How Hypnotherapy helps with fears and phobias

Hypnotherapy utilises the power of your focused attention and imagination to reprogramme your subconscious mind.

In a natural and easy ‘trance’ state, the mind powerfully chooses to make beneficial changes.

Our conscious minds are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to brain function. What many call the ‘unconscious mind’ (bearing in mind that this is not a definitive place in the brain but an analogy to higher consciousness), controls all of our bodily functions without our conscious mind being aware of the process. This higher consciousness also contains all our memories, and the way we react to various stimuli.

For example, let’s take a hypothetical subject and call her Mary. For the purpose of our analogy, let’s say that as a child Mary’s mother had a slightly fearful reaction when finding a spider in the closet. Mary’s young brain figured out, without any conscious effort, that as this spider is a danger, however small, to this god-like adult, then it must be a *huge* danger to her! Mary’s brain, in effect, puts a rule into her subconscious mind “spider = danger!”

When Mary is an adult, that programmed response is still there, unchanged. Mary’s subconscious does not respond to a spider with analytical thought. It does not say “Oh, I am bigger now, and so that spider isn’t such a danger to me. Anyway, I now understand that it is much more afraid of me than I am of it, and it can’t harm me at all.” No, her reaction is still “EEEK!” In fact, each time she sees a spider over the years she has stronger and stronger reactions. Each incident builds up and reinforces the programme: “spider = danger!”

Mary does not challenge that deep-seated belief, and her fear of spiders becomes a full-blown phobia. Now let us say she decides to try hypnotherapy to deal with this fear.

It may be necessary for the therapist to first access the reason behind the phobia, but very often all that is necessary is to ‘reinstall’ the programme or belief system regarding spiders. Let’s say that this is the case here. While Mary is in a relaxed and focused state, she is taken through a desensitising process (usually visualising the feared action while feeling incredibly safe and secure) until she is able to tolerate spiders at an acceptable level. For her that might be simply being able to pick it up on a piece of paper or in a bottle and put it outside. Or she may want to actually be able to hold the spider without fear. The very clear visualising process she goes through during her session reframes her perspective on spiders and she now has a new reaction to them.

Essentially, what has happened is that during this process her subconscious has now ‘seen’ her being calm about spiders and ‘seen’ that they are not a danger to her. Obviously if she was living in an area where there were dangerous spiders this would be taken into account and the process would be appropriate to the real danger, not the perceived danger. For example, she would receive the suggestion that she while certain spiders can be potentially dangerous, she is in control and is the dominant species. She receives and accepts the suggestion that she is perfectly capable and able to deal with the situation without fear.

The imagination is extremely powerful. Even if Mary didn’t try hypnosis, and instead every day visualised herself calmly looking at a spider, or even mentally ‘chatting’ to a spider, after a while her conscious mind would get the message.

After a while of actually experiencing her calmness around spiders, Mary would forget that she ever had a huge fear of spiders, except when she is relating the story at dinner parties. This type of ‘reframing of beliefs’ is why our clients often state that their new habits seem “easy” and “effortless” after hypnosis.

Other fears and phobias are dealt with in a similar manner. Personally, I always teach a client to use EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), and use this in conjunction with Hypnotherapy.

For a personal session to deal with any fears or phobias, using Hypnosis and EFT, book a session in Surrey now (unfortunately not taking on new clients in Twickenham right now). Brookwood – close to Brookwood Station, ten minutes drive from either Woking or Guildford, Camberley or Farnham. The train from Waterloo in London takes 30 minutes.