Understanding Fears and Phobias
We all have fears and phobias that can sometimes feel like insurmountable obstacles. These anxieties can range from common fears like public speaking or heights, to more specific phobias like driving on motorways or bridges. Regardless of their nature, these fears can become so severe that they dictate our lives and limit our potential.
Fears and phobias, oh my… We all have at least one thing that scares the crap out of us. There are the typical fears like the dentist, sharks, flying, heights, and public speaking, to the less common – like the fear of driving on motorways or bridges, the fear of vomiting, using a public toilet, crowds, birds, and clowns. Our fears can become so all-consuming that they rule our lives and how we live it.
To understand phobias, I think it’s important to understand the basics of the conscious and subconscious minds. You have a conscious mind that can think freely and create new ideas. Then there’s the subconscious mind, which is a supercomputer loaded with an operating system with programs for our behaviours and responses, and it’s in control, and on automatic pilot 95% of the time.
The Role of the Subconscious Mind
The subconscious mind records everything that happens to you and makes programs out those experiences.Your subconscious also controls your involuntary bodily functions, like your breathing, your heart beating, and your digestion just to name a few.
The subconscious mind does not move outside of its fixed programs. It reacts automatically to situations with its recorded behaviour responses, and it works without the control or knowledge of the conscious mind. This is why we tend to behave without thinking and respond in ways we consciously don’t want to.
So, when you have a negative experience and experience fear or trauma, your subconscious creates a program to avoid that situation at all costs. It will trigger your nervous system into the fight/or flight response as a way to keep you safe.
When your mind perceives a threat, it sends signals which stimulate your whole body to get ready for either a fight or to run away (flight). It then triggers the adrenal glands, located on top of the kidneys, to pour out steroids, stress hormones: cortisol and adrenaline and hundreds of other chemicals to fuel the body to give it more energy to fight or run away.
This chemical response is like injecting three shots of espresso straight into your bloodstream and the logical part of your mind shuts down, waking up the more primitive reptilian part of your brain that only cares about survival.
How Do We Overcome Our Fears?
The question is: how do we overcome our fears, so they don’t ruin our life or hold us back?
Hypnotherapy and NLP are amazing when it comes to releasing fears and phobias and transforming your life by reprogramming your subconscious mind. My favourite technique to get rid of phobias and irrational fears – is a NLP (Neuro-Linguistic-Programming) technique called The Rewind Technique or the Fast Phobia Cure. I first came across this technique when I was training in NLP. The instructor told us he could get rid of any phobia within 10 minutes, and I laughed out loud. I had a terrible fear of driving on a one-lane winding road after having a head-on car accident with a truck, both of us going around 80 kms/hr. I was severely injured and had to learn to walk again.
As I sat in this class listening to this man tell us he could get rid of any phobia in just a few minutes, I was sceptical, to say the least. My phobia was so bad, I had to take valium if I needed to be driven on any road that was the slightest bit rural and I would still have a panic attack even with the anti-anxiety drugs. I announced to the class that there is no way that was possible in my case, as my phobia was so severe.
He laughed and said, “Perfect guinea pig, come on up.” He asked me on a scale of 1-10, one being I am completely calm about driving on a winding road and ten being I would feel like I was dying if I had to do it. I was at a 7-8 when I thought about it. He explained to me that my subconscious mind recorded everything that happened and created playlists and programs out of them. So, every time I even thought of driving on a winding road, my subconscious would remember my accident and play every memory of it when I felt anxious in the car in a millisecond, and this would trigger a flight or fight response.
Then he had me close my eyes, imagine a screen in front of me and told me to see whatever memories were linked to my anxiety around driving like an old home movie. At the same time to also imagine that there are monkeys, clowns and cartoon characters dancing around, superimposed over the memories, while circus music played in the background making the memories as silly, and as ridiculous as possible.
He had me rewind and fast forward the memories, making the memories blurry and scrambled. He then had me watch the screen float off in the distance until it was a tiny little speck, then watch it explode into a million little pieces and then blow away in the wind. This visualisation is like putting a scratch in the record or corrupting the program that it was unsafe for me to drive on roads similar to the one I had my accident on. By corrupting these memories, it would make it hard for my mind to have negative associations with driving.
Afterwards, he asked me again how I felt about driving on winding roads, I said fine, but I’m not on one at the moment, so I can’t tell if it worked (I was a terrible example for him), but it felt like a 1 or 2 now.
To my surprise, a few weeks later, I was with a friend who had to drop something off, and she started driving on the very road I had my accident on, and to my utter shock, I was fine, completely neutral. I remember thinking to myself, oh yeah, I used to get anxious when on any roads like this. Just a silly visualisation and my fear was gone!
I was blown away and have now used this technique to erase my paralysing fear of public speaking, flying, driving, praying mantis’s (long story). I have also used it with thousands of clients, and it still amazes me with how quickly and effectively it works. This technique has changed my life, and I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t come across it.
We all have old programs our subconscious mind has created to keep us safe, but in fact, are holding us back which needs updating. Imagine how well your phone or computer would work if you had never updated the software? And how much happier you would be without fear holding you back? Just like our devices need updating, so do our minds.
The Fight or Flight Response
When we encounter a situation that triggers fear or trauma, our subconscious mind creates a program to avoid that situation at all costs. It triggers our nervous system into the fight or flight response as a way to keep us safe. This response stimulates our adrenal glands to release stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, preparing our body to either fight or flee.
If you are interested in clearing your fears and phobias with this technique, I recommend going to a hypnotherapist who has trained in NLP and The Rewind Technique since you want someone experienced to guide you through any trauma.
