Phobias

A phobia is an anxiety which has attached itself to particular place, object or situation. Common phobias include fear of flying, needle phobia, fear of heights and spider phobia. The list of phobias is in fact endless including more unusual phobias such as fear of buttons or trees.

If you experience physical and emotional reactions such as heart racing, shallow breathing, tension and sweating, tingling sensations in your limbs and irrational thoughts surging through your mind when faced with a particular object or situation, then you probably have a phobia.

A phobia can be learned, can be the result of a traumatic experience or has developed over time due to underlying stress or anxiety. To be diagnosed as a phobia the fear response is considered irrational or abnormal. For example, when visiting a dentist it's ok to feel nervous before visiting a dentist but to completely avoid going and instead stay home and suffer intense pain, then this is considered irrational. To anticipate that a common house spider will do you harm is irrational. Your phobia can become so bad that you avoid many situations or places which in turn reduces your enjoyment of everyday life.

Using Hypnotherapy you can learn to replace the automatic response of anxiety and stress with another response, feelings of calm, confidence and control.

You won't need to be looking at pictures of spiders until you faint! First, you will learn to relax at a deep level and then you will gradually and at your pace, begin to imagine scenarios whilst in a deep relaxed state and begin to replace the old feeling of anxiety with new feelings of calm, confidence and control.