Halloween can be an exciting but stressful time for people with fears and phobias. Halloween is associated best with ghosts and goblins, a time when spookiness or frightening things are more celebrated than avoided.
Would it surprise you that you can live without fear and phobia? Learn the ten most common fearful behaviors and how Hypnotherapy for phobias might help.
Which are the 10 Most Common Phobias?
Hypnotherapy can be used to address any fear, phobia, or anxiety. However, these top ten are what I’ve managed to treat the most frequently in my career as a clinical practitioner.
- Arachnophobia: The fear of Spiders.
- Social Phobia: The fear of being judged negatively in social situations or public speaking.
- Aviation: The fear of flying.
- Agoraphobia: Fear of any place or situation from which escape is impossible.
- Claustrophobia: Fear of being trapped, especially in small spaces like corridors and elevators.
- Acrophobia: Fear of heights.
- Eremophobia: The fear of vomit.
- Carcinophobia: The fear of dying from cancer.
- Brontophobia: The fear of thunder and lightning.
- Necrophobia: The fear of death.
What Are Phobias?
A phobia describes excessive or irrational fear about a specific situation, object, activity, or object. It may seem silly to others that someone has a fear, but to them, it is real. The phobia they have is not their fault.
Another way to view phobias as an unconscious reaction to a stimulus is to consider them as a misperception of the stimulus. Scientists state that only two most common fears are natural instinctive, or hereditary. They are the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. Everything else can only be learned. The good news about this is that you can unlearn it.
Phobias typically begin when we’re young. However, any traumatic experience, such as serious injuries or accidents, can lead to phobias later in life.
There are two main categories of phobias:
Social Phobias: Fears of other people/situations such as:
- Public speaking
- Performance anxiety
- Embarrassment while eating or in public.
- General social phobia is also known under the name social anxiety disorder.
- Some social phobias are: There are some cases where anxiety is only triggered by certain situations, like when you can’t urinate in public.
Specific Phobias: A fear of a particular panic trigger, such as:
- Spiders
- Dogs
- Elevators
- Water
- Flying
- Death
- Many, many more
Phobias are not always severe. Some individuals may have severe panic attacks. Others can avoid their fears and triggers and still feel some anxiety. They are often aware of their irrational fear. However, they feel helpless in overcoming it.
Hypnotherapy Can Be Used To Treat Phobias
Phobias can be triggered subconsciously. This means that despite all the assurances that XYZ won’t be life-threatening, our minds and bodies will still react with fear. Hypnotherapy can help you communicate with your subconscious and change how you feel and act toward your phobia.
The process of hypnotizing you involves relaxing into a hypnotic, relaxed state. Your hypnotherapist is there to help you and will keep you in control. If you need to find out where your phobia is coming from, you can spend some time trying to find the root of it and remembering the trigger event (if one).
Your therapist can then help you change your behavior by using other techniques. The therapist will usually help you confront your phobia while keeping you calm.
