From Evil Eyes to a Beautiful Garden

How changing a decades old mental movie helped my client stop searching for danger

Dear Reader,

Let me tell you the tale of a woman who stopped seeing evil eyes in the darkness and learnt to appreciate the beauty of her garden instead.

Last Tuesday evening, my client - whom I will call Aurora - was sitting alone in her living room. She looked outside. It was dark but she could appreciate how the outdoor lights made her garden look like a piece of art.  This was a whole new experience for her. For the last several decades, this view was never about beauty. Whenever she looked at her garden at night, her brain would search the shadows for burglars hiding in the bushes. Every night, she would feel unsafe and close the blinds.

Her brain was constantly anticipating threats.  

But on Tuesday, she looked outside and thought that the garden was beautiful.

Years ago, Aurora was the victim of an armed attack. During the incident, she was standing outside when she was confronted by a gunman while members of her family were in the nearby house. Aurora managed to run away from the gunman back into the house and lock him outside, thereby protecting herself and her family. Decades later, one part of the experience remained particularly vivid: the man’s eyes and the sound of his voice.

Still after all this time, when Aurora looked through her bedroom window at night, her brain could recreate those eyes outside. She knew intellectually that the original attacker was not standing in her garden. Unfortunately, her body did not always agree with her mind, and it made her feel the same fear again.

Reflection: Do you have a past memory that takes you to an unresourceful state whenever you think about it?

Creating an anchor for calmness

Our first intervention focused on helping Aurora access a resource she already possessed.

She had practised yoga and meditation for years and could enter a deeply relaxed state relatively easily. As we explored what calmness felt like in her body, Aurora learnt to bring herself deliberately into that state. She linked the feeling of calmness to a small touch on her wrist—creating an anchor she could use later to help her mind and body return to calm.

During the following week, several unexpected noises occurred at night, including shelves collapsing that sent plastic glasses rolling through the house.

The fear returned, but this time the fear did not take control.

She used her anchor to remain calm, then checked the available evidence, established that she was safe and returned to sleep.

Reflection: When stress takes over, can you deliberately return to calm, or do you have to wait for calm to return to you?

Changing the movie

In our next conversation, we explored Aurora’s Meta-Place. Meta-Place is where you step out of the starring role in your mental movie and take a seat in the director’s chair. From there, you can notice how your mind is producing the experience, i.e. the images, sounds, meanings and feelings and consider what might need editing. Popcorn is optional.  

When she entered the Meta-Place, Aurora noticed what was happening within her when she remembered the eyes and the voice, and how her brain made her see and hear them. Not surprisingly her body interpreted the imagined image and sound as a present threat. Her body then responded as though she was actually threatened and she felt that same fear that ‘he is going to kill me’.

At this stage, we made an important distinction in that we were not trying to eliminate fear. Fear had helped Aurora act during a genuinely dangerous situation. We wanted her brain to distinguish between the fear from an external threat and that from an old ‘mental movie’.

So we changed the movie played by her mind in the present and how her body responded to it.

Aurora observed the remembered scene from a distance rather than experiencing it through her younger self’s eyes. Then I asked her to introduce something that would interrupt the attacker’s power over her and make the present-day movie amusing.

Aurora chose a snake.

She imagined the man approaching with the same intimidating expression and saying the same words. Then a snake emerged from the bushes. The man saw it, panicked and had a comical expression on his face before he ran away in fear.

The humour was not directed at the real event. There was nothing funny about that.

Instead, it changed the structure of the movie her brain was replaying now. The formerly powerful attacker became frightened, while Aurora became the person observing and directing the scene.

She created a small hand gesture representing the snake to anchor the new movie. If the old eyes appeared, performing the gesture prompted the revised ending: snake enters and the attacker runs away. This made Aurora feel calm and empowered.

Her homework was to practice mentally replaying this movie at least once daily until our next session.

Reflection: How often do you play memories or ‘movies’ in your mind? How do those movies make you feel? Do you want to learn to control those movies and the state they create in you like Aurora?

Then the movie stopped

Now Dear Reader, let us return to that Last Tuesday evening when Aurora spent several hours alone at home.

When she heard a strange noise outside, she noticed that neither her phone nor her watch had received an alert from the security cameras. Instead of entering threat-identification mode, she concluded that other people lived nearby, there could be animals outside, and sometimes those made noise.

Then she looked into the garden.

Her brain did not automatically imagine people hiding in the bushes of her garden. There was no fear to make her close the blinds and deprive her of her beautiful garden view.

She did not even need her meditative anchor or the snake gesture.

The old movie simply did not begin.

Aurora saw a beautiful garden and enjoyed the view. She was free from this fear.

Reflection: For Aurora, meaningful change meant being able to enjoy her garden. What would meaningful change look like in your everyday life?

A Meaningful Change

Two coaching conversations focused on this fear. That does not mean every longstanding fear will change in two sessions, nor does coaching replace psychological treatment for trauma.

But for Aurora, changing the movie associated with her memories and the state they put her in has changed the way she interprets the present, in a way that brings meaningful change to her everyday life.

Reflection: As you followed Aurora’s tale, did you recognise yourself? If so, I would love to hear about it.

Dear Reader, if you recognised one of your own mental movies in Aurora’s tale, click the Let’s Talk button on the top right to book a free 20-minute conversation and explore what may be keeping you stuck, and whether coaching is the right support for you.

Details have been changed or generalised to protect the client’s privacy. This experience is shared with her permission.