Get over your phobias and fears with hypnotherapy and clinical hypnosis. As a hypnotherapist (AHA) I help many people become phobia-free fast. You may even get health fund rebates.
This includes fear of flying (Aviophobia), driving (Amaxophobia), motorways (Motorway Anxiety Disorder), dogs (Cynophobia), lifts or small spaces (Claustrophobia), heights (Acrophobia), open spaces (Agoraphobia), spiders (Arachnophobia) and many more.
Many studies have found that hypnotherapy is faster for many kinds of phobia recovery than cognitive behavioural therapy.
As I am also a clinical psychotherapist, mental health professional (PACFA) and clinical naturopath (ANPA) I take a holistic approach to help your recovery.
What is a phobia?
Are you afraid of flying, dogs, cats or travelling on motorways?
Do you feel afraid of getting into lifts or being in high places?
Is your phobia limiting what you do, where you go, or restricting your opportunities?
A phobia is when you’re irrationally afraid of a place, situation, object, person or creature that doesn’t ordinary pose any danger to you.
There are situations when we should be afraid like being chased by a tiger, jumping out of an airplane without a parachute or having a gun pointed at us.
However, in our ordinary lives we sometime develop fears that have no basis in logic or pose any real danger to us.
The fight or flight response
When we perceive danger, real or imaginary, we experience immediate physiological and mental change:
- Muscles become tense and ready for action
- Pupils of the eyes become focused on the object of fear
- Hearing becomes hypersensitive or shuts down
- Breath can become very fast and we hyperventilate
- You can hold your breath and almost stop breathing (freeze response)
- Heart and pulse accelerates
- Start sweating and become dizzy
- Panic and stop thinking rationally
- Want to run away or hide
Everyone is different in their responses, but you’ll experience more than one of these basic fear responses during a phobia and you’ll feel out of control.
How a phobia begins
It’s simple how a phobia begins.
You’re exposed to a fearful situation or someone has told you such things are dangerous.
Your body and mind remembers the fear response.
You then equate similar situations as dangerous in the future even when you’re just thinking about them even if they’re not.
Because the fear response is automatically kicking in you’re failing to do a true assessment of the danger posed. Your logical mind is bypassed by fearful emotions.
If there was more than one or multiple initial situations that were truly dangerous you can develop complex trauma and generalised anxiety.
We all have some phobias
You are not alone. We all have things we fear that perhaps don’t pose a great danger to us as it’s a natural human response.
These may be mild phobias that don’t cause any problems in our everyday lives. They might make us different in some way but it doesn’t impede on our ability to create a good life.
They sometimes disappear and resolve when we become exposed to new information or experiences.
It’s all part of our learning and reprogramming developmental experiences.
You can overcome your phobia with hypnotherapy
I’m reminded of a woman who came to see me who hadn’t left her house for 10 years because of her fear of open spaces.
It took six relatives and several hours to get her into the car to come to my clinic for hypnotherapy. She did everything I asked her and the second time I saw her she was planning an around-the-world holiday.
Yes, things can change that quickly.
A thing is only hard to do when you don’t know how to do it or you don’t know how to not know how to do it.
Hypnosis accesses the unconscious mind
All automatic behavioural responses are controlled by the unconscious mind which is why you were unable to break the phobia consciously.
The conscious mind is tiny.
Your unconscious mind is huge. It remembers all the abilities, skills and resources you’ve learned. It’s really smart and the boss of you.
Hypnosis helps us to access your abilities in your unconscious mind to eliminate the phobic response.
I also make suggestions to your unconscious mind to help it install better ways for you to deal with similar situations in the future.
What hypnotic techniques are used?
Being a doctor of clinical hypnotherapy and a medical hypnotist I was trained in hundreds, if not thousands, of hypnotic techniques.
Since everyone is different and experiences phobias in their own individual way I select the techniques that best suit you and your needs.
This may include systematic desensitisation, amnesia, reprogramming your neurological responses, teaching you new skills and much more.
Sometimes I may change techniques during treatment according to how you respond.
Why hypnotherapy works fast
A phobia is an out-of-control emotionally-driven reaction that has no logic and is amplified by the defensive mechanisms in the conscious mind.
In hypnotherapy I am dealing with your unconscious mind as it has the ability to stay calm and make the changes to your behavioural sub-routines without fear.
Having made those changes, you learn act differently to assess situations in the future for the real level of risk and get on with your everyday life.
As a naturopath I also check for any physiological problems and will suggest any changes you need to make to recover from your phobias quicker and even more comfortably.
To book your hypnotherapy appointment to overcome a phobia with Dr Tracie O’Keefe DCH call 0403 398 808
