The mind creates many associations, memory channels and reasons for fear. Fear is learned and feeds on its own fears. After a while, it becomes unconscious. We then start taking on secondary fears. For example a very turbulent ride in an aircraft could lead to a lot of anticipatory anxiety about travel, about aircrafts and eventually also about the idea of holidaying.

The subconscious files these experiences away in your brain and soon, you engage in avoidant behavours in an effort to protect you. These could be in the form of hypervigilence. You might become oversensitive to even slight turblence and find yourself more uncomfortable than other fellow passengers who are going about enjoying their meals or conversations or even resting.

Next, you might start having involuntary catastrophic thoughts about the flight.

Similarly, you may be practicing for a sport competition and may have had a previous injury which has been healed. However, at the back of your mind, you wonder whether the old injury may play up again or whether you will be overcome with performance anxiety. This again will set off a chain of events, negative or catstrophic and fearful thinking. On the day of the performance you may find that you have a delicate stomach and feel rather uneasy. This then leads to performance anxiety.

You coul be having a fear of driving or fear of blanking out at an examination. The trajectory is pretty much the same for any kind of fear. The events and thoughts triggers a set of feelings which impact your behaviour and performance. After a while this becomes a viscious loop.

Hypnosis works on ‘resetting’ your mind’s computer. It is rewired through accessing the subconscious mind and cleaning up old programs and introucing new ones that are more positive, functional and productive and eliminating old maladaptive programs.

The results are impressive and have been highly effective in a vast array of situations whether the desired goal is to change a beahviour, get over a compulsion, addiction or overcome anxiety due to imagined or real fears.

Here a few examples of situations it is known to have ed and the list is actually enormous.

Fear of invasive scans, surgeries and other medical procedures

Fear of competition

Fear of heights, driving, flying, falling sick, swimming, horseriding, going out, close places, animals, insects, hospitals, injections, thunderstorms, balloons, technology, tunnels, subways.

Bruxism, insomnia, naibiting, trichotillomania, weightgain, weightloss, binge eating, nailbiting, public appearances and perfromances, fear of recurring illness etc.,

One of its greatest contributions is towards buidling confidence by giving a deep relaxation auto suggestion.

By this I mean, a post hypnotic suggestion could be administered that the placement of the hand on the heart which will result in a calm and deep relaxation whenever anxiety is anticipated or experienced.

Many claustrophobic clients are able to handle uncomfortable procedures like an MRI which requires lying in a narrow tunnel or intensive procedures such a radiation therapy or invasive surgery with greater calm and equanimity with clinical hypnosis.