Dr. Gannon has opened the door to performance in my life. I have always done well in front of an audience, but in spite of that, I avoided performances because I would fret and worry so much about them. I am a storyteller, and as any date on which I was going to perform a story approached, whether it was a small swap group or a local story slam, I would begin to fill with self doubt and worry. I would stop sleeping and eating about five days prior to the event. The only way I made it through it was “white knuckling it.” It was torture. Dr. Gannon has helped me put a whole system into place that scaffolds the event within a powerful routine of physical exercise and positive mental visualization. The EMDR work he did with me shifted the negative associations I had with performances to optimistic confidence in myself. While I used to be so absorbed in my own worry to notice anything beyond my own distress, now, when I am on stage, I feel I can really do what a performer should do, and that is connect with my audience!
