Hypnotherapy for phobias

It’s very probable that you are reading this as you have decided that your phobia is stopping you from enjoying your life as you would like it to be. You may well be worried about what the future holds if you can’t find calmness and peace. My goal is to always make you feel safe and secure and to support you while you make the positive changes necessary to leave your phobia behind.

Your phobia triggers your fight/flight survival mode. This is an early warning system located within your unconscious mind. When you feel threatened different parts of your brain react to the danger. One part works much like the camera roll on your phone and it scrolls through its images, sights and sounds to see if it can recognise the threat. When it recognises your current situation as being a threat, your body will be flooded with stress hormones.

These hormones will mean you become more alert and you will notice an increase in both your breathing and heart rate. This is why you may often feel your chest pounding. You may find that your skin becomes tingly as a result of your excess hormone production. Your body is now primed and ready to either fight or flee from danger. Sometimes the effect can be so overwhelming however that you just freeze.

Your fight/ flight mode is a potentially lifesaving reaction. It can though react in the same way to any perceived threat such as; buttons, lollipop sticks, needles, lifts, heights, dentists, flights, the list is endless.

Perhaps you recognise this reaction in yourself and you have now reached the point where you no longer want to live with your phobia. Together we can use online hypnotherapy to help remove your phobic response and reframe your thoughts, leaving you to enjoy a life free from your phobia.

Where has my phobia come from?

Many of our phobias develop in childhood. They can be learnt behaviour from adults. One way that a young child learns is through observation. If as a child you were playing with a spider and your mum screamed and ran out of the room, then an association has been built up. You now associate a spider as a threat, something to be afraid of. A fear template is then lodged in your mind. Very quickly your brain recognises it as a threat and your fight/ flight mode is automatically engaged.

Alternatively, you might have perceived an event to be frightening. This is very individual. Others may have experienced exactly the same situation but not perceived the event to be life-threatening. You might have been on several flights without any problems but then during one particular flight, you experience severe turbulence. Much like the spider in the example above, a fear template is now lodged in your brain which sees flying as a threatening situation.

Often applying logic and reasoning doesn’t help. Once your fight/ flight system is engaged it shuts down the intellectual part of your brain. As far as your brain is concerned there isn’t time for logical thought. Your life is in danger and it’s taking charge. We might try to reason with ourselves that we’ve been on hundreds of flights with no issues. Once that template is lodged in your brain then it is likely that you will react with fear.

How hypnotherapy for phobias can help

Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can free you of your phobia by using a Neuro Linguistic Programming technique. This will safely remove the fear template that has been lodged in your brain. 

Hypnotherapy can be very effective in lowering your anxiety levels. By removing your fear template and by lowering your anxiety levels, you provide yourself with the best opportunity to remain calm in the future.

During the therapy, we will focus some of our attention on talking about the more positive aspects of your life. By shifting your conscious awareness to being more positive we naturally help to lower stress and anxiety levels. When looking out for and recalling positive aspects we help to produce a constant flow of serotonin. This helps to dampen down the fear response and leads to feelings of positivity.