The Modern Brain Clinic: can this Harley Street doctor heal your mind?
Anyone who has suffered from panic attacks will know that John Milton was bang on the money when he wrote about the mind’s ability to make heaven of hell and hell of heaven.
In my pursuit of heaven through the foggy hell years of my panic-ridden 20s, I tried all manner of things at various costs with various results. These included CBT (ineffectual for me, like putting a plaster on a gaping gash requiring stitches), hypnotherapy (I chose a bad practitioner, so it made me worse), listening to binaural beats (an auditory phenomenon that occurs when listening to two different frequencies at once which I found kept the more brutal attacks at bay when on the go). While weekly integrated psychotherapy (eye-wateringly expensive) proved the most beneficial of the lot.
After all that, my mind finally allowed me some peace and has for the greater part of five years obediently done my bidding. I still do my due diligence and look after it in the ways dictated to me by the psychotherapist, which means eating a balanced diet to minimise blood sugar highs and lows, getting enough sleep, taking moments to pause when I feel overwhelmed, and doing some mindful movement. Yet, overall I’ve prioritised physical, considering the latter a job done.
