Help with Fears and Phobias

Standing over the River Styx, Thetis, the mother of Greek hero Achilles, dipped her son into the awesome torrent. Her intent was to make her son invulnerable, and to a point, she succeeded.
However, his sole weakness, which eventually led to his death, was his heel. The act of bathing him in the water created his one vulnerability. This awesome hero was felled by an arrow that shot into that weakness and since that day, we refer to Achilles' heel as our one principle failing.
Unless you live beside the mythological River Styx and can frequently bathe in it, you have a weakness. A fear that in some way effects your life. Be it fear of flying, heights, the darkness, water... small or large, it resonates in some way in your mind. Now, you might say I'm being pessimistic, but it's the truth. No person, fat or thin, muscle-bound or lanky, tall or small is infallible. The sooner we all realize that, the better we'll all feel. Having a weakness isn't a crime, but if it's detrimental to your life; is stopping you from participating to the full, then you need to take control of it and actively seek help.
Hypnotherapy can help if your fear of flying is stopping you from going on holiday or a fear of public-speaking is making you palpitate at the thought of an upcoming speech at work. Whether it's pervasive or your phobia revolves around an upcoming event, hypnotherapy can really offer you an alternative path. One, that really works and fast.
For that speech, a course of hypnotherapy allows you to compartmentalize that fear and take control of the situation. You can step back, feeling calm and controlled and work through your fear. The suggestion hypnotherapy can boost your self-confidence and self-esteem, whilst relaxing and reducing your stress levels.
If your phobia is causing you daily continual strife, then a more intensive course of therapy is recommended. Pure HypnoAnalysis will seek out the root cause of your phobia and deal with it accordingly. Whilst providing you with all the benefits or hypnotherapy, it will get down to the nitty-gritty and will finally enable you to live your life to the full without your fears getting you down. Usually a phobia can be resolved within eight to twelve sessions, in which you'll face your fear in a calm, controlled and most importantly, safe environment.
 

So what is a phobia?

A Phobia is an outward expression of an internal anxiety;

It is a symbolic representation of an unconscious anxiety within that person.
The most common cause is some forgotten incident (repression) from a person’s youth that provoked some overwhelming powerful emotions. Indeed so powerful that the psyche buries or bottles up the incident and puts it out of reach inside the subconscious.
It is these repressed memories and emotions that can and often will create a Phobia. So a phobia then 'warns' of something similar and thus causes anxiety for the phobic.

For instance if you were say bitten by a dog, you could well develop a fear of dogs. This fear may stop you going anywhere near dogs; this could then stop you from being bitten again.

 Some Phobias may seem to serve a genuine purpose, e.g. fear of heights, fear of fire, but mostly they appear to be irrational. But ALL Phobias do have a CAUSE.

The main difference between a fear and a phobia is in the severity of the emotional reaction; a strong dislike of say flying is a fear, where as a pathological fear of flying (intense, uncontrollable, physical fear) is a phobia.

Some people and other therapists say the best way to deal with a phobia is to ignore it, avoid it totally. This is easier said than done. The more you think about avoiding the situation where the phobia is concerned, the more the fear and anxiety, thus the worse the phobia becomes. Where some therapies claim they can rid you of a phobia in only one session, the anxiety will still be there, and unless you deal with the true cause of the phobia, the anxiety linked with it will simply attach itself to another target, i.e. a phobia of Open spaces – (Agoraphobia), may well substitute itself with a phobia of Confined spaces – (Claustrophobia), so from one extreme to the other.

Phobia sufferers know what prompts their anxiety: spiders, snakes, moths, flying, driving etc. For many panic or anxiety sufferers, however, there seems to be no specific cause; attacks can occur almost randomly - at home, at work, indoors, outdoors; or perhaps even in bed at night, when the sufferer wakes up feeling anxious but with no idea why.

Mark’s approach is that in each case there has to be a reason for the problem, something that caused it in the first place. His Analytical Therapy uses hypnosis to search out that cause, then deal with it, so that the client may return to normal living.

Phobias are almost always caused in childhood, even though the symptoms may not appear for years. The only way to CURE a phobia completely is to release the emotions that are causing it. This type of Analytical Hypnotherapy is also used to treat other psychological problems, for instance, depression, stress, anxiety and sexual problems.