We all experience fear to some degree throughout our lives. However, it is the intensity of our reaction and the long or short term effect that will separate it from a normal response, to one that becomes irrational and starts to have an impact on our life.

For example, if you are out walking in the countryside and you come across a snake curled up in the grass, the likelihood is that it will stop you in your tracks, frozen while you wait for your brain to catch up and assess the situation. Your fear response will have caused you to stop, and in this circumstance it is a normal and beneficial reaction that is there to safeguard you from potential danger. After analyising your predicament, a normal, rational, low level response would be to move away slowly and quietly and carry on with your walk putting the episode behind you, albeit with perhaps a bit more caution in case there are any others. However, for some, this experience may prevent them from walking in the countryside in the future for fear of the real or perceived threat that there may be a snake hidden in the undergrowth. Your fear response is now beginning to have an impact on how you conduct your life. The extreme response would be where over time you develop an irrational fear of snakes to the extent where you fear them even when there is no threat, and just the sight of a photo or the thought of them can trigger symptoms of fear and anxiety - and now you have a phobia of snakes.

A phobia, by definition, is a type of anxiety disorder that creates an overwhelming and unreasonable fear response when triggered by certain animals, objects or situations that in reality pose no threat or very little genuine danger, and is therefore an irrational fear response. This irrational response may in fact be created even without you being in the presence of your object of fear, or ever having had experience of it. To be defined as a phobia, the fear must cause some level of impairment. So, unlike the brief anxiety most people feel when they give a speech or take a test, a phobia is long-lasting, causes intense physical and psychological reactions, and causes an overwhelming need to avoid all contact with the source of anxiety. This creates avoidance behaviour which can become quite intrusive and debilitating depending on the severity. Also, if the source of the fear is part of your daily life, then your phobia can affect your ability to function normally at work or in social settings.

 

   What causes these Fears and Phobias?

 

There doesn't seem to be one particular cause of phobias, and much is still unknown about why they become an issue. However, there are various factors that might contribute to developing a phobia even if there is not often a clear definitive reason why it starts.

 

Some causal factors are:

 

    •Traumatic or negative experiences. Many phobias are based on real-life events that may or may not be consciously remembered. Certain situations might have a lasting effect on how you feel about them. For example, if you experienced a lot of turbulence on a plane at a young age, you might develop a phobia of flying. Or if you were injured by a dog some years ago, you might develop a phobia of dogs.

    •Learned reaction. Your phobia may develop from factors in your childhood environment. For example you might have parents or guardians who are very worried or anxious. This may affect how you cope with anxiety in later life. You might develop the same specific phobia as your parent or older sibling. If they have a severe reaction to something they fear, this might influence you to feel the same way. 

    •Long-term stress. Stress can cause feelings of anxiety and depression. It can reduce your ability to cope in particular situations. This might make you feel more fearful or anxious about being in those situations again. Over a long period, this could develop into a phobia.

    •Genetics and your Environment. Research suggests that some people are more vulnerable to developing a phobia than others. Certain phobias may run in families. For example, twins who are raised separately, in different locations, may develop the same phobias.

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  Are all Phobias the same?

 

No. Generally, there are two main types of phobia:

 

    •Simple Phobias  •Complex Phobias

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Simple phobias are created by triggering our fear response to specific animals, objects, situations and certain activities. 

The range of things that cause a simple phobic reaction is quite diverse, but the more common ones are:

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• Spiders and other insects

• Snakes and other reptiles

• Dogs

• Needles

• Sight of blood

• Fear of being injured

• Flying

• Heights

• Dentists

• Enclosed Spaces

 

 

Complex phobias tend to have a much more profound and debilitating effect because they prevent the person suffering from it to lead a normal life, and are often associated with deep-rooted fear or anxiety.

The two most common complex phobias are:

 

   •Agoraphobia    •Social phobia

 

    How can Phobias affect life?

 

Although phobias affect different people in different ways, in general, the symptoms that simple phobias produce are those of anxiety to varying degrees, panic attacks often being at the more severe end of the scale.If you're afraid of something you have to see or do a lot, this can start to have a serious impact on your everyday life. If your phobia is about something you don't come into contact with very often, this can sometimes have less of an impact on you. However, you may still experience fear and anxiety even when the object or situation isn't present. This means that your phobia can still affect you on a daily basis.

Having a phobia that is complex in nature, such as Agoraphobia, or Social phobia can have a serious impact on the way you live your life, and very detrimental to your wellbeing.

 

   

 

How Can I Help?

 

Having been trained in a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy I have many techniques at my disposal, including two of the most effective treatments for this kind of fear and anxiety - Desensitisation and Exposure Therapy. Sometimes teaching you to relax even when confronting your object of fear is sufficiently effective, in other cases it is more appropriate to teach you how to manage your feelings, i.e. evoke the feelings that make you fearful and anxious and teach you to tolerate and cope with them.

However, I will often use a combination of these two therapies depending on your current coping mechanism, as well as other techniques involving relaxation and methods to change the way you think and feel in these circumstances which in turn will influence how you react.