Imagine a life controlled by panic and terror, where each feat is examined and even the most insignificant decision is agonized over. Extensive time is spent studying daily responsibilities or conditions that the majority of people manage easily. According to the National Institute of Health, nearly 40 million adults in the United States who suffer from anxiety disorders live this type of reality.
Concordantly, more than 18 percent of people living in the United States endure a form of a panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, broad anxiety disorder or phobias, such as a social phobia, agoraphobia, or a specific phobia, which embody common fears of things like heights, elevators or germs.
Are you like them? A lot of people aren't sure how to figure out if their natural concerns have transformed into a phobia. A phobia is classified as an unfounded fear or dread. When someone comes upon a phobia trigger, he or she might become panicked with faster heart rate and breathing. Commonly, that person might feel a choking sensation or their hands turn clammy. They may additionally hear ringing in their ears and realize they are unable to focus on the atmosphere.
As with any unpleasant sensation, people may go to great lengths to escape the happenings, things or places that initiate them. If someone has a
social phobia, that person will avoid people, or if it is a common phobia, such as coffins or spiders, people who have a phobia may aim to avoid those triggers.
The anxiety disorder phobia can be one of the most difficult to get to the bottom of because subsequent concerns often result from the
anxiety / phobia relationship, such as despair or substance dependence. In fact, the majority of people who suffer from one anxiety disorder regularly develop other anxiety disorders.
Though it may be helpful to visit with a mental health professional to analyze your phobia and examine the core of it, the imperative step is entering into treatment for the anxiety and phobia. There are several therapies for successfully easing a phobia, including drugs, talk therapy, systematic desensitization, hypnotherapy, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Usually, medication for anxiety and phobia treatment include sedatives, which actually worsen the difficulty because sedatives do not help the primary reason for the phobia. Other mental health professionals favor talk therapy; however, conversing about or even thinking about the situation or atmosphere of the underlying anxiety phobia can produce a panic attack.
Traditional
hypnotherapy - which simply helps the subject to realize a relaxed hypnotic state and then offering post-hypnotic commands or suggestions can be very successful if the client is amenable to it. However, many people with phobias rebuff the idea that they will be more relaxed and calm when they are faced with the environment or situation that activates anxiety from the correlating phobia.
Knowing the challenges and even impediments of other types of treatment for phobias, systematic desensitization can be a helpful treatment. It is the process of gradually desensitizing a subject to the trigger that causes the anxiety disorder phobia and resulting panic attacks.
For example, if a subject desires to rise above a phobia of dogs, she is asked to first be seated and imagine a dog until she is secure with the picture. Then, she is given a picture of a dog to view. Perhaps she advances to holding a stuffed dog and so on until she is able to remain in the presence of a canine without the panic symptoms - possibly even touch it.
The key point is that, after each step, she acknowledges that nothing terrible occurred and that she is safe. If at any time she experiences fear or panic, the therapist asks the client to go back to the preceding step until she has recovered a sense of ease.
Fortunately, there is a method to make this process less painful and frightening: Systematic desensitization can be carried out as the subject is in a relaxed state of hypnosis. While in a relaxed hypnotic trance, the client would be asked to execute the same actions, but she would actually be feeling very peaceful as she imagined herself feeling comfortable and relaxed in the anxiety-provoking situation.
Just like live systematic desensitization that takes place without the assistance of hypnosis, if the client suffers any anxiety connected to her phobia, she is commanded to go back to the previous step. The only downside is that this technique can require a fair amount of time to create release from a phobia.
The quickest and most effective way to eliminate a phobia is a Neuro-Linguistic Programming method called a Visual/Kinesthetic Disassociation. It often alleviates the subject of a chronic phobia in only one session. The practice actually programs subjects to disassociate, or mentally step outside of themselves at the point that they might typically undergo their anxiety attack. The process literally splits the subjective emotions from the mental images that cause the panic attack in the first place.
CONCLUSION: While any phobia treatment that someone commences will require work and commitment, systematic desensitization coupled with hypnosis can offer an effective cure. But the NLP Visual/Kinesthetic Disassociation can offer a solution that almost seems magical by allowing the subject to triumph over the phobia quickly with significantly less - perhaps even no discomfort or panic.
