Help with Fears and Phobias – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

I’m just back from a week in Wales with the girls. Whilst we hit the end of the recent heatwave while we were there, we also got to enjoy lovely rain! I never thought I could love the cooling Welsh drizzle so much!

On the way to Wales we seemed to hit every traffic jam, busy road and stoppage that you could possibly encounter. Remind me never to travel across the UK on a Friday again! Although we nearly didn’t travel on the Friday because we had it in our heads that we were leaving on the Saturday! Luckily we discovered the correct dates a couple of days beforehand (I’m blaming my wife for the mistake!! Only please don’t tell her that it turns out I had the correct dates written in my diary the whole time had I bothered to check!!).

While we whiled away the time stuck in traffic, my youngest mentioned that she’d recently watched a video that ran through the top one hundred fears and phobias. And what started as a game of how many could I correctly guess, soon turned into a game of how many have I helped people to overcome with hypnotherapy. The answer (unsurprisingly) is a lot! Aside from the most obscure ones (or easily avoidable), I must have helped people to deal with at least seventy five per cent of the fears and phobias listed.

Luckily for us, based on where we were staying, hills, woodland and rivers didn’t appear on the list (or at least not on the list of any one of us!).

This was the river that ran past where we were staying and which was shallow enough to have a paddle in:

And it was a long walk up to the top of this hill (as the kids reminded me every thirty seconds) to get a look out at this awesome view:

Help With Fears and Phobias

The human brain is a funny thing sometimes. It can take something that logically and rationally you know is quite safe and harmless and turn it into something that fills you with dread and fear if you are exposed to it or even if you could possibly come into contact with it.

Now, sometimes people know vividly and clearly where and when their fear and phobia started. There may have been a specific incident that was the start of all your fear. Others will tell me about close family members who struggle with the same fear and so it seems likely that this was something learnt from watching them at a young age. And others tell me they have no idea why they have their phobia or what started it and they may not even have any specific times or places where anything overwhelmingly panic driven or traumatic has happened.

However your fear and phobia was learnt (and it was something learnt at some point), it is possible to ‘unlearn’ it, or to get your thoughts, feelings and behaviours at a more reasonable level for whatever it is that currently leads to the anxiety, worry and fear. That may mean those things become something fun and enjoyable, like swimming, socialising or travelling. Or it may just mean being able to do the things you need to do feeling calm and in control. For some people flying will never go from fearful to joyful, someone with a fear of sick is never going to rejoice when someone around them vomits (because none of us do), driving may just become something a bit mundane without the fear and sometimes the dentist is just something you’d be able to go to calmly and get done rather then being excited about.

The key thing with fears and phobias is that we want you back in control over your thoughts and feelings so that they are appropriate to what is going on around you. A little house spider in the UK is not dangerous, but you’d still want to be wary of certain spiders if you go to some other countries. Being calm around dogs is great, but if that dog looks angry you’d still be better off avoiding it even without your old phobia of dogs.

For whatever reason your fear or phobia originally started it may have become quite problematic. Over time our thoughts, feelings and behaviours in response to a particular place or thing become seemingly more automatic and habitual. You may have become quite adept at becoming fearful about the thing you are phobic about. Your thoughts and feelings will seemingly just happen if you are faced with your fear, or even if you just think about the possibility of that happening. You start to think in fearful ways, experience those anxious feelings and then seek to escape from, or avoid going anywhere near, the thing you are afraid of (which just strengthens your fear about it).

In fact, you’ve probably avoided many things linked to your fear or phobia before now and will probably only do something to overcome your fear when you can no longer avoid it. You may have to go to the dentist for some work because you are in pain, you may not want your kids to see you freak out every time a tiny house spider appears at home or you may need to get behind the wheel and drive somewhere or to make a speech at an event you can’t dodge.

To be honest, I can’t remember all of the fears and phobias I’ve helped people to overcome over the years, there are too many! I’ve helped people with overcoming the fear of flying, fear of driving, public speaking, health, blood, injections and needles, dogs, spiders, sickness and vomiting, balloons, fish, heights, certain sounds, escalators, thunder, crowds, open spaces, confined spaces, fear of failure, water, doctors, dentists, hospitals, birds, germs, fire and a load more.

It generally doesn’t matter too much how your phobia arose (or even if you have no idea), it is still possible to let go of the anxiety and fear by working out and interrupting the habitual psychological patterns that mean it keeps continuing and repeating (even though you don’t want it to). As you learn to take back control over your thoughts and feelings, and to diffuse the fear and anxiety, you can build up more and more confidence as you approach and successfully tackle your phobia and things associated with it.

I’ve had some lovely feedback recently from people who have been finally able to relax on their flight on holiday, who have been able to drive themselves where ever they want to go, who can calmly remove a spider from a room without screaming and running away and who have been able to happily go and swim in the sea without worrying about any little fish that may be about.

So whatever you own fear or phobia is, whether I’ve mentioned it in this article or not, and whether or not it appears in any list of top ten or top hundred most common phobias, it is possible to overcome it and find the freedom to be able to calmly, confidently and positively do the things you want to do and without all the dread and anguish that you’ve been struggling with up until now.

To your health and happiness, 

Dan Regan

Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

Struggling with anxiety, fears and phobias and need some help? Find out how I can help with a Complimentary Hypnotherapy Strategy Session. Learn more here: Appointments

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