The first thing you need to know about fears and phobias is that it is important to know the difference between them.
Fear is the body’s natural response to danger – often referred to as your fight or flight indicator. It is instinctive and triggered automatically as your body’s protection mechanism. It is normal and healthy to have fears of things that may disrupt our normal status, like getting nervous when you hit turbulence in an airplane. It stimulates that inherent flight or fight need to protect yourself. Usually with fears you know the cause and typically can be found to be established during childhood. Some common fears are:
Fear of loss
Fear of rejection
Fear of success or failure
Fear of pain
Fear of exposure
Fear of strangers
Fear of performance
Fear of responsibility
Fear of the unknown
Fear of sexual issues
A phobia on the other hand, is an irrational fear or over-exaggeration of an object or situation that in reality causes little or no danger. Phobia sufferers go to great lengths to avoid situations without rational cause. In severe cases sufferers can find that the phobia can control their entire lives. Phobias are created and housed in the sub-conscious mind and are trigger activated causing physical symptoms. These physical symptoms can be trembling, sweating, nausea, headaches, racing heart, blushing, palpitations and difficulty talking. In addition to the physical symptoms phobia sufferers have emotional responses such as avoidance behavior, feelings of anxiety, loss of control and oftentimes panic. Phobias more commonly develop in adulthood and typically cannot be pin-pointed to a direct cause. Phobias can be of any nature, a few examples include:
Fear of heights (acrophobia)
Fear of flying
Fear of death or dying
Fear of closed spaces (claustrophobia)
Fear of open spaces (agoraphobia)
Fear of loss of control
Fear of insects or animals
Fear of blood (hematophobia)
Fear of water (hydrophobia)
Fear of dirt or contamination (mysophobia)
Fear of intimacy
Dental Phobias
Environmental Phobias
Social Phobias
How Hypnotherapy can help
- Identify underlying cause for phobia
- Behavior modification to change your reaction to the stimulus
- Overcoming and releasing negative associations replacing with positive associations
- Reduction of stress and anxiety
- Reframing situations to help overcome fears and phobias
- Releasing emotional attachments