10 Common Fears & Phobias That Hypnotherapy Can Relieve
October can be a fun but also stressful time of the year for those who have certain fears or phobias. We all know that Halloween is best associated with ghosts and goblins, and that spookiness and frightening things are celebrated rather than not. However, for many people, especially children, this time of the year is one where phobias and fears of certain actions or things can be created or amplified tenfold. And for hundreds more people, that fear or phobia is something they live with year-round.
What if I told you that it is possible to live your life without that fear or phobia? Would you like to know how? Learn the 10 most common phobias people can have and how hypnotherapy can help deal with, if not fully end, them.
What are the 10 Most Common Phobias?
While hypnotherapy can address and relieve all types of fears, phobias, and anxieties in people, these top ten are the most common ones I’ve succeeded in treating in my time as a clinical hypnotherapist:
- Arachnophobia – the fear of spiders.
- Social Phobia – the fear of being evaluated negatively in social situations i.e. public speaking.
- Aerophobia – the fear of flying.
- Agoraphobia – the fear of any place or situation where escape is difficult.
- Claustrophobia – the fear of being trapped in small confined spaces such as hallways or elevators.
- Acrophobia – the fear of heights.
- Emetophobia – the fear of vomit.
- Carcinophobia – the fear of cancer.
- Brontophobia – the fear of thunder and lightning.
- Necrophobia – the fear of death.
What Are Phobias?
A phobia is an irrational and excessive fear of a specific activity, situation, or object that triggers a compelling desire to avoid that thing. If someone has a phobia, to everyone else it may seem silly, but to the person with the phobia it is a genuine fear. Having this phobia is not their fault and not something they can “get over it”.
Another way of looking at a phobia is as an unconscious automatic response to stimulus, which stems from a misperception of said stimulus. Scientists say that only two fears are hereditary or naturally instinctive: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. Everything else is learned. The good news is, that means it can be un-learned.
Phobias usually start while we are young. However, any traumatic experience we endure, such as serious accidents or injuries, can cause phobias in adulthood.
There are two main categories of phobias:
Social Phobias – fears involving other people or situations such as:
- Public speaking
- Performance anxiety
- Embarrassment in public, such as eating
- General social phobia, known as social anxiety disorder
- Specific social phobias, i.e. cases of anxiety triggered only in specific situations such as being unable to urinate in a public bathroom
Specific phobias – a fear of a single specific panic trigger such as:
- Spiders
- Dogs
- Elevators
- Water
- Flying
- Death
- Many, many more
Phobias can be severe in some individuals while others can simply avoid their fear trigger and have mild anxiety over that fear. Most understand that they suffer from an irrational fear, but they feel powerless in being able to overcome their instinctual panic reaction.
Ending a Life Full of Irrational Fear is Possible
There is hope. Phobias can be treated. But when the fear trigger can be easily avoided (for the most part), a person may decide to try and ignore it rather than go for treatment. This can cause the phobia to manifest and cause disruption in one’s life in the future. A phobia may become present with no trigger or reason and it can be difficult to treat with standard psychotherapeutic techniques.
Many hypnotherapists may use “Parts Therapy” as a treatment to find the part of you that has the phobia. Parts therapy is based on the idea that our personalities are made up of a number of various parts which are aspects of the subconscious, each with a respective job or function in the inner mind.
Revert that part of you, that part of your personality, to the first time you were aware of the cause of the current phobia. Various hypnotherapy techniques can help to desensitize you, reframe the initial moment about the fear, which allows you to function freely without it. You may be taught self-hypnosis techniques to help reinforce your phobia-free life.
If you have a phobia or fear of any kind, you may want to consider hypnotherapy to help your personality be free and thrive again. Contact me if you have any questions about my services.
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