Phobia Creep
Often people suffer from more than one phobia. If a phobia is not overcome it can produce additional phobias. Interaction between phobias can also cause modification to phobias and complicated patterns of circumstance that trigger fear develop. The fear from one phobia can creep to other items even strange phobias.
A client came to me describing phobias of confined spaces, heights and fairground rides. During her first session we addressed what she felt was her greatest fear – that of heights. Following our first session she was able to go many high places without fear but she still could not go near escalators.
This fear of escalators was something that appeared when it could no longer be “hidden” by a fear of heights. During the process to overcome her fear my client worked out that escalators made the connection between her fear of heights, confined spaces and fairground rides.
My client’s fear of heights and confined spaces had both developed when she was a young child: her fear of heights when she fell from a wall and her fear of confined spaces (claustrophobia) when she became trapped inside a box.
On a visit to London in her mid teens she had added a fear of escalators – in hypnosis she recalled an incident standing at the top of an escalator on the London Underground when she was 15, frightened to descend to travel on the tube (to be trapped underground in a tube train). Her fear of being trapped “crept” to one of escalators.
She did not feel that her fear of fairground rides had existed before she was about 17. She remembered an experience on a fairground Big Wheel. There had been some incident and the ride had stopped while she was at the top for a longer period than expected. While trapped at the top she had panicked. Her only desire had been to get to the ground as quickly as possible and she believed she had been physically restrained from jumping out. She had always assigned this to a fear of heights but on reflection she realised that her fear had not been of heights because she had no fear of jumping from the car – another greater fear had overtaken her.
Prior to this incident on a Big Wheel my client had, even with her fear of heights, enjoyed visiting fairgrounds but after her “escalator” incident becoming “trapped” at the top of the big wheel had triggered another fear. Already experiencing a fear of heights, her subconscious had made two additional associations with fear – she was trapped (claustrophobia) and her view down through the steel structure of the Big Wheel “reminded” her subconscious of an escalator and triggered her new fear of escalators. She was experiencing three phobias simultaneously and she panicked. Her claustrophobia, fear of heights and fear of escalators added together and “crept” to fairground rides. A new phobia was established.
It is not necessary to discover the cause of a phobia but frequently in addressing them we get clues. Phobia creep is a continuing problem and if not addressed will lead to more and more phobias developing and the sufferer becomes more and more imprisoned by their fears.
Hypnotherapy and NLP are used to cure phobias by helping the sufferer to view the initial sensitising experience from a different, safer, perspective. Treatment using hypnosis allows you overcome your fear by developing a new perspective that does not hold the fear that was programmed in by the original experience. With the correct treatment you can cure your fears and phobias. Hypnotherapy and NLP can be extremely effective as a cure for phobias.
Stop putting up with fear. Hypnosis can cure your phobias. Book a hypnotherapy appointment with Stephen Rigby at his Guildford or Woking, Surrey practice for treatment now! Remember you can get a free introductory appointment if you just wish to discuss your requirements in more detail.
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