Overcoming Phobias
People can be afraid of a wide range of things and what may be totally acceptable to one person can be panic provoking to another.
Some of the more common fears include:
- Enclosed or open spaces
- Darkness
- Death
- Heights
- Injections
- Snakes & Spiders
- Travel
- Water
- Going outside
Why do people develop phobias?
Clients often say that nothing has happened to cause their phobia and that it is simply something they’ve either always been afraid of or that just came on for no reason. If one person is afraid of enclosed spaces and another isn’t, then clearly there is a difference between the two.
The first person has either been exposed to some trigger event that has been repressed in the subconscious mind, or has learned to be afraid from a parent or other authority figure earlier on in life. People don’t become afraid for no reason.
The originating event may not have been particularly traumatic at the time but is likely to have been caused by emotional conflict or been anchored by a negative response. Phobias can occur spontaneously following the death of someone close or during periods of extreme stress.
How do you know the difference between a fear and a phobia?
A phobia is an extreme reaction to a fear. A fear of fear! If you break into a cold sweat, trembles, screams or has any other distressing symptoms at the sight of a mouse, then you are probably suffering from a phobia.
As part of the hypnotherapeutic procedure is to develop rapport with the client, both the therapist and the client often become sensitive to each other and unconsciously know when the truth is being withheld.
Mutual trust must exist in order for therapy to be successful.
Whilst suggestions alone can be effective if the client is well motivated to overcome the fear, the phobia can sometimes be substituted for a different one if the emotion is still repressed.
Our preference is to regress clients through the use of ideomotor techniques and take them back in time to the onset of the phobia. Once these have been set up we can ask permission of the subconscious mind to explore the past and learn more about the problem. We ask the subconscious if anything happened in the past to cause the problem. This may be something that happened to the client or someone close to him or her. It could be something he or she heard or read or saw on TV even. Our questioning will cover all eventualities until we get a response that we can work with.
Clients can go through the event several times on an unconscious level until the memory surfaces.