. And probably expensive.)

It sounds to me like you haven’t made that choice yet. It sounds like there’s a secondary gain there for you — a benefit to eating candy that outweighs the benefits of not eating candy — that has prevented you, so far, from fully choosing this path. You might want to look boldly at yourself, and see what that benefit is — it might not be terribly comfortable to find out, but it will certainly be enlightening. The first benefit that occurs to me is Angst — there wouldn’t be very much drama in your blog if you were to just up and stop eating sugar, easily and effortlessly! So you might be faced with the question of whether the benefits of vitality, leanness, boundless energy, and fitting into your skinny jeans are worth giving up the drama. Or whatever your secondary gain is. You may find out that it’s not worth it! That would be worthwhile to know, one way or the other, wouldn’t you say? To avoid a whole year of struggling in vain trying to choose something you don’t really want to choose?

The good news is that there are ways to resolve that inner conflict and feel fabulous. The first step is determining the nature of that conflict. What’s the purpose of the part of you that doesn’t want to give up sugar? You might well ask.
Emily 10/03/09 03:04

It’s funny how much I identify with what you’re feeling about candy. I just put up a post about how my eating (yes, I, too, am into sweets of all kinds and trying to cut back) is related to anger. I’m interested to see how this hypnosis thing turns out!
Angela Lord 10/03/09 03:11

There’s also that rebellion thing you spoke of — the sense of being in control — that might be worth looking at. “No one’s gonna tell ME what to do, dagnabit!” your unconscious, little-girl self may be asserting. Not even your conscious mind!

If that’s the case, or something like it, it might be worthwhile to help resolve that old out-of-control feeling — you may find that when you do that, your sugar cravings just *poof*! disappear.
DK 10/03/09 09:56

Thanks so much for your continuing comments and support, Emily. Where can I find your blog to see that post of yours that you mention? Dana