
These fears and phobias often seem very trivial to a lot of people and may consists of things like fear of animals such as spiders, dogs, rats or cockroaches or it maybe fear of natural things like fear of darkness, fear of heights etc. Many at times they are not very serious too. However, irrespective of the seriousness of the issue, the fact is that these fears really troubles us because it is there with us always and we can not do anything about it.
Psychiatric treatment can also not help much in removing fears and phobias, at best they can give us medication to suppress to avoid the anxiety that comes at time of the fear and phobia. However, this is not an ideal approach for people looking at resolving fears and phobias completely.
Hypnotherapy is one of the options using which we can get rid of our fears and phobias effectively. This is because hypnotherapy works with the subconscious mind and thus using this one can go directly to the real cause, incident or situation which is causing the fear or the phobia in the present time and heal it completely. This in turn will bring permanent changes in the person's behavior. But before we go deep in understanding what tools can be used in hypnotherapy to remove fears and phobias, let us first understand what is hypnotherapy.
Fears and Phobias: Definition and Difference
Often we tend to use fears and phobias, almost interchangeably, however, that is not right as there is a slight difference between the two. Fear is a kind of anxiety disorder which creates an uncomfortable emotion towards a stimulus, situation, thing, etc. and pushes one to avoid it. Fear has logical reasons and often surfaces in childhood.
Phobia, on the other hand is a persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the knowledge that the trigger is not actually dangerous. Phobias are irrational and illogical and the response is extreme. Phobia usually surfaces in adulthood.
What is Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is basically a science of mind and so it is very scientific and not mystic, unlike the popular belief. It is basically a form of psychotherapy, which uses the power of the sub-conscious mind to go to the source of problems, challenges and issues and find a solution to them. It also accesses the inner strength of an individual through the subconscious mind.
Hypnotherapy to release fears and phobia
Now that we have understood what fears and phobias are and what is hypnotherapy, the next question that comes to ones mind is: How can hypnotherapy help a person suffering from fears and/or phobias? Well there are many tools and techniques that can be used, however, most often hypnotherapists focus on threefold therapy for this. It involves uncovering the original event where the fear or the phobia arrived, desensitization and suggestions.
To uncover, the real event causing the fear and phobia, a hypnotherapist can regress the person to the first time he or she felt that way and explore what happened that impacted him or her. Once the real reasons are uncovered, the therapist can then help the person understand the incident from different perspective which does not involve the need to be fearful.
Once the original event causing the fear or the phobia is uncovered and resolved, you will feel much better, however, the response to the fear or phobia stimuli may not be gone completely and that is where the second tool of desensitization will help.
Desensitization is a very helpful technique for completely releasing fears and phobias. Using this process, a therapist relaxes the person and helps them access their sub conscious state and then using the tool decreases the sensitivity of the person to the fear or phobia stimuli.
The actual process of desensitization involves the affected person giving a score to his or her fear and then gently bringing that score down by a few points in one go. Then repeating the process and bringing the point further down and continues till it reaches zero. This decreases the client's sensitivity and response to the particular fear or phobia. This desensitization process is found to be very effective as it completely uproots the fear or the phobia from the affected person's sub conscious mind, setting them free from it forever.
Using suggestions, one can motivate the affected person's mind and reprogram it to not be scared of the situation. Suggestions work very well, provided you have framed the right suggestion. Suggestions can change the old not helping program in our mind to more fruitful ones, helping in dealing with the fear and phobias.
Using a combination of the above techniques, a person can dissociate from the particular situation and trigger causing the fear or phobia he or she is facing. Once this dissociation happens, the person's fear or phobia will actually vanish and the person will be able to lead a normal, happy life.
So, if you have been going through a fear or a phobia, that keeps troubling you, there is no need to suffer anymore. Using the help of a professionally trained expert in the field, you can really set yourself free from all these fears and phobias.