How Hypnotherapy Can Transform Your Fear of Flying
I would like to share with you some thoughts on fears, phobias, and negative self-talk.
While these thoughts can relate to any fears or phobias you might have, the fear of flying is one of the most frequently treated phobias I assist with using hypnotherapy, so that is the main example I am going to be referring to for the majority of this article.
Feel free to attribute my advice here on flying to your own fear, phobia, or negative self-talk that you are trying to change for your sake and to improve your quality of life.
How is the fear of flying created?
If a person has a fear of flying they will usually picture the same scenario over and over again: they get to the airport, they get on the plane, there’s turbulence, there’s a plane crash, and then they die. If that person has a fear of flying, then every time they think of flying they think of that scenario. Those thoughts fire through the mind swiftly, so what the person is left with is some sort of scenario or visualization or imagination of that exact same type of scenario.
Because the subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between what you imagine and what’s real, your subconscious mind thinks that you’ve died 100, 10,000, maybe even 100,000 times. Every time you think about flying, it experiences your death.
So when the person goes to get on the airplane, because the subconscious mind’s main purpose is to protect you and keep you safe, it’s going to do everything that it absolutely can to prevent you from getting on that airplane because it thinks that you’ve died 100,000 times. That can include any physical symptom, from shortness of breath, to sweaty palms, to heart rate increase, to fainting, to blindness, to hyperventilation—you name it. It can do whatever it’s going to do because it’s trying to protect you and keep you safe.
How to conquer your fear of flying using hypnotherapy
When you’re working at changing things in the subconscious mind, hypnotherapy is a partner in between doing the work on a subconscious mind level and creating a different feeling or a different emotional response when thinking about flying and when actually flying. However, because with hypnosis if a person has had a fear for a very long time, the longer the fear or belief has been in the subconscious mind, the more organic change has taken place. So, they have neurological pathways designed to think a certain way and to feel a certain way when they think about flying.
When you’re undoing that fear with hypnosis, there’s also this other component of mindfulness which comes into play. Being aware of every time you think of flying, and actively and consciously deciding to not think about that and not play that fearful scenario over and over, can definitely make a quicker change in the subconscious mind, instead of playing that same story over and over, the same old story, the movie where you died…essentially just reinforcing that that fear should be there. So if you actively and consciously use mindfulness techniques to also picture what it is that you do want instead of what you don’t want, what you’re doing is impressing upon the subconscious mind that.
The way it works is you imagine showing up at the airport very relaxed; you’re feeling excited about your trip where you’re going. You imagine getting on the airplane, sitting down, enjoying some quiet time, reading, maybe having a nap, or watching a movie, all while still feeling calm. Then, imagine the airplane landing, and you still feel calm; imagine getting to your destination still feeling calm and relaxed. This is all telling your mind a different story. Then, what you’ve been telling your subconscious for 10, 20, or even 30 years will now be replaced with positive thoughts, positive feeling, new neural pathways which will establish an organic, long-lasting change for the better.
Hypnotherapy is absolutely the way to go about conquering your fears and phobias or changing your self-talk. Why not give it a try?
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