People who don’t suffer from a phobia have a hard time imagining just how some innocuous object or animal can evoke such a profound state of fear and panic in a phobic person. What’s so scary about a feather or a mouse? Well the phobic person won’t be able to tell you either – all they know is that the object of their phobia creates off-the-scale levels of fear and loathing.
There are many ways of approaching treatment, from the effective to the ridiculous. Some of them just don’t even try to understand the phobic person’s problem – like the well-meaning doctor who advises a person who is terrified of birds that they should cure themselves by installing a birdbath in the back yard! That’s just not going to do it for a true phobic.
Causes
From what I have observed in working with phobics and seeing them treated in hypnotherapy demonstrations, there are three processes at work in the creation of a phobic:
1) The initial sensitising event – this is an event or series of linked events that creates a wounding or trauma around a particular issue.
2) The wounding that results from the sensitising event is linked to an object. Interestingly, the object is not always directly involved in the original wounding. For instance, a fear of birds could have its origin in a frightening event experienced by a very young child concerning birds, or the origin could be in a more metaphoric linking of a trauma to birds. For instance, the young child might associate their abandonment by a parent with the word “flighty”, which someone used to describe that parent.
3) The event and its object linking, because it is not understood by the conscious mind, sinks into the subconscious where it begins to exert a hidden influence over the life of the subject. Because no resolution or catharsis occurs, the wound festers and swells until at last it is a vast, unseen monstrosity that causes terrible suffering for the subject. Part of the severity of the fear response is that it is laid down as an actual neural pathway over the many years of repetition. The phobic can no longer see the original wounding event, yet they have built a powerful neural highway around it.
Treatment
Hypnosis is one of the few tools that can reach deep enough into the subject’s consciousness to locate the initial wounding and bring the long-awaited release and catharsis. It takes skill on the part of the therapist and courage on the part of the subject, but the results can be miraculous. All that is required is for the original wounding to be recalled and then for adult understanding to be brought to it. The simple recognition by the conscious mind of the subconscious content is enough to stop the incessant replaying of that original wounding. The wounding and the resultant phobia is replaced by profound understanding and forgiveness.
