Fears and Phobias

What is the difference between a fear and a phobia?

The main difference between a fear and a phobia is in the severity of the emotional reaction. If you have a strong dislike for flying for instance, then you have a fear of flying. Whereas a phobia of flying is considered to be a pathological physical fear that is intense, uncontrollable and unendurable.

Although some phobias seem to serve the obvious purpose of keeping you safe, like fear of heights or drowning, there are some that appear to make no sense at all.

We are not born with our fears and irrational phobic responses, we learn them.

A phobia is a thought and response process that has grown out of all proportion. It stems from an initial healthy respect for something, that then grows into an enormous fear and then grows more and more until it becomes a phobia – an illogical excessive fear.

This may take varying amounts of time to develop, days, weeks or years. Once developed, it restricts and in some cases controls your life. For some people one phobia develops into more phobias and then goes on escalating until they are unable to carry on any sort of normal life. There are people who won’t go abroad for holidays because they have a fear or phobia of flying. A person who can’t enter a room with a spider in it until they know it’s gone. People too frightened to leave the house to seek medical treatment from a Doctor for a physical problem because they have a fear of open spaces. People too afraid to visit the dentist even though they may have a very painful problem with their teeth. People, who can’t have injections due to a needle phobia, can’t bear heights or enclosed spaces.

The list goes on and on, but they all have a common cause, their mind and their memory has a distorted view of the subject.

Fears and phobias are extremely common, and you may be thinking that you are unusual, but most are so common that they have official names. Here is a very small amount from a very big list

Fear of spiders – Arachnophobia
Fear of water – Hydrophobia
Fear of going to school – Didaskaleinophobia
Fear of being sick – Emetophobia
Fear of injections – Trypanophobia
Fear of heights – Acrophobia
Fear of blood – Haemophobia
Fear of flying – Aerophobia - Aviatophobia
Fear of open spaces – Agoraphobia
Fear of public speaking – Glossophobia
Fear of dentists – Odontophobia
Fear of enclosed spaces – Claustrophobia

The best way to live with a phobia is to ignore it and to distract yourself from it. Although we all know that this is easier said than done, the more you think about it, the bigger the issue becomes in your mind and the more it takes over your life.

It can often help in the short term to read more about your phobia and gain some understanding of it. Find out what it’s called, sounds funny maybe, but it is often reassuring to know that what you are suffering from is common enough for it to be given a name and that you are not alone with your phobia.

Some therapies try and get you to feel the fear and tough it out. This can very often be of help and both coaching and suggestion therapy can help in the short term or to get you through an impending situation, but it is really only symptom treatment and is not addressing the root cause of the problem.

If you think about the fact that a phobia or anxiety attack is driven by very strong emotions, then it follows that the longer-term solution is to find and resolve the emotional root cause.

With me, this is achieved in a gentle, supportive, safe and totally confidential environment, using a series of Pure Hypnoanalysis sessions. Together we will build a strong bond of trust and rapport and I will use a Pure Free Association technique, to help you to access and talk through those bottled up or repressed emotions until they are resolved and the bottle is drained.

Hypnoanalysis doesn't rely on what I think is important. It encourages your psyche to naturally allow some emotions to surface, those emotions that have been causing untold grief and anxiety in the back of your mind.

Hypnoanalysis is a fairly quick therapy compared to most and typically takes 8 – 10 sessions, unlike some therapies that take years. It is a quick and gentle way to reach the root cause of the bottled up emotions that are creating the problem. This is not symptom treatment; once the repressed emotion is released the phobia is gone.

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Contact Ian at Change Matters

Call now to book your free initial consultation where we can discuss the types program available and you can ask any questions you may have in a relaxed, friendly and confidential environment.

Call can me on 07780 118542

E-mail me on ian@changematters.co.uk