117. Fear of being psychotic

PERSON: woman.
DESCRIPTION: iatrogenic fear; "a physician has tried as much as possible to refer me to his wife for a psychiatric treatment, and since that moment I live with a deep fear of being psychotic; then I wanted immediately to see a neurologist, who found me normal; so I told him that I still had fear, and he replied that hearing another opinion would have been beneficial for me, so he referred me to a colleague, a psychiatrist, who diagnosed just some anxiety, and confirmed that I didn't need any drug, and that I could live in peace; but I still felt my fear, so the psychiatrist referred me to another colleague, this time a psychologist, who told me that I'm OK, and that I'm worrying too much, and that I should calm down because I'm fine". Her questions to me about hypnosis, and my explanation: "if you train yourself, then you can easily become more calm with adequate exercises".
APPROACH: generic and preliminary hypnotic training in order to "assess by herself what to do with this issue"; slow but growing general retardation, mixed with spontaneous but fragmentary and mysterious verbalization ("dog bite.. broken leg.. died frog"), and then long silence and deep calmness. My comment: "now that you are very quiet, you can recognize that when we are weak the bad things that happen to us can be experienced as very frightening"; emotional explosion from her part, with great joy: "but then.. I.. then I am not psychotic!!".
RESULT: partial inexplicable serenity, and new appointment within the next two weeks for further hypnotic exercises.
UPDATE (2 months): appointment canceled by her because unnecessary; no further news.

Copyright © Alberto Torelli. All rights reserved. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED.