Clearing Fears and Phobias with Hypnosis

About 25% of my work is with clients who have some sort of fear, phobia, or anxiety about some aspect of their life.

Interestingly enough, many of these people, don’t have an actual fear of something; their fear is that they might BE fearful. They are afraid of becoming\afraid of flying. So on the way to the airport, they get gripped with fear, not about the flight itself, but by the possibility that they might have a fear attack on board the flight.

So what’s that about?

Anxiety problems often run in families, and a fear or phobia is one type of anxiety problem. People who worry a lot often have parents who have these traits. Anxiety that runs in families can partly be explained by biology and genetics. Some points of view hold that the potential of certain biological traits passed down in families may affect the brain's chemical regulation of mood and can affect how sensitive someone is or how strongly they react to fear cues. Another point of view is that this reaction is learned behaviour.

We know that children learn by watching how their parents and others react to the world around them. If a parent is overcautious, overprotective or overemphasizes danger, children often develop seeing the world as dangerous or potentially dangerous.

Growing up, as each situation is seen as potentially dangerous, the emotion compounds to such a degree that the person finds they are spending more time worrying about the possibility of encountering the fear around the feared situation and avoiding anything that might bring them into contact with it. Hence the fear of the fear.

Whatever the fear or phobia, the person experiences stress and anxiety when they're faced with it and will try to avoid the things or situations which trigger the anxiety. But avoiding it makes the fear or phobia worse in the long run. Avoidance is turbo charged fuel to the ‘fear of the fear’. It can become all consuming. People who live in the fear of the fear are more and more dominated by the things they have to avoid in their life. And their world becomes smaller and smaller.

As you can imagine, it is critically important to find out whether the person has a fear, or a fear of the fear, because they are treated differently.

I have found that using systematic desensitization – the 10 step process – works brilliantly for the fear of the fear. But for actual, debilitating fear, regression is the way to go. We need to get back to the ISE, or the root of the fear, and it can be in this lifetime or other lifetimes. The source, of course, doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we need to find the source, and make sure it is THE source, then let it go.
So, happy hunting, clearing and healing.