Hypnotherapy for Fears & Phobias

PHOBIAS

A phobia (from the Greek "Phobos" meaning Fear), is defined as a persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous.

The most common phobias are:

Agoraphobia - Fear of open spaces
Ailurophobia - Fear of cats.
Acrophobia - Fear of heights
Apiphobia - Fear of bees.
Arachnophobia - Fear of spiders.
Aviophobia - Fear of flying.
Claustrophobia - Fear of confined spaces.
Cynophobia - Fear of dogs
Dentophobia - Fear of dentist.
Emetophobia - Fear of vomiting.
Ereuthrophobia - Fear of blushing
Felinophobia - Fear of cats.
Globophobia - Fear of balloons.
Gephyrophobia - Fear of crossing bridges.
Mottophobia - Fear of moths.
Musophobia - Fear of rats or mice.
Myctophobia - Fear of darkness.
Ophidiophobia - Fear of snakes.
Ornithophobia - Fear of birds.
Social phobia - Fear of being evaluated negatively in social situations
Spheksophobia - Fear of wasps.
Trypanophobia - Fear of injections.

What they all have in common is FEAR.

All phobias are irrational. Some may seem more irrational than others eg fear of balloons, fear of baked beans and other food phobias seem very irrational whereas some may say having a fear of wasps is rational.

Many people have phobias but don't do anything about it. However if you have a phobia, and it's now become a problem for you, then I can help you.

We are only born with two phobias:

a) a fear of sudden loud noises

b) a fear of falling.

All other phobias are learned. They are learned from past experiences in our lives.

For example, maybe a young child saw his mother screaming when confronted with a spider. Or maybe the child had a spider thrown at him. Or maybe the child was being bullied and the bully happened to wear a t-shirt with a spider on it. In all of these cases the spider became associated with a fearful experience. And each time the person says or thinks "I don't like spiders" they are reinforcing their fear.

I sometimes tell my clients the story of the woman who had a fear of cats for most of her life. However she didn't know why she had this fear. Through the use of hypno-analysis we discovered that when she was a baby she'd had a frightning experience. One day it was thundering and lightening. She was lying in her pram frightened by the loud rumble of the thunder. Nearby was a cat. The cat, itself frightened by the loud thunder, jumped over the pram. The baby saw the cat and the image of the cat became merged with the fear of the thunder. From then on each time the child saw a cat she reinforced the negative association, so strengthening her fear.

In this situation what we would do in hypnosis would be to disconnect the emotion from the event. So the client can think of a cat without having any emotional turmoil.

Some phobias are more complex. A fear of flying, for example, may be a fear of being out of control, or a fear of heights, or a fear of being in an enclosed place, or a combination of all of these.

Furthermore, the cause of the phobia may have had nothing to do with object of the phobia! For example the client who had a fear of driving over motorway bridges - his problem actually started many years earlier when he fell off a roof, so developing a fear of heights!

Here at Hypnotic Solutions we treat all kinds of fears and phobias, from fear of flying to fear of public speaking.

Simple phobias respond well to NLP and can often be helped in just one or two sessions. More complex phobias may take a little longer.

Contact us now for more details and to book an appointment.

Hypnotic Solutions, 233 Regents Park Road, Finchley Central, London N3 3LF Tel: 0845 45 65 234