Hypnotherapy & Phobia

What has Caused the Phobia?

A client will often say that nothing has caused the phobia, it just started, they've always been afraid of dogs, etc. If one person is afraid of dogs and another isn't, then clearly there is a difference between the two. One person has either been exposed to some causal event which has been repressed in the subconscious mind, or has learned to be afraid from a parent or other authority figure at some time earlier in life. The causal event may not have been very traumatic at the time, but the young mind will have seen it out of the context that would be understood by a more mature mind in later years. It may have caused an emotional response and/or motor actions to be locked away, repressed, and the emotional and possible motor responses will have been locked away and anchored to the event. The subconscious mind can often set up a kind of false instinct, whereby any sign of the stimulus, or even something resembling it, or associated with it, may cause a phobic reaction, and then the body's flight or fight response will kick in and the individual may begin to panic - a panic attack.

Hypnotherapy to Relieve Phobias

The first thing the skilled hypnotherapist will do, is to work with the client to discover the causal event, and once found, to desensitise the client from it. Once this has been achieved, then hypnotic suggestion, metaphor and possibly Neuro-Linguistic Programming will be used to create a new template for the client so they can see the previously feared situation, object or circumstance in a new and non threatening light, through a new lens as it were. If the causal event, or events are not found and the emotion not released, then the phobia may just resurface later with more intensity than before if that is possible. The person with a phobia will need to be helped to find and review the trigger situation, to see it with an adult maturity and understanding, and to then see the cause in a different way and with a different and better understanding. The mind can be reprogrammed to see things in a different way and to accept situations as normal that would previously have been viewed as threatening.