“I used to get terrible stage fright every time I had to speak in public,” said the man. “My blood pressure shot up, I got palpitations and my breathing became rapid and shallow. But then my wife gave me these tablets to lower my blood pressure, and I’ve not had any problems since then.” “Can I tell you a secret?” replied the other man. “Every time you take a tablet, your body knows that it needs to reduce its blood pressure – it knows what it has to do in response to the tablet. It knows it so well that it will do what it needs to do by itself, even if you just carry the blood pressure tablet with you.”

The case study “Placebo I” illustrates how blood pressure can be regulated by imagining blood pressure tablets. The story could also end; “Your body knows it so well that it will do what it needs to do even if you simply draw a white circle on every page of your presentation to remind you of the blood pressure tablets.” Further interventions on stage fright and exam nerves can be found in Hammel 2017, 103.

(From: Stefan Hammel: Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling. Sories and Metaphors in Psychotherapy, Child and Family Therapy, Medical Treatment, Coaching and Supervision, Routledge 2019)