Mission Statement To provide and encourage an ethical and knowledgeable, understanding, and application of hypnosis in health care. To promote the further recognition and acceptance of hypnosis as an important tool in clinical health care and my clients complete satisfaction.

Fears and Phobias

Whatever your particular fear, or phobia, this page will go some way to explain how phobias are created, and perhaps more importantly, how hypnosis and hypnotherapy can help. 

If your particular fear or phobia isn't mentioned on this page, don't worry, it's just that they can't all be listed. Simply contact us for further details.

Fears

A fear is an unpleasant reaction we feel when confronted with real danger… it is an essential 'fight or flight' instinct, which makes us prepare to either run away from that danger, or stick around and fight it out.

Phobias

A phobia on the other hand (while still a very strong and unpleasant reaction), is an irrational fear which has been ‘symbolically attached’ to an object, or situation, which causes little or no real danger.

There will usually be strong avoidance behavior connected with the phobia, which will run alongside intense feelings of anxiety, loss of control and panic. 

Sometimes, confrontation with the phobia, can manifest itself in a physical response, such as perspiring, trembling, or can even lead to fainting. But this is usually only associated with blood, injury, or needle-type phobias.

Specific phobias

Specific phobias can be categorized into five main types:

Animal: such as rats/mice, spiders, insects, snakes, flying creatures, dogs, cats and reptiles.

Natural Environment: such as water, thunderstorms, heights, fire, and the dark.

Blood / Injury /Needles: such as injections, the sight of blood, dentistry, surgical operations, or other invasive medical procedures.

Situational: such as flying, lifts, driving, tunnels, bridges, enclosed spaces (claustrophobia), or being sick. 

These fears relate to a fear of being trapped and unable to get away. Other: such as illness, germs, choking, vomiting.

Complex phobias

As well as the specific phobias, there are also the complex phobias of social phobia / social anxiety, and agoraphobia (the fear of open spaces). These can also be very distressing and debilitating, in a wide range of situations.

What causes phobias?

Phobias are often caused in childhood, where the child experiences a real fear, but the mind manages to detach (or repress) the feeling of terror, from the situation that caused it.

This leaves the mind with a strong fear, and nothing to attach it to. The mind doesn’t like it this way, and will therefore, symbolically attach this fear, to a real object or situation that it does know about, be it a spider, an enclosed space, a lift... whatever it may find.

Whenever the person now comes into contact with the object or situation (say, a spider), they feel the fear that the subconscious mind has associated with it… and they have a ‘phobia’.

Sometimes, however, phobias can develop after experiencing something traumatic. 

The initial sensitizing event, or triggering incident, may vary from witnessing, for example, an accident, visiting the dentist's office, or even just hearing about terrible disasters.

Or, a child may model their behavior on that of their role model who has a phobia in their own right, and as a result, this can cause the child to become phobic as well. 

An example of this, would be a child who became terrified of thunderstorms, simply because the mother was frightened of them and acted in a terrified manner, or hid herself away, whenever a storm raged overhead. 

The child would quickly have picked up on the mother's fear, absorbed and formed a learned behavior pattern, and thus developed a conditioned response.

Common phobias.

Some very common phobias are:

• dental phobia / fear of dentists

• flying phobia / fear of flying

• snake phobia / fear of snakes

• emetophobia / fear of being sick

• button phobia / fear of buttons

• spider phobia / fear of spiders

• commitment phobia / fear of commitment

• driving phobia / fear of driving

• social phobia

• fear of public speaking

Using hypnotherapy to treat phobias.

Hypnotherapy can be so helpful in treating phobias, because it goes after the root cause of the problem, which helped to create the phobia.

If you have a fear or phobia that is starting to control the way you live your life, then that surely must be the right time to do something about it. 

Hypnotherapy can help with phobias.
Treatment using hypnotherapy for phobias , can give very rewarding and satisfying results.

If you suffer with a phobia, and especially if it's causing problems in your life, then don't suffer in silence.

Hypnosis / hypnotherapy: a brief and effective treatment to help with phobias.