f**king with my brain

I saw a clinic psychologist this morning. Someone who specializes in cognitive psych. It was somewhat reassuring to hear him say he's not really interested in my childhood, my history, my inter-personal relationships.
What interests him, is the neuron reactors in my brain. Specifically the ones which link toads to my adrenal glands.

Like Pavlov's dog, learnt behaviour links parts of your brain which weren't original joined. Bell = saliva. Toad = freak the fuck out.

And apparently, according to my guy Larry with his slow speech and his bright intense eyes and the somewhat off-putting wet corners of his mouth and completely refreshing ability (especially for a man of his years in front of a 'young-ish' woman) to use fuck in a sentence within the first 15 minutes (he was quoting someone but still I loved it), we can trick my brain into releasing that link.

We're on a 6 session strategy (after that, if I'm not 'cured', he carries on treating me for free), it seems a bizarre thing to spend money on. But we spent a whole lot more than that on this magnificent house on the lake, and I'm damned if I'm going to cloud my summers with fear and anxiety.
It's just not practical to have to drink 2 glasses of wine before I'll go out on the lawn after dark. It's time-consuming to have to send the dog out to sniff around the stoep before I'll step outside at night. It's just plain ridiculous to leave our outside workroom standing open all night because I forgot to go out and lock it up before dusk.

Larry and me, we're going to fix this thing.

Completely unrelated picture of a completely different creature. These ones I love.