Strange things phobias aren’t they?

Rationally we know that the ‘thing’ can’t harm us. Or that flying is safer than driving down our own street and yet just the thought of the object of our fear can start our heart racing and our stomach lurch. I should know, for many years I had very debilitating phobia. I was usually too embarrassed to tell people what it was as the usual reaction was astonishment and then … laughter! Not comforting when the source of the fear would elicit a response that would stop me functioning for a day or two.

My phobia?

O.K then – it was caterpillars! Seriously! Just a picture of one would bring on an instant panic attack often causing me to vomit, faint, hyperventilate, and cry uncontrollably. I would then constantly replay the image in my mind so I would be in a constant state of panic for hours which would then exhaust me and cause dreadful headaches. When I slept, I would dream about them and wake up having another panic attack. I can tell you endless stories (which now seem humorous) of incidents involving those huge, scary life-threatening creatures called caterpillars.

But that was years ago. Then I discovered EFT and hypnosis and I no longer have the fear or the phobic reaction. Caterpillars will never be my best friends but I remain calm in their company and can move one from the cauliflower to the garden if necessary. And not only have I learnt to control my fear, I now have a huge insight into how and why we build up these negative behaviours. So, no matter how irrational the phobia seems on a logical basis, I can emphasise with you completely.

Clinical Hypnotherapy, EFT and NLP are very powerful techniques for eliminating phobias. At Mind Power your phobia can be eliminated quickly and easily, leaving you free to see the source of your old unwanted fear in a far more rational way. We teach you how to stay calm and relaxed and feel in control in situations that in the past caused you anxiety and panic. We also teach you how to change your own ‘self talk’ which plays an important role in how you respond to things in life.

So why do some people develop these ‘illogical’ fears?

For many people there is often a ‘positive intention’ behind the panic response – I will explain mine to you when we meet. Even though the behaviour often seems irrational the subconscious mind is responding in such a way to ‘protect’ the individual. For many people there is often a deep rooted underlying cause for this and, surprisingly, this isn’t always related to the ‘trigger’ (i.e. spider, thunderstorm). For many clients this can be simply a ‘learned’ response from parents, siblings or classmates. For others the ‘trigger’ can be attached to a more painful, upsetting, fightening memory that has been forgotten. Many people with long held phobias are responding unconsciously to the ‘fearof the fear’.

During hypnosis we can often find the origin of the problem and begin to change the negative emotional image stored there. Using EFT we rapidly release the fearful emotions attached to the phobia.

The reason why Hypnotherapy and EFT are so successful in the treatment of phobias is because phobias reside in the unconscious part of our minds and during hypnosis we bypass the conscious mind and focus on retraining our unconscious. Therefore clients experience very real and significant change extremely quickly

Over the years we have successfully treated all kinds of phobias including fears of spiders, needles, thunderstorms, lifts, dentists, bridges and flying to name just few, always leaving our clients altogether more relaxed and more confident in those specific situations where they used to be extremely anxious or panicky.

So how does it work?

Hypnotherapy uses hypnosis to induce a deep state of relaxation, during which our unconscious minds are highly receptive to new or alternative perspectives and ideas.

The reason it’s so effective lies in the extreme power of our unconscious mind, which stores all the memories, beliefs, habits and behaviours we’ve developed since birth. Prior to us responding to any external stimuli, we automatically access our unconscious and use its stored data to analyse how best to respond. And given our unconscious is primarily concerned with keeping us safe, well and happy, it usually provides us with good information to help us respond in the most helpful and resourceful manner.

However, as a result of the way we learn, from time to time it also stores and provides us with poor information, which results in many of life’s problems. You see from birth we learn by modelling other peoples behaviours and beliefs (many of which can be unhelpful), and we also place significant prominence on our own emotional experiences (again a lot of which can be negative) and both these conditioned and learned responses stay with us over time.

Let’s look at a simple example – a phobia of bees…

We are not born with an inherent fear of bees – far from it; we are born with a curiosity of all around us. A fear of bees can only be developed in one of two ways: either we see other people’s fear and model our response accordingly (a conditioned response); or we have a scary experience ourselves that becomes the prominent information stored in our unconscious (a learned response) and as such, fear becomes our programmed response to bees. Make sense?

And then over time, as we develop these unhelpful beliefs (e.g. bees hurt us), or unwanted behaviours (e.g. responding hysterically at the sight of a bee), we simply end up re-accessing and replaying them time and time again – they become our habitual response. And this model can be applied to any phobia, addiction, stress or anxiety response, self-esteem issue, allergy and more or less all of our other unhelpful response in life.

We cannot consciously control our unconscious. Think for a moment about driving a car – a learnt behaviour stored in our unconscious that we can access as and when we need – could you consciously decide to unlearn how to drive? Of course not. Now apply the same to principle to an addiction, phobia or anxiety response and it becomes clearer – to change any of these unhelpful responses for the better, we first need to change the information stored in our unconscious, or to provide the unconscious with newer and more helpful information. Want to know how I can help you? Call me on 07776 133247‬.