The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. Nelson Mandela

It's been a few days since I last blogged, as I've been on holiday. Having previously mentioned my driving and flying fears, you'll be pleased to hear that I cruised through the drive to the airport and experienced very pleasant flights to and from Cape Verde. For some considerable time, I believed that neither of these would ever be possible.

I think it's important to say that some people are able to adapt their life to avoid the trigger for their fear or phobia. I was able to do this for many years to avoid driving on dual carriageways. Your fear or phobia is only a problem if it causes you a problem. There were many things that I didn't do during that time, or that I did differently, but I was able to continue with my life. The question is, do you want things to change?

So, if you do want things to change, how does hypnotherapy help with fears and phobias? Firstly, they are not necessarily the same thing, and so I might not work in the same way, but hypnotherapy can definitely help with both.

With a phobia, I'd want to make sure that other aspects of your life were optimal, and sometimes a little work is required. Then, I'd use an example of an encounter with the fear-provoking 'thing' and work to change the memory that makes experiencing the 'thing' very difficult or impossible.

For instance, during my hypnotherapy training, we were often 'guinea pigs'. During our phobia training, our lecturer demonstrated a technique on a fellow student with a fear of spiders. I don't want to give away all of our secrets, but while she was in a trance-state, our lecturer changed her perspective of an encounter with a spider. From my own hypnotherapy practice, my favourite example is a client with a fear of heights. After a course of 3 sessions, their phobia is no more, and I still occasionally receive photos of that person doing things at height.