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Hypnotherapy Blog
The Vicious Circle of Fear
Fear and anxiety are the most common problems I deal with in my Plymouth hypnotherapy practice. The fear and anxiety that’s bad enough to bring someone to a hypnotherapist is generally a vicious circle- a problem that feeds upon itself and prolongs its own existence, sometimes long after its original cause has been forgotten.
To understand fear and anxiety we must take it apart, examining its separate components. The mind functions on different levels, and fear is experienced on each level.
Firstly there’s the physical level- the palpitations, disordered breathing, sweating, tremor, muscle tension, and other things we feel physically in our bodies when we are afraid.
Secondly there’s the thinking level. Thinking is like a conversation with our self- it involves words and names. When we think about a physical sensation, we give a name to it. When we feel palpitations and tremors, we may call this “fear”, and react accordingly. If we gave the name “excitement” to these same sensations, our reaction would be quite different. People seek “excitement”- they pay good money to experience it. Yet “fear” is seen as something to avoid, even though it feels the same.
The third component of fear is Imagination. When we fear something, the mind instantly creates a “story”, based in minute amounts of real evidence. “That dog barking at me will jump on me and rip out my throat!” “That woman I’m embarrassed to speak to thinks I’m an idiot, and will tell all her friends about me, and they will all despise me!”
A fourth element in fear is the meaning we attach to it- the conclusions that we draw from the experience. These include such thoughts as “Even a small dog terrifies me, therefore I am a coward who will never amount to anything in life!” “Women laugh at me because they know that I am a total loser who does not deserve a relationship!”
By taking our “feelings” apart like this, we can understand them better. And having seen what they are made of, we can identify the weak points in the vicious circle of fear. For instance, we can learn methods to control our physical reactions, thus removing the first component of fear. Hypnotherapy is a quick and effective way to achieve this, providing that clients is motivated to practice and persist in the methods that a good hypnotherapist will show them. Once the physical element of fear is controlled, the mental and imaginative elements can also be tackled.