Home OP-ED The Value of Storytelling: Reversing a Downhill Life

The Value of Storytelling: Reversing a Downhill Life

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A client told me today she appreciated the vignettes I told. At 87, she understands a world my parents had taught me a lot about. This knowledge helped me to establish a wonderful connection with her. I was able to use these amazing stories of overcoming tremendous obstacles as motivation for her difficulties.

In her late 80s, she is beset with issues the aged experience, especially failing health themselves while a spouse is worse off. Her husband has undergone a significant mental deterioration. He is in a home. She visits him daily, reconciling herself to the truth. She is moving on, making a transition to life with her husband. 

Unless she is good within herself, she realizes she will be no good to others. This is why she is seeing me.

Hypnosis offers her a way to relax, alleviate her depression.  It helps her to view life positively.

Where the Accent Belongs

My stories emphasize unbelievable heroism under difficult circumstances. My idea: To understand we all have difficulties and the issue is how we deal with them.

One story is about how a gentlemen escaped out his back door while the Gestapo broke down the front door and arrested his parents, whom he never saw again. He arrived in England, flew in the RAF, eventually returning to his homeland where he ran a carpet factory successfully for three years until it was forcibly taken from him at gunpoint by the new communist government.

Forced to flee with his wife and eight-month-old old son, settled in England where he became a successful importer and exporter of carpets.

Another was about a Jewish gentleman who left Germany at 12, his bicycle tires bulging with as much money as they could hold to help his family escape. There was a German Jewish man who owned linen factories employing 22,000 people. Forced by the Nazis to escape, he went to England.  Blond, blue-eyed, 6-foot-3, he spoke perfect German. Sent back into Germany as a British spy, he  was involved in escapades of great importance. 

To this day, the government will not release the reports of his missions.

There was a Jewish woman who became a governess to a wealthy Italian family in 1938. When the war started, the family looked after her until she was able to gain passage to England where she met her husband. They had two children and made a life. Lesson: She made something of her life regardless of the hostility.

A Very Happy Ending

A child of Jewish immigrants in the United Kingdom, this young girl never had her own bedroom, always having to share a room with her sister. Her parents opened their apartment to any indigent Jew seeking a new start after the war. She wrote a book, “The House Next Door to Trauma,” the gold standard for therapists who wanted to help those who had survived the concentration camps and other war-related traumas.

The author founded a home for retired Jews. Queen Elizabeth recently pronounced her a dame. 

There always is a positive story whenever you look for it. It is temptingly easy to be negative.

But when you hear inspirational stories, you realize you can be as successful as you want, regardless of circumstances.

All it takes is a mental picture of what you want, the knowledge to attain it. Create a plan. Work the plan.

We all have difficulties. In the end, we overcome our challenges. A great view of oneself would be, I am not as good as some but better than others. Know what you want. Then get it.

Do not hesitate to contact me by telephone, 310.204.3321, or by email at nickpollak@hypnotherapy4you.net. See my website at www.hypnotherapy4you.net