In my hypnosis practice in Los Angeles, probably the vast majority of my hypnosis clients come to me because of fears of one kind or another.
Do you imagine lions and tigers and bears, lurking in the shadows? Maybe you like to be scared out of your wits, like when you go to a scary movie, or an amusement park, or a haunted house on Halloween. I remember enjoying scary tales when I was a child. I looked forward to my mother or father telling them to me
The fears we feel from stories or movies are different from the fears that haunt our daily lives. When irrational fear stays with us, day in and day out, and limit what we can do, they are a problem. They can paralyze us – as when agoraphobia prevents you from leaving the house, and they can cause health problems!
Our nervous system is designed to protect us. The emotion of fear is a response to something that has not yet happened, and the fear informs us to act rapidly and decisively. This is when fear is working as a messenger, coming in only to alert us to possible danger.
Let’s say a child strikes a match, then touches it, and gets the message that fire burns. The child develops a a respectable relationship to fire. But imagine another young child who is trapped in a house fire, who is rescued, and then rushed to hospital to be treated for burns. You can imagine that this child’s relationship to fire may be very different, and may involve a measure of significant associated fear.
I use the example of fire; but people develop excessive irrational fears of many things based on sensitizing events that may be far less significant than being caught in a house-fire – fear of dogs, fear of flying, fear of water, fear of public speaking. The list goes on and on.
I use Hypnosis and NLP in my Los Angeles hypnotherapy practice to help you change the way significant memories perpetuate irrational fear. Knowing why you are afraid of something, whatever it is – fire, failure, public speaking, intimacy, being alone – may not be enough. Hypnosis helps transform the unconscious momentum that perpetuated the old fear to give you entirely new options, and a new relationship to what you were afraid of.
