FEAR
by Pamela Harper |
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Allow me to preface my thoughts with a quote from F.D.R.'s first inaugural speech; "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I want to make all my decisions with a clear mind and a light heart.
In my practice I render assistance to individuals who have transformed a minor matter into a major problem. Fears and phobias start out a s a single incident and then through years of layering they become bigger than life.
I worked for years as a psychiatric nurse in mental health hospitals and home visitation assessments. I was in a position to witness people in the grips of fear, at its most severe: A woman in her mid 30s who experienced messages from alien beings that were transmitted through the electrical wiring wrote for hours each day nonsensical manuscripts that she reluctantly shared with me. To keep her from escalating into violent outbursts, I medicated her. She is an extreme case; living in fear nearly every waking hour.
A simple fear, such as a fear of spiders could begin quite innocently when a parent transmits concern onto the child by saying "spider bites can kill you". A year later that child might walk through spider webs and cry, adding emotion to what would otherwise be just a sticky moment. Into their teens, they could view a scary movie about spiders and add another layer that reinforces their "arachnophobia".
What makes one person frightened of high places while another person craves skydiving depends more upon their perception of the event that the event itself. I was "scared of heights" until my fellow hypnosis students regressed me back to the age of two where I relived the scene of falling down the basement stairs in my grandmother's arms. I later experienced two more traumatic falls and thus acquired an unreasonable belief that high places posed possibility of death. Once I relived the childhood trauma with my adult mind I was easily able to discard my irrational ideas.
To develop a phobia there is usually a significant emotional attachment to the sequence of traumatic events. It takes repetitive experiences to produce an illogical response to what would otherwise be a benign event.
Often it is not even the event itself but other circumstances that occur at the same time: A young woman developed stomach pains whenever she ate watermelon. We discovered in hypnosis that she witnessed a sexual indiscretion by her first husband with a friend while she was eating watermelon at a picnic. Each time she subsequently consumed watermelon she became acutely ill. She had no conscious awareness of the connection until it was revealed to her from a position of detached observation.
It is easier or "safer" for some people to hate the watermelon than the friend or her husband. It is a simple case of transference.
Prejudice is a form of fear or phobia that occurs when we stereotype groups of people that we don't even know. In this case there is a perceived fear usually issued to us by our family or another trusted source.
People often worry that they will suffer during the hypnotic regression. Exactly the opposite is true. A credentialed hypnotherapist knows precisely what to say to bring resolution to the tainted thought process. The client gains a tremendous sense of control and well being once the source of the fear is uncovered. They are usually very surprised to find that it often goes back in time much farther than they thought.
Fears and phobias are generally relieved in just one session. It is quite freeing to be rid of the restraints created by "having" to live you life in a certain way, to avoid contact with something that you may have once enjoyed. I am quite elated about the possibilities open to me now that I have discarded a fear of heights. I'll enjoy the chairlifts on the ski slopes.
(c) 2005 Pamela Harper |
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