Phobias
Clinical hypnotherapy can be an effective form of treatment for phobias. We learn phobias quickly and I believe we can un learn them quickly too.
Phobias are a learnt response to a given object, event or situation. Phobias are learnt in moments, and reinforced throughout our lifetime. The good news is that phobias are learnt quickly and can be un-learnt just as quickly.
Whenever we experience the world around us we experience it firstly through one of our senses i.e. hearing, sight, touch, feeling etc. Our memories are our stored experiences. This is where phobic responses often reside. Now when we think of past or future experiences we give meaning to those remembered or future experiences. When we give meaning to something we do so often without realising. Let’s take a simple example like a dog. When we see a dog our brain gives meaning by running a pattern match and comparing to past experiences, even those experiences we have consciously forgotten. The brain runs a process and says to itself, “is it the same as” or “is it different from”? So when we see a dog we know and recognise it as a dog because our brain has run a pattern match. This meaning is a combination of pattern matches that our unconscious mind runs on our behalf. These pattern matches are simple things such as: good, bad, safe, dangerous, similar to, different from.
We cannot experience anything without giving meaning to it. That meaning is a combination of past memories, the anticipated future and the coding that our mind gives it.
So How Can Does This Relate To My Phobia?
The answer lies within you and your own mind’s ability to change unconscious processes. Let’s take a hypothetical example: Peter is an adult male and he is scared of dogs. When Peter was three years old had no previous experiences of dogs and the only meaning his mind searched for when he saw a dog was the meaning he had gained from children’s books. One day whilst in the park, a dog bit him. His brain stored this experience as a memory. Many years later as an adult Peter cannot consciously recall this memory. When he was three his brain stored this experience as danger. Consequently whenever Peter sees an animal that has four legs his brain begins to search for meaning and runs a pattern match. If the animal he is now seeing, as an adult, is in fact a dog then his brain goes “ah a match…dog! = dangerous.” To deal with the danger Peter’s brain will flood his system with chemicals produced by the body and Peter notices a sensation he recognises as fear. Peter can now take appropriate action and the fear will subside. The brain says to itself “Good that worked well I’ll store that for the future” and this latest experience confirms to the brain that it did indeed take the right action as Peter, now out of harms way, feels fine. This is a simple cause and effect algorithm that Peter’s brain is running. Now it would make no difference to Peter if that dog were a small Chihuahua or a big snarling dog. The response was completely out of his conscious control once his brain began running the pattern. So when Peter with help from a clinical hypnotherapist, has recovered the earliest memory and examined it with the perspective of his adult mind and not that of his child mind or his brain has learnt to run a different algorithm then Peter will have a different response to the dog.
So whatever phobia or behaviour you want to change now I am here to help you achieve that.