“It’s not as if it creeps up on me slowly. All of a sudden, it’s BANG and I’m screaming and crying and clinging onto my husband for dear life!”

Does this sound familiar? 

This was one of my clients telling me about her fear of wasps.

Most people know at least one person who is terrified of wasps, spiders, snakes, heights or flying.

And these are just some of the common phobias. People can be phobic about absolutely anything: clouds, beards, hearing a certain name, writing a cheque in public ...

Some phobias can seriously affect a person’s life - like having to make a 10-mile detour on the journey to work every day just to avoid driving under a bridge; or not being able to wear clothes with buttons; or having to keep all windows shut on a baking hot night for fear of a moth getting in.  

These are known as specific phobias because it's very clear cut what the phobia is about.

Surprisingly, specific phobias are relatively easy to treat. I use a mixture of hypnosis and Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and one session is often all that’s needed. I must stress here that some phobias (like agoraphobia and social phobia) are much more complex, having several layers, and consequently take longer to address.

People often feel very embarrassed about their phobia. They know their fear is irrational, so they don’t understand why they can’t control it.

The culprit is a little bundle of neurons in the brain – only the size of an almond – called the Amygdala. You have one bundle in each hemisphere. As soon as the Amygdala senses danger, it sets off a chain reaction in your body that’s faster than greased lightening. It puts you on maximum alert to get ready to fight or run like hell. 

If you’ve ever walked down a dark street at night and suddenly heard a noise behind you, you’ll know what I mean. Even when you realise that the noise behind you was only a cat, it’s still some time before your heart stops thumping, and the rush of adrenaline begins to subside. 

Normally, once the perceived danger is over, your brain starts processing the experience by piecing together the evidence – a bit like doing a jig-saw puzzle. Dark. Street. Alone. Noise. Dustbin lid. Domestic cat. ‘Ok,’ your brain says. ‘So it was only a cat jumping onto a dustbin lid. No real danger there. You can go back to sleep now Amygdala. Panic over.’ 

But sometimes the processing doesn’t happen properly. A piece of the jigsaw gets left behind and the memory of the event doesn’t get stored in its entirety. The result is that, in future, whenever something even slightly approximating the original memory happens (like seeing a cat for example) the Amygdala thinks "Aha! This rings a bell … Eeeek! danger … danger!" ... And it's all systems go.

This is a very simplistic way of describing it, but you get the idea?

Hypnosis and NLP uncouples the jigsaw so the brain can put it back together using all of the pieces this time and, Hey Presto, the phobia disappears.

So there's no need to live with a distressing phobia, is there? 

Get rid of it now!

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                             Phobia hypnosis West Wickham

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                                    Phobia hypnosis Kent

Hypnotherapy to help you reduce anxiety, stress, panic, get rid of a phobia, West Wickham, Bromley, Kent and South East London