Ever had a recurring dream? Amongst all the millions of dreams we have, we are reported to dream on average seven times a night, is there one theme that comes back time after time. I fly a lot using my arms as wings, and fall off cliffs without ever reaching the bottom. That is normal isn't it? I mean, that is basic dreaming, doh! But there is one dream I loathe, the one that probably makes me thrash about and make funny noises in my sleep.
I am walking through a forest. It is heavy going and every now and then I stumble and have to hold onto something to prevent falling. I am making progress when I begin to fall again and I reach out to a branch which turns into a giant snake before I can pull my arm back.
Its okay, I wake up. George Orwell, in his book 1984, wrote of a room where no matter what your will, no matter what your resolve, you could be broken and tell your deepest secrets as if you had been given truth serum. Room 101. Throughout the story, the thought of Room 101 fills the reader with fear. Even Winston Smith the main character is not as fearful as the reader as Winston believes he will be too strong for them. But Winston has a weakness that even he has forgotten. He is phobic about rats.
Winston eventually makes it to Room 101, smugly, he has not been broken yet and there is nothing more they can do to break his will. They have made a cage which they fit to his head. Leading from the cage is a passage with a small door. Behind that is another chamber filled with rats, teeth gnashing vile and hideous.
“They have not been fed for a week Mr Smith. They will be pleased with a snack” Check mate. Winston is broken by his phobic fear his Achilles heel. I knew at that point in the book I too would have been broken as they would know my phobic tender point, snakes.
We lived in New Zealand where the only dangerous creature is a female spider that lives under driftwood on remote West Coast beaches and even then, it is venomous for two months of the year only. Reportedly there have been 3 deaths as a result of the bite ever. In actuality, there are only three things that can hurt you in New Zealand; your own stupidity, someone else's stupidity or being hit by a falling meteorite, and NZ is not the only place with that worry. Snakes are just not on the agenda. What a fabulous country!
Even in a country wonderfully free of snakes, I was still uneasy with my phobia. A rational man with an acute fear of something he did not even have to worry about seemed slightly irrational, not something I liked. I had learned a little about desensitization, or graduated exposure therapy and thought I would give it a try. Essentially, one must learn some relaxation techniques, ways to reduce anxiety and then start by imagining the thing you are fearful about but at a safe distance. This distance is equivalent to how far away you can imagine your fear without it causing you distress. In my case it was as far away as another country. Luckily New Zealand does not hold snakes in zoos so I did not have to worry about one escaping. So Australia would be okay. 1500 kilometers away across a tumultuous section of ocean. The reason why NZ was free from snakes in the first place. That was okay, I could cope. Once you can cope with this you slowly make the distance shorter. But no hurry, Australia is fine for now
So far so good but then I landed a job that required travel to Australia.
Luckily I began traveling to the larger cities. A low hazard I figured. I doubted the hotel concierge would tolerate a brown or tiger snake wrapped around the obligatory lobby specimen tree. I still checked the drawers and under the bed, just in case.
I was viewing surgery at a hospital in the leafy suburb of Lane Cove in Sydney and did not finish until eight o'clock one night. I needed to walk back to the hotel. This journey, whilst only a mile or so, took me sometime as I had to walk around each tree of the many that lined the Avenue, in case a snake fell out on me, as well as carefully checking the ground in front of me. I did make it though. My Aussie colleagues never knew this but my Aussie wife, my second wife, when I told her many years later, gave a standard Australian reaction.
