Phobias, or irrational fears, can range from a fear of something small like a spider to something massive like a flying phobia.
Just recently, hypnotherapy cured a youngster whose fear of flying, or aviophobia, had cost his family the best part of £40,000 trying to cure his fear which includes cancelled flight tickets and doctor bills.
Joe Thompson, a 12 year-old schoolboy from Somerset, was stranded in Abu Dhabi for 18 months because of his crippling flying phobia.
After successful hypnotherapy, he arrived back at London’s Heathrow Airport four years after his family moved to the UAE when his father Tony, 62, was offered a managerial role at a private hospital.
They were due to fly back to Weston-Super-Mare in June 2012 but just four months before they planned to come back, Joe developed an acute fear of flying.
When the youngster boarded a flight to Sri Lanka to attend a rugby tour with his father the flying phobia came to light when he found that he could not face the journey.
“We got on the plane but Joe became so traumatised, the crew said he had to get off,”
his father told the Metro newspaper as he explained that Joe was scrambling over the seats to get out.
“It was terrible. I had 40 other children with me who were all taking part in the tournament. I could not leave them so I had to let Joe get off. I called my wife and she came and picked him up.”
The family then repeatedly tried to get Joe on a plane without any success, meaning that the father and son had to stay behind in the country while the boy’s mother went back to the UK to work.
According to the National Council for Hypnotherapy, a phobia is an irrational fear, literally a fear without good reason, or a fear of something that may not happen.
People with phobias often experience unwanted responses to animals, objects, insects, actions or places. This physical response is known as a stress response; people often describe their reaction to something as being ‘paralysed with fear’ or ‘having butterflies in my stomach’, ‘just wanting to run away’ from whatever is triggering the response.
People with phobias often know their response is irrational, which makes it harder to accept. “Why am I reacting like this when I know it can’t hurt me?” is something most hypnotherapists hear from a client who has come to see them for treating a phobia.
Phobias are far more common than many people realise. It is estimated that more than 11 per cent of the population have some kind of irrational fear. Generally people manage their phobia on a day-to-day basis and only seek help from a hypnotherapist when it prevents them doing something they want to do, or when they know a situation will force them to face it. People are also aware of the possibility of unconsciously passing on their phobias to their children, who learn from their behaviour.
People often say to a hypnotherapist, ‘you’re my last resort’ and in Joe Thompson’s case it was – and it worked.