It might not feel like it right now but, you can successfully deal with your fears and phobias. Thousands, if not millions of people around the world overcome their fears each and every day, and even more learn to manage anxiety…why are you any different?
I’d like you to meet Dave. For the best part of 20 years (yes, 20) Dave had a life-affecting mushroom phobia. With my help, and in under 15 minutes, Dave’s life changed forever and for the better. He made a video to show you.
WHAT IS A PHOBIA?
A phobia is a type of Anxiety Disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of something. Everyone is different, but there’s no doubt that phobia and anxiety affects behaviour.
Do you recognise some of the most common anxiety behaviours in yourself?
ESCAPE: The urge to get out and escape from the situation that the anxiety or panic strikes can be overwhelming. It’s part of the fight or flight response which fills you full of physical energy and makes you want to DO something. When you do leave you find that you start to feel better quite quickly, so you’ll tend to think that escaping makes Anxiety go away. Next time you’ll feel even keener to escape and soon a pattern is established. It’s important to understand that escaping does not make Anxiety go away. The Adrenalin rush of flight or fight always dies down, even if you stay put.
AVOIDANCE: This usually follows on from escape. If getting out of a certain situation appears to make Anxiety go away, then it seems logical to avoid going into a situation in the first place. The problem with this is that pretty soon you’ve got a whole list of things you can’t do, life becomes a misery and you still suffer from Anxiety.
Avoidance is one of the main factors that keeps Anxiety going and keeps you holding on to your Phobia.
DOING LESS: The physical symptoms of Anxiety can make you feel as if you are physically ill; in fact many people find it hard to believe that their problem is mental rather than physical. You can find yourself doing less and less because you feel so weak, tired and shaky. This is a vicious circle because the less you do the worse you feel physically and the less you’ll feel able to trust that your body will see you through the panic.
SAFETY BEHAVIOURS: Nearly everyone with Anxiety has something they do that they believe makes them safe. The trouble is that the effect tends to wear off, so that as time goes by you need to keep increasing the number or complexity of rituals to achieve the same feeling of safety.
There are 2 big problems with all of these behaviours:
- As we’ve seen already, they tend to get worse over time, so that life become more and more restricted.
- You believe that the behaviours are holding your anxiety in check, but infact you never get to test that out.
Hypnocoaching will lead to you changing your behaviours and so will help you halt any escalation and prove to yourself that Anxiety does go down in the end.
Every year we help many, many people resolve all sorts of fears and phobias, from simply feeling ‘slightly nervous’ to full-blown panic attacks, from spiders to flying…even mushrooms! Whatever your particular fear or phobia, there is a way for you to resolve it and we can help you do that very effectively.