It is common for those of you who have done the dance with us to remark once enlightenment has cast its illumination into your mind that,
“It seemed so real, it seemed genuine, in the beginning before it all changed.”
Ah yes, the seduction, the love-bombing, the honeymoon or the golden period. Call it what you might, that period of time when everything was wonderful and rosy in the garden certainly seemed to be real enough didn’t it? The whispered words of love and affection certainly sounded genuine. The long hugs and hours enveloped in our arms appeared to be real. The ecstatic love-making felt wonderfully intense. Even now as you sit in a state of bewilderment and confusion, your fingers run over the gifts that we bought for you and you can still feel them. Surely they must be real too.
Yet for all the magnificent recall you can apply to the sounds and sensations of that initial period you now know that it was all an illusion. You may not have processed us from your system on an emotional level. Indeed, it is doubtful that you ever will, since that it is the way we are designed so that the Hoover will always remain in play. You have gained understanding though and your mind repeatedly tells you that it was not real, it was not genuine and it was an illusion. You are caught between the two states of knowing it was not real but then knowing what you felt, what you experienced and how your emotions were heightened. Therein lies the answer. It was how you felt. It was your perception that generated such wonderful sensations. You perceived that this acquaintance that you half-knew became the bearer of a perfect of love. You perceived that every text message that was received contained affection and longing. You perceived the burning glances of desire. You saw,heard and felt all of this because you wanted to.
In reality you were fed something that lacked substance and was not genuine. You were told that we would make you feel loved and adored and you therefore felt that you were loved and adored. You were told that we would make you feel special and wanted. You felt special and wanted. The pill that was us contained no potency, no medicine and no effects. It was your perception that created the golden sensations you experienced. Yet again you are no doubt saying to yourself as you read this that it felt so real. Of course it did, because you let it feel so real. You believed in its power so much that you created the feelings that you desperately wanted to experience. You were subjected to the placebo effect. We were no better at tackling depression, high blood pressure or anxiety than a pill made of sugar. Yet, as astounded medical experts have seen time and time again that supplying a patient with what they think is a treatment for pain but is in reality is just a sugar placebo pill produces an improvement in the patient’s level of pain. We do the same to you. We make you feel loved, wanted and adored. You are given a placebo however and your desire to experience those wonderful feelings drives you to experience them.
This may sound like it is your fault. In a way you have some culpability for engaging in the thinking that you did which produced such marvellous results. It perhaps now makes more sense as to why this period of wonderful feelings did not last because you were just fed the placebo. However, in the same way that a medical placebo effect takes place, because the good doctor tells you that this pill will lessen your depression so it does, you have been subjected to a similar fraud. We told you how marvellous you would feel and you did. We perpetrated the fraud against you and fed you placebo after placebo with the inevitable effect. The tragedy is that there is not a nocebo effect with us. The downside really was real. Just in case you wondered about that too.