Casting off fear

When I was 6 years old, at my grandmother's insistence, we went together with my mom to "casting off fear" at the local witch doctor's. Grandma claimed that this process was excellent for getting rid of the nightmares that kept me from sleeping - they involved monochromatic depictions of geometric shapes that would rapidly expand and shrink accompanied by the screams of an unknown woman... Even then, I was skeptical, and not only did I not believe in God, but this also seemed like a waste of time and magic to me.