Lauren’s Story - About a Clinical Hypnotherapist who had a life-long phobia of water.
Q: How did you become and how did you overcome your aquaphobia with ALP lessons?
Lauren: I had parents who just didn’t take me swimming. Apparently, my Mum could swim but I never saw her in water. My Dad was allergic to chlorine – so he never got in water at all. I grew up in Blackpool but apart from paddling in the shallow sea there, I’d never really been in water at all. When I got into year 6, I was due to have school swimming lessons and I think my parents freaked out a bit, thinking that everybody could swim, and I was the only child who couldn’t swim at all.
I have an older sister and when I was 10, they sent me swimming with her a couple of times and she tried to get me to float on my back. However, I didn’t trust her not to push me under – although she never did - so that didn’t go well. After that I was due to have my school swimming lessons, but at the pool before the lesson, I unfortunately had quite a bad accident and chopped the end of my finger off in one of the heavy doors.
The consequences of that were that I had to have an operation and was out of action so I couldn’t have my school lessons. So, I still hadn’t really been in water.
Another year or so went by and when I was about 11 my parents did have another attempt to try and get me to swim and they booked lessons for me. They decided that I needed private swimming lessons and that’s what gave me my water phobia. Until then I was neutral about water and swimming.
Q: So, may I ask, what in that lesson caused you to have a phobia?
Lauren: Well, where I learned there was an enormous swimming pool, an Olympic sized pool, but there was also a separate room with quite a big trainer pool in it. I was quite tiny at 11 and the water was very deep for me - it was up to the top of my chest and the whole pool was the same depth. The teacher just kept telling me to swim – but as I’d never been in the water, I didn’t know the concept of floating or swimming. So, every time I tried to move or leaned forward, in whatever way I could, I obviously went under the water a lot. All the teacher did was just push me back into the middle of the pool repeatedly with a long pole. He was just sitting on the side. I inhaled large amounts of water and he had to jump in in the end and pull me out from under the water. I was in quite a bad way – I was laid out on the side of the pool for quite a long time, unable to breathe very well and was coughing up lots of water. This experience shouldn’t have happened. And that was what did it really. That gave me an extreme fear of water.
Utterly horrendous. I was 11 then. I’m 52. 41 years ago.
So that gave me the phobia. I couldn’t even be splashed in the face. I basically avoided all water activities. I didn’t go on a boat; I couldn’t walk around the edge of a swimming pool. I avoided everything to do with water.
Q: What about having a shower or bath.
LAUREN: I could go in the bath, but I couldn’t put my head in the water. I could have a shower but couldn’t put my face under the shower.
Q: What do think it would make you feel if you had put your face under the water in a bath or shower?
LAUREN: I just got that gasp (gag reflex) where I couldn’t breathe. It was an automatic reflex that I didn’t have any control over.
Q: The consequences of what that swimming teacher did are quite staggering really – the effect it had on your life. And of course, presumably it’s not just you, it’s your family and friends as well?
LAUREN: It has affected absolutely everything really. I do have children, so I made sure that they had proper swimming lessons. And while they had a lot of choice over the activities they did, for me swimming lessons were something they just had to do. And they both loved it; they are really good swimmers and swim a lot now.
Q: That’s very good that you didn’t let that negative cycle transference happen.
LAUREN: No. I was pretty determined that I wasn’t going to let that happen. They never knew until they were already good swimmers, that I had a fear of water.
Q: That’s pretty exceptional. Because a lot of people we have come across and parents, have transferred that fear to their children. So, at the moment we are looking at research into the importance of Parent and Baby classes in terms of overcoming fear, social bonding and child development. Parents who are scared of water or have limited aquatic skills, either abstain and miss out all together or they will transfer their stress into the child during the swimming lesson.
LAUREN: It happens a lot and, in my job as a clinical hypnotherapist, I see a lot of aquaphobic adults, and see that often the stress has been transferred from their parents. Either from a bad experience or directly from parents, who were always extremely worried around water.
Q: How do these people get to you?
LAUREN: I’ve been doing this job for quite a long time. I’m quite a well-known hypnotherapist in the area. I do get people who travel quite a long way to see me and I get referrals as a Clinical Hypnotherapist. Obviously, it’s the quality of your life that’s important. I think people get to the point in their life where they think “I need to do something about this”. I work on a lot of desensitisation for different phobias and issues, including water. Quite often when people are having lessons, or even before they can begin lessons, I step in and try and help them there. And for a lot of people, if they have experienced a negative experience in a pool, the smell of chlorine is a trigger for them.
Q: How did you meet Tom Glover at Glovers Swim School and what inspired you to go and take lessons?
LAUREN: I decided that enough was enough. I was already a clinical hypnotherapist then, so I did quite a lot of prep on myself. I decided that I wasn’t going to let this fear defeat me anymore. My motivation was as much to show to myself that I could overcome something to be honest, as an ability to swim. Because really, technically, I have spent most of my life not swimming and I thought if I don’t swim, I can still live with it, because I have already lived with it all my life. I wouldn’t say the drive was particularly being able to swim, it was that I needed to be strong enough to overcome the fear and show myself that I can actually do something that terrifies me. That was my motivation.
I was 49, so, I was coming up to my 50th birthday, which was probably, subconsciously, a bit of a driver as well. I found Tom by chance, just phoning around. I knew that I wanted one to one lessons, I knew that I wasn’t capable of getting in a pool with a lot of different adults, even though they were adult learners. I found a gap in the market regarding this, which is where you probably found it. It’s easy to find children’s lessons but not so easy for adult lessons. This was 3 years ago.
Q: How long did you have ALP lessons for?
LAUREN: Well, Tom started off by teaching me to put my face in the water and I did nearly leave because I thought no, I want to swim with my head out of the water. That was a really big issue for me. However, Tom was amazing, and I stayed. He taught me ALP safe breathing techniques. So, I had quite a lot of lessons but then unfortunately I got diagnosed with cancer and I had to stop my lessons for a year because I needed a lot of treatment. I went back again once I was better. Then I had another break for another operation. But then I went back again and stopped having lessons in October 2019. So, it’s been a bit on and off.
Q: What did Tom do in the ALP lessons that helped you so much?
LAUREN: He was very patient and understanding. I needed to do some self-hypnosis before I could get my head in the water, every single time I had to get in. Tom gave me space to do that and never rushed me. He was very encouraging, in a realistic way, and suggested that I should keep a diary on my phone of the things that I’d done well.
Every time I turned up for the lesson I still panicked initially. I spent weeks and weeks panicking before my lesson and feeling really sick and shaking. It took quite a lot of getting over, but I consistently went and Tom was consistently there. He showed unconditional positive support and patience through my moments of self-doubt and occasional tears of frustration.
I also found, what was really good, is that he listened to what I was saying and doing and tailored my next ALP session, taking that into account with this excellent programme. So, if I’d gone backwards a bit, he wouldn’t just press on relentlessly, he would go back and address that issue. I found both Tom and ALP extremely responsive and that really helped me. I now swim every week and I love it!
This has ultimately helped me change a number of other areas of my life in a much more positive and confident way, that I would not have done prior to overcoming my aquaphobia.
Feel like you could benefit from ALP lessons with Tom or Diane, give us a call on 01772 802140!
