Fears and Phobia’s

Fears and Phobia’s

I’ll explain Fears and Phobia’s in a easy to understand way in. this blog

A fear or phobia is an intense fear of something that, in reality, poses little or no actual danger. Common phobias and fears include closed-in places, heights, highway driving, flying insects, snakes, and needles. However, we can develop phobias of virtually anything.

If you have a any fears or phobia’s, you probably realize that your fear is unreasonable, yet you still can’t control your feelings. Just thinking about the feared object or situation may make you anxious. And when you’re actually exposed to the thing you fear, the terror can be automatic and overwhelming.

So what is really going on?

I will use spiders as an example simply because it’s that time of year when I start to get more spider phobia phone calls as they start to come in for in colder months.

First people will see a spider (Visual) then they may have some internal dialog(NOOOO a massive spider) or external (Scream Aaaaaaaa) this in turn will trigger the feeling(Kinaesthetic) inside like fight, flight or freeze which in turn gets processed as fear by the person.  Normaly the reaction is out of proportion to the situation, for example has anyone you know ever been in an unprovoked attack by a spider or been bitten? Not many I bet !

The thing to really think about is that we are only born with 2 fears :-

  • · Fear of sudden loud noises
  • · Fear of falling

All other behaviors are learned either directly or indirectly, the amount of clients I see who say that a member of there family is scared of the same thing. They more than likely learned to react the way they do because they have seen for example their Mum screaming that there is spider in the house and to get it out. The client learnt how to respond to spiders because it what their Mum did when they were a small child and as a child they did not have any other resources to call up on.

All of this doesn’t help a person of course who has the fear, so how can hypnotherapy help fears or phobia’s?

There are lots of different methods all will aim to do the same job of helping the client to feel differently about the phobia or fear and allow the client to disassociate themselves from the feelings. The client will just not be as scared or as concerned by the fear or phobia as before. They may not want to ever hug or hold a spider but they will be able to cope with catching one and removing it or just leave it to get on with whatever spiders do on a good night out !

I use different methods depending on what I think is best for the client, sometimes the work is already done before I even use hypnosis but the hypnosis is still a great way to help the client to think differently about the fear and allow the mind to process it in a more logical way in the future and take on some new learnings to allow the client to make a change and have a more appropriate behaviour towards the problem.

If your phobia doesn’t really impact your life that much, it’s probably nothing to be concerned about. But if avoidance of the object, activity, or situation that triggers your phobia interferes with your normal functioning or keeps you from doing things you would otherwise enjoy, it’s time to seek help with someone like myself.

Contact me HERE id you need any extra support.

Regards

Adam Cowming

Website  www.blhypnotherapy.co.uk


Body Language

In this blog I’ll explain Body Language in a simple to understand way.

This is a very important tool that all therapist and business people should be aware of or have some form of understanding of, you’d think!

Body language means communication with the movement or position of the human body. It can be conscious – or unconscious. It is important to   remember that, although body language does give you an additional channel of communication, which sometimes contradicts the spoken word, it should be interpreted with care. For one thing, it can be affected by particular habits of the speaker. To be able to read somebody is very interesting, but it can be complicated, so watch out!

As a therapist I hope I have a general understanding but I know that I don’t know everything and it an area to which I’m looking into getting a higher level of understanding. I pride myself on my ability to be able to calibrate my client’s conscious – or unconscious body language.

The eight primary elements of body language are your face, eyes, posture, gestures, voice, movement, physical appearance and touch.

Words (the literal meaning) account for 7% of the overall message

Tone of voice accounts for 38% of the overall message

Body Language accounts for 55% of the overall message

The figure 55% comes from some research that Albert Mehrabian undertook in 1971.

The ‘Mehrabian formula’ (7%/38%/55%) was established in situations where there was incongruence between words and expression.

That is, where the words did not match the facial expression: specifically in Mehrabian’s research people tended to believe the expression they saw, not the words spoken.

Mehrabian’s model is a seminal piece of work, and it’s amazingly helpful in explaining the importance of careful and appropriate communications. Like any model, care must be exercised when transferring it to different situations. Use the basic findings and principles as a guide and an example – don’t transfer the percentages, or make direct assumptions about degrees of effectiveness, to each and every communication situation.

This is now widely used in the field of selling, where sales personnel are trained to observe and read the body language of their potential customers. Sales personnel trained to read you can now utilize this skill to read the subliminal cue exhibited by the customers to close a deal. Consequently, many companies such as insurance companies, direct-selling companies and international car-showrooms now engage body language experts.

Body Language: What It Is & How To Read It

I help out some workshops and it’s easy to tell who knows about body language and who doesn’t and the difference just pointing out little things to people can make them look at people very differently, often these workshop are not about body language but as therapists it will always be part of what we do so it good to help and pass on the skills we have to others. Some of the people who attend are not therapist so are not used to using these skills but are normally very fast at picking some of the very basic tips they get.

If you need any help, coaching or therapy contact me HERE

Regards

Adam Cowming

www.blhypnotherapy.co.uk