My least favorite season in Italy is fall. Not for the falling leaves, first rains or shorter days. For the scariest enemy I have ever encountered on my path.
Otherwise innocuous, despite the disgusting smell it can produce, la cimice is not dangerous: it doesn't bite and it's not poisonous. It just freaks the hell out of me.
I have become the laughing-stock of my parents and siblings, who are usually in charge of rescuing me whenever there is a cimice within a hundred metres. If there is a cimice in a room, I leave the room and close the door and go looking for someone who can take care of it and I will not enter the room again until it's gone. Over the years it has become even worse, since now I have ridiculous physical reactions like a pounding heart, shivering and other unpleasant feelings. My worst nightmare would be to find myself in a room full of cimici, I think I could die.
So apart from feeling very stupid about this, since I usually can manage slightly more dangerous situations (like African cockroaches), I used to think about it as an eccentric trait of my personality that wouldn't affect me in any other way. How wrong I was.
Some weeks ago I took my brother to the train station, and before he closed the door, one cimice got into the car without me noticing. As soon as I started driving, the thing started flying in the car. Those who have seen me near a cimice will know that it's a real miracle I didn't have a car accident. I barely managed to get to the first parking, got to a supermarket and bought bug spray, but I didn't know the thing doesn't die with normal bug spray, it needs its own special spray. I spent the following twenty minutes with a pounding heart, looking for the thing to get it out of my car, because otherwise I couldn't go home. Then I realized that if this happens to me again when I am driving, say in a highway, I am seriously up for a meeting with Saint Peter at the doors of Heaven (let's be optimistic here about the final outcome...).
I cannot be a serious emergency professional and be paralized by a less-than-two-centimetres insect. Right? It's just so ridiculous.
So I decided to take care of it. At first I didn't know how, but then talking with a friend she suggested that I ask the help of another friend, who is a professional coach (blessed be all of you, my friends).
And this morning, via Skype - J. in Germany, myself in Spain - we had an extremely helpful coaching session in which, through some talking and some very specific exercises, she helped me get over it. I have to say: it was exhilarating.
At the beginning, when I started explaining my issue (because in Germany, how lucky, they don't have the thing) I felt very uncomfortable - pounding heart and the usual stuff - just talking about it. Then while we went through the exercises, I could feel my unease leave me gradually, I could feel myself more and more able to manage an encounter with the beast, and in the final visualization I could even imagine myself not only not being afraid of the cimice anymore, but also taking it out. Not only taking it out of the room, but taking it with my hands. Not only taking it in my hands but even observing it close-by, and even - EVEN!!! - not caring about it anymore and staying in a room where a cimice is flying.
It was such a liberating feeling.
(Un)fortunately there are no cimici in Spain, but I wish I had one so I could prove that it was not just imagination, that now I really am able to manage those close encounters of the third kind.
And this long post is about telling you not to be afraid of trying new things (i.e. coaching), they may just be the answer you were looking for.
A special thanks to J. for being such an amazing coach!
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