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Fears & Phobias
Phobias can often stem from childhood, where the child experiences a real fear, but the mind manages to detach (or repress) the feeling of terror, from the situation that caused it.
This leaves the mind with a strong fear, and nothing to attach it to. The mind will then symbolically attach this fear, to a real object or situation that it does know about, be it a spider, an enclosed space, a lift... whatever it may find.
Whenever the person now comes into contact with the object or situation (say, a spider), they feel the fear that the subconscious mind has associated with it, and is then classed as a phobia.
Sometimes, a phobia can develop after experiencing something.
The initial sensitising event, or triggering incident, may vary from witnessing an accident, visiting the dentist's office, or listening to a story about a disaster.
Or, a child may model their behaviour on that of their role model who has a phobia in their own right, and as a result, this can cause the child to become phobic as well.
An example of this, would be a child who became terrified of spiders, simply because the mother was frightened of them and upon seeing one would run away screaming.
The child would quickly have picked up on the mother's fear, absorbed and formed a learned behaviour pattern, and thus developed a conditioned response.
Common Phobias.
Some very common phobias are:
- Dental Phobia - Fear of dentists
- Flying Phobia - Fear of flying
- Snake Phobia - Fear of snakes
- Emetophobia - Fear of being sick
- Button Phobia - Fear of buttons
- Spider Phobia - Fear of spiders
- Commitment Phobia - Fear of commitment
- Driving Phobia - Fear of driving
- Social Phobia - Fear of public speaking
Hypnotherapy can be used to recondition the mind to respond differently to to object of the phobia.
