Hypnotherapy for fears and phobias, helping clients in Islington, Mayfair, Tunbridge Wells & Online
Having helped clients in Islington, Mayfair, Tunbridge Wells and online successfully tackle their fear and phobias for many years, this is how I can help you:
When you feel afraid it can trigger strong emotional and physical reactions. You can feel shaky, dizzy, tearful, your heart beats faster, you can feel nauseous, and go clammy. You’re not sure if the feeling will end. Nobody likes to experience fear like that, but most of us do at some point in our lives. It’s how we learn to avoid things that are dangerous, or bad for us. The fear acts as a warning signal. Mostly it’s a temporary feeling that we accept and can manage, but sometimes we can make associations with the wrong emotion, and so we feel fearful about something even when that’s not usually the normal response to that situation.
Having a fear of flying, or of heights, or of going to the dentist, even a fear of animals like dogs, birds or spiders, can hold you back, as you start to avoid situations that you have come to associate with that feeling. That’s when it can turn into anxiety, and become a phobia. A phobia is when you develop an intense and irrational fear of something; it can be an object or a situation, like meeting new people, that has no real threat. The difference between fear and a phobia is that with a phobia you are constantly worrying that you will encounter the object or situation that you fear. It can be very tiring for you, as you spend lots of time and energy actively trying to avoid the object of fear, and if you do come across it, you start experiencing unpleasant symptoms like shortness of breath, feeling sick and potentially even panic attacks.
Phobias can develop very suddenly, as a result of a single incident, as a child or in adulthood. Perhaps you had a bad experience at the dentist once, or a dog snapped at you as a child. It’s often something your brain has learnt in response to others too, that you may not even remember. For example, if your mother used to jump up and run away whenever you were out in the garden as a child and there were wasps around, warning you to be careful, your brain would have put that in the “alert” category to help you avoid danger, and learnt enough from it to trigger a protective reaction every time you encountered a wasp again.
While you may know the fear is irrational, it can be hard to override your brain once it’s set to “protect” mode. This is where hypnosisi can be so helpful. Your phobia may appear to be very specific, but the root cause can often be buried deep in your unconscious mind. It needs patience and understanding to uncover what has led you to feel this fear in the first place, and to help you overcome your phobia once and for all. Guiding you through a gentle hypnotherapy process, I first help you get to the root of the phobia or fear, and then work with you to unlearn the reaction so that you can enjoy your life finally free of your fear. Depending on the severity of the phobia, I sometimes use some NLP techniques too, which are a great way to help you manage your responses to certain triggers and situations. The best thing about hypnotherapy and NLP is that it can be as quick to change your response as it took to learn it in the first place. Imagine what a wonderful feeling that is, not to have to spend any more energy worrying about your phobia, or avoiding situations! Let me help you get your life back.