Health Anxiety: OCD

A Phobia is a learnt behaviour that we have learned during the teens or early adulthood. The anxiety often starts with the apprehension of the journey, worrying about what might happen. Anxiety and fear are interrelated because fear causes anxiety and anxiety can cause fear.

It doesn't matter what age you are, where you live, or your colour, at some point in our lives, most of us will have experienced some sort of phobia knowing how debilitating it can be. A phobia is a form of irrational fear which can make a person feel unable to control a situation and be overwhelmed with panic.

Most phobic sufferers will go to great lengths to avoid situations in which they feel anxious. That’s unhelpful because avoidance then creates a vicious circle in which the fear grows larger in the mind and the phobia becomes more, rather than less, restrictive.

Phobias anxiety is provoked by a specific event, subject or situation, whereas social phobias are evoked by a social situation and agoraphobia is fear of being alone or in a public place where escape might be difficult or impossible. What is common to all phobias is that the fear experienced is certainly real as the sufferer usually feels ‘out of control’ in a particular situation. Phobias therefore can have very debilitating effects on that person’s quality of life as they go out of their way to avoid anything that might trigger it.

Hypnosis relaxes and calms you, allowing your subconscious mind to accept positive suggestions for your well-being. The experience helps you to reflect calmly and positively and to cope with the days, weeks and months ahead. Hypnosis also helps you to heal the parts of you that experienced anxiety and insecurity, panic attacks and phobias, and tension. Hypnotherapy helps you to alter the old thought process to regain confidence, enthusiasm, and motivation so that they can speak with confidence in public.

CBT-based Hypnotherapy combined with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is used to improve the inner mind and mood, changing habits, thought behaviours and beliefs can also help the sufferer to regain their self-confidence and self-esteem, and alleviate any fears and phobias that have resulted from suffering using various techniques e.g. relaxation breathing exercises, meditation, or nature walks can also relieve the strain and improve sleep patterns and to develop better-coping skills for pain and other stressors.

These coping skills and mechanisms are resources which we all have within us, and these resources can be identified and brought out, to be utilized in the future. Clinical hypnosis increases the effectiveness of hypnotherapy, which enables unique, specific and positive changes to take place. Using deep relaxation during the process calms down the fight or flight response.