2018-10-01_Reader_s_Digest_AUNZ

October• 2018 | 39

READER’S DIGEST

CELEBRITIES WITH UNUSUAL PHOBIAS

Kendall Jenner:Tryphoboia (tiny holes)

“Things that could set meof are pancakes, honeycomb or

lotus heads (the worst!),” she says.

Billy Bob Thornton:Chromophobe (antique furniture)

“It’s that French, English, Scottish, old mildewy stuf,” he says.

“Old dusty heavy drapes and big tables with lions’ heads

carved on it.”WWW.NEWS.COM.AU

“The moment it happened, they

knew they had gone through a one-

way door – there was no going back,”

says Miller. Perhaps that’s because

thereisoftenamoraldimensionto

storiesofquantumchange.Inshort,

people’s values changed.

Millerlikestorecountacasestudy

ofafiercelyaddictedsmokerwho

pulleduptoapubliclibraryoneday

to pick up his kids. He rummaged in

the glove compartment and looked

under the seats for his cigarettes but

couldn’t find them. It was starting

torain.Thekidswouldbeoutina

second.Buttherewasashopnotfar

away.Hecouldzipoverthereand

be back in a few minutes. It wasn’t

raininghard.Thekidswouldn’tget

too wet.

Then something shifted in this

man. He thought,Dear heaven, I am

thekindoffatherwhowouldlethis

kidsstandintherainwhilehechased

adrug.“Andthatwasit,”saysMiller.

“He never smoked again.”

something about the photo triggered
what I think of as the right brain,” she
says.“Itwaslike,Oh. My. God.”
At the time, the woman was tak-
ing classes in a particularly intense
form of emotion-based acting, and
as a result, she cracked open a lot of
bottled-up feelings. From the moment
she started applying those lessons on
the stage. “I felt a door just open wide,”
she says. “It was the door – there’s no
other way to put it – to truth.”
Over the following months, her
rational mind accepted the insight
that had hit her in a flash. She com-
mitted herself to living more authen-
tically. That did lead to a divorce. As it
turned out, she – like con man Simon
Lovell and countless others who have
experiencedaha!moments – changed
her life forever.
Indeed, when Professor Miller’s
co-author,JanetC’deBaca,followed
up with the people they’d studied a
decade later, not a single one had
returned to the pre-epiphany life.
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY (MARCH 9, 2015), © 2015 BY BRUCE GRIERSON, PSYCHOLOGYTODAY.COM.