What is a fear or phobia?

A fear is a natural response we all have to danger. It’s a survival instinct that helps to keep us safe from threatening situations. Phobias though are different. A phobia is a more intense feeling than a fear.  In fact, a phobia can result in terrible anxiety and panic attacks for some who suffer from them.

A phobia is a conditioned emotional response to a perceived threat that we encounter. What you might be surprised to learn is that we are born with just two innate fears – a fear of falling and a fear of loud sounds, both perhaps derive from our early days when they represented a threat to our survival (Think large hungry animals and sheer cliff drops) and so the fear instinct was incredibly useful.

What causes us to experience a fear or phobia?

A phobia or fear usually starts with a negative experience, or it may have been taught to us at an early age by well-meaning parents for example.   And once that has happened, it’s like running a phobia programme every time you encounter the experience. As a result, and at its worst, it can negatively impact our lives, severely restricting our enjoyment.  Phobias often causing us to freeze, hide, run away or avoid certain situations.  The problem is the programme is both unhelpful and at its worst can ruin your life.

What are the symptoms of fear or phobia?

When you experience your phobia, it’s likely you’ll feel scared, nervous and anxious and you might experience physical symptoms such as:

• Dizziness and lightheadedness
• Sweating
• Increased heartrate
• Feeling of sickness
• shaking
• an upset stomach

This is because when we experience stress, our body’s chemistry changes.  This is triggered by a flood of hormone secretions including adrenaline. As well as the external symptoms I mentioned, internally, there will be an increase in blood sugar for instant energy.  At the same time energy is diverted from non-essential activities such as digestion and instead is channelled into the muscles, lungs and heart etc., so that the body can take action.  This reaction is known as ‘fight or flight’ as our body prepares for a short burst of heightened activity.

Continuous and repeated periods of stress cannot be managed by the body successfully long term and eventually our stress will build up inside causing mental and physical exhaustion, commonly known as ‘burnout’.

How can we resolve fears and phobias?

The mind is considered to be divided in to two elements: The unconscious mind and the conscious mind.  The unconscious mind contains your entire history of every experience throughout your life and it is capable of processing vast swathes of data.

The conscious mind by comparison is our day-to-day rational thinking mind.  It’s capable of processing around seven pieces of information (plus/minus two).  The conscious mind will look to the unconscious mind when it needs to understand how to respond to an event.  When it doesn’t know what to do – as in the case of fears and phobias, it will turn to the unconscious mind and select what appears to be the most appropriate programme.  The problem is the programme might be old, outdated and serve no useful purpose – as is the case with fears and phobias.

But the great news is, that because the programme or fear/phobia was learned in the first place, it can be unlearned and you can break free of the chains of your fear. When I first learnt this, it was an absolute revelation.

Because fears and phobias work on the subconscious level, it won’t matter how much you tell yourself the fear isn’t real, your mind will still react with fear. But using hypnotherapy and Neuro Linguistic Programming, we can safely work at the subconscious level to remove your fear and phobia.  In fact, because phobias and fears exist in our subconscious, they are very vulnerable to hypnotherapy.

Many phobias exist in our subconscious and are learned responses. This makes them particularly vulnerable to hypnotherapy.  Using Hypnotherapy, combined with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) you can quickly unlearn the fear response and build up your resilience to experience or object restricting your life.

Types of fears and phobias

There are lots of reasons why clients work with Hypnotherapists to resolve a fear or phobia.  Here is an example of just a few, as there are too many to list here:

• Fear of Spiders
• Fear of confined spaces
• Fear of dentists
• Fear of dogs
• Fear of flying
• Fear of heights
• Fear of needles
• Fear of water
• Fear of needles
• Fear of small spaces

If you are suffering from a fear or phobia and would like to break safely and gently free from it, contact me today.  I offer a free 30 minute no obligation call to help you decide if it’s right for you.  You can book your free session here https://yoirtupsxgkuificju.10to8.com