There's something about LKH's recounting of the therapist's explanation that ... doesn't feel right. I'm having a hard time pinpointing what exactly is making my spidey-sense tingle, but a quick, informal Google is turning up a lot of hypnotherapy (hypnosis) for phobia treatment, and no "sleep therapy" per se.
How would you conduct therapy during the client's normal sleeping hours, anyways? Did the therapist give her tapes to listen to while she's asleep, or something? That could backfire horribly, considering we tend to integrate sensory information from around us into our dreams.
Your subconscious is where all the thoughts that you don't want to admit to having wind up. Writers may have more vivid imaginations (which might make phobias & delusions harder to cure or deal with), but they're not better/stronger/more self-accepting than everyone else -- or if they are, I haven't gotten the memo, and neither have all my writer-pals with serious self-esteem problems. Self-acceptance is the factor that dictates how directly you can access your subconscious -- the ability to face aspects of yourself that frighten you, the parts you're ashamed of, the parts you want to pretend don't exist.
I am not a psychologist (give me another 5 years, heh), and even a trained professional shouldn't make guesses about the mental state of someone they don't know personally, but my instinct in a general sense is that a strong, incurable phobia actually might suggest you're farther dissociated from your subconscious, because if your conscious & subconscious were closely integrated, they'd work more easily together instead of battling for control of your thoughts. (This is assuming you like working in a particularly psychoanalytic paradigm -- I don't, usually. But I do know it's a lot easier to find something external to freak out about than deal with an internal problem.)
no subject
How would you conduct therapy during the client's normal sleeping hours, anyways? Did the therapist give her tapes to listen to while she's asleep, or something? That could backfire horribly, considering we tend to integrate sensory information from around us into our dreams.
Your subconscious is where all the thoughts that you don't want to admit to having wind up. Writers may have more vivid imaginations (which might make phobias & delusions harder to cure or deal with), but they're not better/stronger/more self-accepting than everyone else -- or if they are, I haven't gotten the memo, and neither have all my writer-pals with serious self-esteem problems. Self-acceptance is the factor that dictates how directly you can access your subconscious -- the ability to face aspects of yourself that frighten you, the parts you're ashamed of, the parts you want to pretend don't exist.
I am not a psychologist (give me another 5 years, heh), and even a trained professional shouldn't make guesses about the mental state of someone they don't know personally, but my instinct in a general sense is that a strong, incurable phobia actually might suggest you're farther dissociated from your subconscious, because if your conscious & subconscious were closely integrated, they'd work more easily together instead of battling for control of your thoughts. (This is assuming you like working in a particularly psychoanalytic paradigm -- I don't, usually. But I do know it's a lot easier to find something external to freak out about than deal with an internal problem.)