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phobias
Many different phobias exist, some common and others less so. More common issues include a fear of spiders, public speaking, flying, and driving. The common thread between all phobias is the sense of fear that they give us and the debilitating effect this can have.
Our sense of fear is often a helpful one, allowing us to avoid things which could be dangerous or harmful. However, sometimes the mechanisms in our brain controlling the sense of fear does not work correctly and amplifies the source of the phobia in our minds making it impossible to function normally when exposed to them.
Hypnotherapy works by addressing that part of our mind controlling the fear and working to find what triggered the phobia in the first place; usually a traumatic incident(s). Many people respond well to hypnosis for phobias and go on to function normally even when exposed to their fear.
The release of stress hormones when we feel fear heightens our awareness, our reaction times but crucially our ability to rememeber. It is this increased ability to remember and for a stressful incident to stand out in our minds that makes it hard forget and can produce a phobic factor that stays with us.
In addition to this, particularly fearful or stressful events are stored in a part of our brains called the amydala. This is an old part of our brains and connected closely with the subconscious workings of both physical and mental processes. If the event is stressful enough to remain in the amydala a phobia reaction will arise, even if only elements of the environmental stimulus are present, the sense of fear will be triggered.
Interestingly the amygdala is not conected to the part of our brain that puts events into the context of time. This means that it can be hard to rationalise a phobia as an event that no longer has any relevance, so even if you know you are not in any danger, the acute sense of fear remains. Hypnotherapy allows us to put a phobia into context and rationlise it by comunicating with the subconscious mind in which the phobia has been stored. We use a technique in which the client imagines their phobia in increasing levels of realism until they are comfortable with it, similar to traditional exposure therapy. Hypnotherapy is very effective working with phobias.
