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Controlling intense fears and phobias is a relatively easy task using either hypnosis
or Brief Imagination Therapy. All you will require to
control these emotions is a single session. Let me first clarify that I will not be making
any judgments regarding your phobias or intense fears. I will not determine for you
the rationality of your phobia. As such, I will not be helping you completely remove
any fear. The reason I won’t do this is twofold.
First, fears are inherently illogical because our imagination lends a certain amount of
irrationality to every fear. Anyone see the movie Jaws? Enough said.
Second and more importantly, fear is not a bad thing. We are born with our subconscious
preprogrammed with two fears: a fear of loud noises and a fear of falling (or heights
depending on how you interpret the fear). Some have added a fear of the dark to that
list as well. Fears are a way that your subconscious protects you. You have learned at
some point in your life, with the aforementioned exceptions, that this thing you fear is
potentially harmful to you.
When a fear becomes too intense or excessively irrational the subconscious has
overstepped it’s objective of protecting an individual. It still serves this function but at the
expense of disrupting or, possibly, consuming the individuals life. This distinction is typically
what separates a fear from a phobia. It is simply a matter of degree. Someone who fears
flying will still get on a plane whereas a phobic will not even go near an airport (to varying
degrees).
So then, a client comes to see me because he has Selachophobia, a fear of sharks (I just
looked that up by the way. I’m not that smart.). If we were to completely
remove both the phobia and the fear, this person could very well have the same
regard for a shark as he would for a puppy dog. That sounds pretty foolish to me.
Another client comes in to receive help with his Sesquipedalophobia, which is, get this, a
fear of long words (and it’s practically the LONGEST phobia spelling there is! I can see
all the patients running screaming out of their psychiatrist’s office upon hearing their
diagnosis!) (Sorry.). Now in my experience there is absolutely no reason to have any
fear whatsoever of long words. I cannot, in my wildest imaginations, think of a way words
could cause you any harm. But this individual has clearly had an experience where he
thought they could.
Now this may be an extreme example but I think it illustrates my point (and it was funny).
It is not for me to judge whether or not your intense fear or phobia is rational. Therefore,
we will not be removing these emotions as they have some basis in your reality, even if
I am unable to understand it. Instead we will be reducing them to a manageable level,
what I like to call a benign fear. This is, simply, a cautious regard. I am not fearful of sharks
but I know better than to start splashing around making seal noises in their presence.
Let me also point out that I do not want to know why you have this intense fear or phobia. Another
reason I am unable to pass judgment on its rationality or lack thereof. Using hypnosis or Brief Imagination
Therapy techniques, I don’t need to know why. I know that your intense fear was caused by a single
learned event. It may have been reinforced and/or strengthened by the reoccurrence of a similar event,
but it was learned on a single occasion (excepting the previously mentioned inborn fears). It follows then
that we should be able to help you un-learn this intense fear in a single session. If you doubt this logic it is
probably because you have been conditioned by the psychoanalytical therapists and doctors to believe it
takes years of lengthy and expensive analysis to affect change in someone’s life. And then, after two years
of therapy, they finally discover exactly how you came to be afraid of spiders and, guess what? You’re still
afraid of spiders!
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