REMOVING FEARS

Phobias, Anxiety Attacks and Stress
Hypnosis has a long history of helping people removing fears across the whole spectrum - from simple stress reduction, to severe anxiety attacks to full-blown phobic responses.

There are three classes of phobias: agoraphobia, social phobia, and specific phobia

Social phobia, also called social anxiety, is a disorder characterized by overwhelming anxiety and excessive self-consciousness in everyday social situations. People with social phobia have a persistent, intense, and chronic fear of being watched and judged by others and of being embarrassed or humiliated by their own actions. Their fear may be so severe that it interferes with work or school - and other ordinary activities. While many people with social phobia recognize that their fear of being around people may be excessive or unreasonable, they are unable to overcome it. They often worry for days or weeks in advance of a dreaded situation.

Social phobia can be limited to only one type of situation - such as a fear of speaking in formal or informal situations, or eating or drinking in front of others - or, in its most severe form, may be so broad that a person experiences symptoms almost anytime they are around other people. Social phobia can be very debilitating - it may even keep people from going to work or school on some days. Many people with this illness have a hard time making and keeping friends.

Physical symptoms often accompany the intense anxiety of social phobia and include blushing, profuse sweating, trembling, and other symptoms of anxiety, including difficulty talking and nausea or other stomach discomfort. These visible symptoms heighten the fear of disapproval and the symptoms themselves can become an additional focus of fear. Fear of symptoms can create a vicious cycle: as people with social phobia worry about experiencing the symptoms, the greater their chances of developing the symptoms.. Social phobia often runs in families and may be accompanied by depression or alcohol dependence.

To get an idea how hypnosis can help with phobias, let's look at how a phobia is created to begin with.

Say a child develops a fear of frogs because her big brother tosses a dead frog at her as a joke. In the moments where the frog is hurtling towards her face and she thinks it's real time seems to slow down. She imagines an ugly  and slimy animal about to hit her and her limbic system floods her body with the hormones that cause sheer terror within her. She is, in effect "entranced" in that moment and from then on she never forgets to be afraid of frogs.

Hypnosis helps for several reasons.

It can help you gain control of errant thoughts that cause stress.
It can help you make lifestyle changes that effect your body chemistry.
It can help you learn to put deep relaxation under your conscious control

Studies have shown hypnosis is helpful in relieving numerous conditions that arose from stress by relieving the underlying condition.

Examples include skin conditions, lupus, chronic pain and high blood pressure.

Your brain is made in such a way that you can learn very quickly if you are in an altered state of consciousness. That means you can also unlearn just as quickly.