Banishing Phobias and Fears

Posted in Life Coaching, NLP & Hypnotherapy

About 10 years ago I was in a sales meeting with a customer who happened to be a Life Coach and psychologist. I can’t remember how we got onto the topic, but I was telling him about my sisters severe phobia of snakes that she’d had most of her life.

When I say severe phobia, I mean really, really severe. I kid you not, she couldn’t even use the word without flinching and going white. She wouldn’t go near any book that may contain a picture of a snake and vacations to hot countries where snakes tended to hang out was out of the question.

The guy laughed when I told him and said he could cure her in about 30 minutes. Short of poking here in the eyes with a pointy stick and blinding her so she couldn’t see the damn things I couldn’t see how. After all she’d had this fear for 30 years since when on an Italian vacation my dad accidentally run over a sleeping snake whilst out riding a bike.

He then turned round to check on the skinny ones condition who on closer inspection was not quite as dead as he had at first thought. In fact it was very pissed off at being woken up so unceremoniously and seemed determined to vent it’s displeasure by spitting and snarling. This all happened with my terrified sister sat on the back of the bike and it obviously left an indelible impression.

I was intrigued with what the Life Coach said to me because he was well qualified judging by all the official looking certificates adorning the walls and I was keen to tell my sister. Although she initially mocked me when I informed her of this apparently life changing treatment it obviously stuck in her mind.

A couple of years later she was due go on a backpacking vacation to Peru, home of rather a lot of snakes, and some, like the anaconda, big enough to eat a small horse for an appetizer. Not unnaturally she was a tad concerned she may come face to face with a ravenous reptile and promptly drop dead from a heart attack.

Unbeknown to me she went to see a Life Coach who had told her on the phone he too could ‘cure’ her in under an hour. And guess what? He did. Well I say cure, I don’t think she wanted to hug snakes or anything like that, but looking at pictures didn’t create any discomfort any more and she was no longer anxious about her vacation.

On my first NLP practitioner course there was a guy training with me that had a phobia of needles. So much so that the color drained from him and he almost passed out during the exercise trying to recreate a trip to his doctors. He was ‘cured’ by the trainer in about 20 minutes and it was simply amazing to see the results.

If you have a phobia or debilitating fear here are some traditional ways you can deal with your situation.

Avoidance

Make sure that you never ever come into contact whatever it is you’re phobic about. Not a problem if it’s White Rhino’s, Moon dust or original quotes on Twitter, but more problematical if its spiders, needles or cheese.

Avoidance is seldom an efficient strategy because it involves treating the symptom and not the cause. In fact, using avoidance techniques can actually intensify the fear when it does arise as you are completely unprepared for it. People will go to incredible lengths with avoidance often severely disrupting their life and the lives of those around them whilst never dealing with the issue at hand.

De-sensitization

I have to say I’m not a psychologist or psychotherapist, I’m a Life Coach, so I am giving you a layman’s take on this process and that of flooding.

Imagine you have a fear of snakes and you go to see your therapist. She may wander off to the other side of the room and open a book. From 25 feet away she then shows you a picture of a snake for a second or two.

Your heart may skip a beat but you’ll probably be ok. The next time you go to see her she brings the book a bit nearer and shows it to you for 10 seconds. The time after that it’s on the couch and the next time she’s waving a plastic snake at you from behind her desk. Get the picture?

She’s slowly getting you used to the idea of snakes by lowering your sensitivity to them. This may very well work or it may not, but it tends to be a slow process and thus expensive.

Flooding

Your therapist decides that that the desensitization isn’t working too well and a change of tack is called for.

Next time you enter her office she pulls a lever as you walk in and trap door opens up beneath you. You plummet 10 feet to the floor below, but land ok on a handily placed mattress. No harm done you think, until you notice in the half light you’re surrounded by a rather large amount of snakes that seem very excited to see you.

You then realize that you can’t get out of the room and you either have to make friends with the snakes or have a cardiac arrest. This may work with some people and it may cause severe trauma in others. If you’re thinking of trying this out I would advise non-poisonous snakes and a large insurance policy.

Relaxation Techniques

It is what it is. You teach yourself some deep breathing and other assorted ways of staying relaxed and hope to hell you can remember what to do when you come face-to-face with your nemesis.

This approach is a lot trickier than it sounds. When we come under intense pressure and default into fight or flight our breathing tends to develop a mind of it’s own, and before we can say ‘The Jacobsen Technique‘ we’ve gone into a full on panic attack and it’s time to get the brown paper bag out.

Hypnotherapy

This can be a highly effective way of dealing with fears (although probably not as good with phobias as the method below) if the person is receptive to hypnotherapy. Check out the post ‘What is Hypnotherapy?‘ if you’d like to learn more.

Now let’s take a look at the NLP method. Be aware if you have a severe phobia you may feel some agitation doing this, so if that is something you would rather not put yourself through, then don’t.

The Fast Phobia Cure

The fast phobia cure sounds like quackery for people that are either desperate and/or have a fragile grasp on reality. I confess to having no idea how or why it works, but I know it does because I have had plenty of successful first hand experience as have other Life Coaches I know. It’s also now been adopted by thousands of life coaches, counselors and psychotherapists the world over, so they too see the value.

Like a lot of NLP techniques it will vary from practitioner to practitioner, but here is the process in a nutshell.

Imagine you’re in a cinema with a friend for company. You sit some way back and wait for the movie to start. You are very relaxed and looking forward to the show.

The movie starts to roll and you notice that it’s in black and white and that you can see yourself on the screen. The self you can see is the one you would have seen just prior to your original phobic response started. If you can’t remember what kicked all this off, don’t worry, just remember the earliest severe episode you can, but be sure to start the movie well before you would have known there was a problem.

Before the movie starts you can imagine floating out of your body back into the projection room. You can still see yourself looking chilled and waiting for the movie but now you’re in control of the equipment and safely behind a thick glass panel.

Run the grainy, jerky, black and white movie until well after the end of the phobic incident. When you get to the end and noticing that the ‘you’ on the screen is just fine freeze the film.

Float back down into the’ you’ watching the movie and then run the movie very quickly backwards to the beginning in no more than 2 seconds. Now watch the movie again and once more stop well past the event.

Float (a lot of floating I know, so I hope you’re a good floater) into the’you’ on the screen and make the scenery 3D.

Re-wind from the end of the movie to the beginning really quickly only this time making it comical by adding crazy special effects. Using the snake example you could make it a cartoon snake wearing a hat and looking all self-conscious because it had a lisp.

Now add color and repeat the process by running forward quickly and then backwards. You can even add a silly sound track at this stage. Go backwards and forwards several times making sure you are completely at ease with it.

After you have done that try and recreate the phobic response and you’ll find you can’t, or at least nothing like as intensely. You can run this a number of times until your phobia has been downgraded to point where it is no longer really an issue.

How does this Richard Bandler designed trickery work you may be wondering?

Well yeh so am I, because as I said in the intro, I really have no idea. For what it’s worth, Tony Robbins suggests it’s like taking a needle to a vinyl record and scratching it over the surface again and again. The record wont play properly after that and that’s what we’re trying to do to the trigger memory, corrupt it and make it unplayable. That seems to make sense to me, but it’s just a theory.

That’s it for me until after Christmas with the blog. I want to take this opportunity to say a massive THANK YOU for supporting me this year by reading The Discomfort Zone. I hope you have a brilliant holiday season, don’t get too wound up by your relatives and you get everything you wish for.

Merry Christmas!

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10 Comments So Far.

Comment by Branigan on 21 December 2009:

(Note to author of post: one of the headings isn’t displaying correctly in the post. It’s the one that’s supposed to say “Relaxation Techniques.”)

Haha…that’s kind of funny. My best friend has that EXACT same fear of snakes. It’s so weird. Every time he freaks out I can’t help wonder why some people are like that with snakes (and other things) and why they don’t phase some other people at all.

And…that’s interesting. I have a really bad phobia of pretty much all insects, but, for some reason, the “special” technique at the end doesn’t seem to be working for me. Haha….I just end up freaking out before the end of the exercise while I’m visualizing the stuff inside my head.
Comment by Tim Brownson on 21 December 2009:

@ Branigan – Thanks for the heads up!

Yeh, the only drawback with this process is the need to recreate the fear that is being treated and some people just cannot bring themselves to do that. Although a good coach or therapist should be able to put them at ease.

Best of luck with it, and know it can be beaten.
Pingback by Do you have any phobias? on 22 December 2009:

[...] you have any phobias? I just wrote a post on how to get rid of phobias in about 30 minutes and it got me to thinking, how many people truly have a phobia as opposed to a [...]
Trackback by uberVU – social comments on 22 December 2009:

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Comment by timethief on 23 December 2009:

Hello there.
Thank you Tim for producing high quality useful content for readers like me to appreciate throughout the year. May you have a bright and joyful holiday season and a healthy and happy new year.

Pssst and may you sell many copies of your book too. ;)
Comment by Sami Paju on 24 December 2009:

Hi Tim,

This wasn’t the first time I’ve read about the NLP Phobia Cure trick, but it’s interesting you brought up the point about _why_ it actually works.

I don’t have a solid answer either, but based on what I’ve read about memory, we don’t apparently remember anything same way twice. When we recall a past event, it is always colored by the way we felt at the time (the memory imprint itself is never objective), but it’s also affected by the way we feel at the moment of recalling it.

I think the really interesting thing, though, is that after the moment of recall – affected by the feelings present at the time – the memory is stored in a changed form. Like taking 5 red balls from a box, but when putting them back one of the balls has turned green.

This could prove some logical-sounding explanation for why this NLP trickery works, as the way I see it, it’s basically recalling a memory, but deliberately generating different kinds feelings that are usually associated with it, so when the memory is ‘put back’, it’s in a changed form.

//sami
Comment by Andy on 24 December 2009:

Tim, I’ve just pictured my mother-in-law wearing a funny hat and talking with a lisp, and it seems to be working. To be fair it could also be the Budweiser kicking in!

Happy Christmas Tim!
Comment by Tim Brownson on 24 December 2009:

@ Timethief – Thanks very much and the best to you too.

@ Sami – Interesting stuff, thanks for that.

@ Andy – My mil looks like that anyway with or without a Bud. Happy Christmas to you too fella!
Comment by Sami Paju on 24 December 2009:

You’re welcome Tim ;) I’m planning to dive deeper into the world of neuroscience in 2010, so hopefully will learn more about these things :-)

Oh, and Merry Winter Solstice!

//sami
Comment by Patrick @ Life coach on 30 December 2009:

Hypnotherapy cured me of my procrastination, and I would have totally confidence in using it to fix any phobia if I had one. It is like you are being completely reconfigured inside.