What is a phobia?

It is a persistent non rational fear of and desire to avoid a specific object, activity or situation and this sense of fear is out of proportion to the real danger and yet it can happen not only in the presence of an object or situation but also when you think about them.

A phobia is often an extremely intense negative feeling of fear which is triggered by a situation or object with doesn't actually pose a real threat to your safety. You have heard of someone or something “pushing your buttons”, well this happens when your (wrongly in place) fear buttons are pressed and you react as if you were under threat of danger. What then happens is that the “Fight or Flight” response (faster heartbeat, sweaty palms, quickening of the breathing, palpitations, etc.) comes into effect when there really is no immediate threat.


Common with many phobias, is the feeling of loss of control in the given situation and this brings stress and anxiety and often full scale panic. You will then avoid the situation or object which brings these feelings and when you avoid it (and don't get these feelings of anxiety) this serves to re-enforce the link between the object or situation, and the fear.

This is happening to more and more people nowadays than ever before because of the build up of “stresses due to modern day lifestyles”. Someone can become phobic/fearful of (for example) of driving when they have never had a problem before and this makes sense if there has been trauma involved due to an accident, however it also happens quite often when there has been other stresses in life building up and the driving (especially if you are tired, ill, or rushing to get to your destination) becomes the “straw which breaks the camel’s back” and from then on that becomes the trigger for the fear/phobia when it never used to be. All that has happened is that the natural defence and protection system that triggers the “Fight or Flight” response (which works very effectively when there is real danger) has now decided to “protect” you against what it now has decided is a threat and it will work very efficiently from that moment onwards to protect you whenever it comes up against (or perceives) an object, activity or situation that it has coded as a threat.

This explains why some people become scared of road works, traffic cones or just getting into a vehicle and also why some people become scared of the wind or a certain sound or even a piece of paper, because although it does not make sense logically (and a many people spend way too much time trying to understand it logically and rationally) it actually makes sense to your emotional/feeling protection system as it was the main thing at that time that connected with the negative feeling state.

Using Hypnosis, NLP and EFT you could find that your Fears and Phobias change in a short period of time because all that needs to happen is that the negative feelings linked to the memories need to be balanced to an appropriate level of wariness/apprehension for the situation.