Hypnosis for Phobias

Hello, I’m Jonathan Garside from The Hypnosis Clinic. One of the first things I tackled when I became a clinical hypnotherapist 26 years ago, was arachnophobia, someone with a morbid fear of spiders! A phobia is more than a simple fear. It develops when a person begins to organise their life around avoiding the thing they are afraid of, whether it’s an animal like a spider, object, place or situation. Phobias are the most common type of anxiety disorder. In the UK, an estimated 10 million people have phobias. They can affect anyone, regardless of age, sex and social background. If you have a phobia, you may have an overwhelming need to avoid all contact with the source of your anxiety. Coming into contact with the cause of your phobia or even the thought of it can make you anxious and may cause you to panic. If the cause of your phobia is an object or animal that you do not come into contact with regularly, such as a spider, it is unlikely to affect your day-to-day life. However, if you have a more complex phobia, such as agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces, you may find it very difficult to lead a normal life. At The Hypnosis Clinic, we deal with lots of different phobic responses from people. Some of them are relatively simple phobias like a fear of spiders, heights, flying or dentists. Some of them are more complex like agoraphobia or a social phobia. Simple phobias tend to come from childhood, and are often thought of as lessons incorrectly learned. More complex phobias tend to start later in life and have a variety of different underlying causes. Almost all phobias can be successfully treated and cured. Treating simple phobias may involve gradually becoming exposed to the animal, object, place or situation that causes fear. This is known as desensitisation or self-exposure therapy. Treating complex phobias often takes longer and involves talking therapies, such as counselling, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy. In the sessions, we often look to find the cause of a phobia, because understanding where it came from really can help us to put it into a better perspective. I’ll give you an example; I treated a 26 year old woman who had a fear of elevators; she would never use one and the thought of travelling in one was positively terrifying to her. I was also interested to see that she had lost the use of her right index finger. She couldn’t remember how it had happened or when. Even doctors could find nothing wrong. Using hypnosis, we were able to uncover the reasons behind this interesting story; it transpires, that at the age of 5, she had momentarily trapped her finger in a closing lift door. Her mother had become very angry, smacking her and yelling. The already traumatised child started a process of telling herself that elevators were so dangerous that they could cause your mother to go ballistic and even stop your finger from working - that was mum’s kind suggestion. Now 26, she was still labouring under the childish belief of a 5 year old, even though she could see things logically as an adult. After 3 sessions of hypnotherapy and some physiotherapy, she was able to use lifts again and regain use of her finger. If you’d like to find out more about how to live your life free from phobia, take a look through some of my tips on this blog. If you’d like to find out more about the work I do helping people to overcome problems, make an appointment for a free consultation. You can either come to meet me at our clinic in London’s regent street, or via a Telehealth video call. Have a look on our website for more details: https://thehypnosisclinic.com