{"id":19965,"date":"2012-10-27T14:26:27","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T13:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/?p=19965"},"modified":"2012-10-27T14:26:27","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T13:26:27","slug":"natalie-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/?p=19965","title":{"rendered":"Natalie Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Calm<\/strong><\/p>\n

I entered Dr Stuart\u2019s therapy room, I knew I had to revisit some of the more adventurous and fearful areas of my life experiences if I was going to deal with my daily anxiety . . .
\n\u201cHello Kalindi, how have you been?\u201d
\n\u201cOK . . . \u201d I said, \u201cnot too anxious.\u201d
\n\u201cNot too anxious . . .\u201d he reflected!
\nI had a purpose today \u2013 I explained I wanted to talk about some of my early fearful experiences.
\nI\u2019d been thinking about Thailand in 1990 with my boyfriend John.
\nI remember constantly walking up a steep mountain in the dense jungle. Our guide Sonny was in front, a little hill tribe boy that walked barefoot. At the time I\u2019d never felt so exhausted, I just wanted to stop.
\nPeople started to fall ill; it had been two days walking solidly. John had started vomiting along with some of the others, and the weather was changing for the worse. We sheltered that night in a small hut that was up on stilts. A hurricane had hit and the rain and wind had been torrential.
\nWe started out at dawn as Sonny had decided we would take the bamboo rafts down the river a day early to get us quickly to the village at the edge of the jungle.
\nThe river was flowing fast, with so much debris from the night before. I stepped onto the raft and it sank down into the river with my weight. John was at the front to guide us round the bending river with a long piece of bamboo.
\nThere was a fallen tree halfway across the river on the left side. John and I were travelling close to the right side bank; there were three Japanese students heading straight for the trunk; there was no escape for them and as they were travelling so fast I couldn\u2019t do anything.
\nThey fell in and went under the murky water and as we went past the end of the tree, I watched in what seemed like slow motion. One came up, I saw one head, then another, but the third boy, where was he? It had been too long, what was happening? But then it was our turn \u2013 as we went round the corner I fell in, I had a hold of the back of the raft but my legs were out in front of me.
\nThey were pulling me underneath the raft, I was fighting the current as it was so strong and if I let go I\u2019d go straight under, that was for sure. As we turned another bend I managed to pull myself back on to the raft to stand up again, and could see I had something on my leg \u2013 it had caught hold of me in the water in its own attempt to save itself, it was a snake! It had coiled around my ankle and lower leg.
\nI started to panic and shout \u2018snake!\u2019 but John was busy in front controlling the raft. I lifted my leg up and shouted and pointed. \u2018There\u2019s a snake on my leg\u2019. Sonny heard me, leant over from his raft and pulled the snake off.
\nAt this point I sat back in my chair in Dr Stuart\u2019s office and breathlessly paused.
\n\u201cYou have certainly experienced the true feelings of fight or flight.\u201d
\n\u201cYes, I have,\u201d I replied.
\n\u201cAnd you now know when it is appropriate to have these feelings; you can define a true experience of fight or flight and one that is provoked by your memories and thoughts.\u201d
\n\u201cYes I do.\u201d
\n\u201cHow do you feel now?\u201d
\n\u201cCalm!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Calm I entered Dr Stuart\u2019s therapy room, I knew I had to revisit some of the more adventurous and fearful areas of my life experiences if I was going to deal with my daily anxiety . . . \u201cHello Kalindi, how have you been?\u201d \u201cOK . . . \u201d… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19965"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19967,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19965\/revisions\/19967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}