Do you jump out of your skin every time you see a spider crawling across the room? Do you break out in a cold sweat at the mere thought of getting onto an airplane? Maybe you suffer from nail-biting anxiety every time you have to get in the car to drive across town. Or maybe you’re paralyzed by the prospect of speaking in front of a group of colleagues at work.
Sometimes these fears and phobias are nothing more than a nuisance.
But for many, the consequences can be much more severe. Chronic fear and anxiety can lead to missed opportunities in work and social life, relationship strain, physical illness, depression, substance abuse, and even suicidal thoughts and actions. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Through the process of hypnosis and the techniques of transpersonal hypnotherapy, we can access the deepest parts of ourselves, the places where our fears have taken root. In a deeply relaxed and loving state-a place where we know we are safe and free from harm-we can begin to unravel the knots of trauma that have been tangled up with false narratives about the objects of our fear.
We begin by setting the compassionate intention to heal ourselves and to align all of our energies with our true needs. We generate a soft, loving-friendliness towards ourselves and allow ourselves room to be just as we are. From this place of openness and self-respect we can begin to enlist all the help, wisdom, and resources that are already available within us. These can take the form of Inner Guides, angelic beings, animals, natural objects, colors, or light. Whatever shape they take, we know that they are the playful expressions of our true being and that they-being inseparable from who we truly are-can have nothing but the most positive and loving intentions for us.
With the power of these resources at our command we can then begin the work of bravely opening up a heartfelt dialog with our fears and phobias. We soon recognize that they are not the enemies we thought they were. Instead we see their only motivation has been to protect and care for us-albeit a little overzealously.
We offer these parts of ourselves gratitude and with tender attention we dispel invalid presuppositions, mistaken assumptions, and false generalizations that have supported self-limiting phobic reactions. By realigning these phobic parts with the healthy, natural mechanism of fear-the evolutionary gift of being able to accurately evaluate real dangers to our life and safety-we redirect that frozen energy towards healthy and beneficial activities.
Once this simple and enjoyable process is complete, we are free to live life with more freedom than ever before. We can choose not to fly in airplanes rather than be terrified of them. Spiders and insects become creatures of beauty and wonder instead of the monsters we thought they were. To drive or not to drive is no longer an agonizing decision but a choice based on what’s appropriate at the time. Public speaking becomes an exciting thrill. This new life, governed now by more choices and free-will, can be the beginning of a whole new chapter of enjoyment, learning, growth, and adventure.
