How To End Phobias, Anxiety & Panic - part 1 pptx

4 Simple phobias 5 Complex phobias 7 Purposeless phobias 9 Purposeful phobias 12 “Just having a panic attack” 17 Role of Anxiety 20 Symptom Relief 22 Some common phobias 24 Five Solution

How To End Phobias,

Anxiety & Panic

by

Bryan M Knight, MSW, PhD

Copyright©2004 Bryan M Knight

3rd edition

All rights reserved

published by The Chessnut Press

2

Contents

What is a phobia? 4

Simple phobias 5

Complex phobias 7

Purposeless phobias 9

Purposeful phobias 12

“Just having a panic attack” 17

Role of Anxiety 20

Symptom Relief 22

Some common phobias 24

Five Solutions 29

Self-Help Cure 33

About Dr Bryan Knight 37

Resources 40

What is a phobia?

A phobia is an irrational anxiety about a person, place or thing, which:

ƒ is out of proportion to any actual danger,

ƒ cannot be reasoned or explained away,

ƒ appears silly to the sufferer,

ƒ but cannot be voluntarily controlled, and

ƒ leads to avoidance of what is feared

There are simple phobias and complex phobias

Simple phobias are those that focus on a single person, place or thing Often the sufferer simply avoids the feared object, (e.g.,

an elevator) Simple phobias usually start with a traumatic

incident, such as being stuck in an elevator

They are the easiest type of phobia to overcome

Complex phobias are those that focus on several objects And interfere with the life of the sufferer

A complex phobia might, for instance, include fear of heights, fear of flying, fear of escalators, fear of museums containing aeroplanes, even fear of magazines containing photographs of planes

To overcome a complex phobia with traditional therapeutic methods – including hypnotherapy usually requires

uncovering its root cause(s)

However, you may find relief (permanently) by using

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) about which more

later

4

Simple Phobias

A simple phobia, i.e., one which is focused on a single feared

object such as spiders or computers, often has little impact on your life and thus rarely calls for treatment

If you are terrified of the ocean but live in the mid-West, you may never have to face your fear; should you see an ocean on television you can swiftly change the channel

Dr S is a surgeon who had a life-long phobia of cats He was generally able to avoid contact with cats He would cross the street if he saw one of the dreaded creatures coming his way

He would steer away from stores, restaurants, any places where

he knew there would be a cat In all other ways life was fruitful for Dr S

Until the day his best friend excitedly reported over the phone that he’d brought home a pair of kittens for his daughter

The surgeon began to make excuses not to visit the friend This was very tricky, especially since their respective wives and children were also friends

Finally, Dr S had to confess his fear of cats The friends could not understand but they valued the friendship enough to do as

Dr S requested: before he came for a visit, they locked up the kittens, now grown to full-sized cats, in their spare room

After a while Dr S became more and more embarrassed about his phobia His nine-year-old daughter Sofia also developed a fear of cats This bothered her best friend (Dr S’s daughter) who wanted Sofia to enjoy the cats as much as she did

Eventually, Dr S decided to conquer his phobia Feeling silly, but determined, he made an appointment with a hypnotherapist

The first session of hypnosis was used to uncover the cause of the doctor’s phobia (at four he had been badly mauled by a cat, something he had entirely forgotten); in the second session the hypnotherapist used behavioural techniques to enable the doctor

to approach cats (in his imagination); the third session was devoted to supportive therapy with positive imaging and post-hypnotic suggestions Dr S was encouraged to actually touch his friend’s cats in real life To his friend’s delight, that is

exactly what Dr S did

The doctor was ecstatic And the cats were free to roam the house normally

But little Sofia was still scared So her father brought her to the hypnotherapist She was so responsive (children are usually excellent at hypnosis because of their rich fantasy lives of

make-believe) that only one session was required to enable her

to be as comfortable playing with the cats as was her friend

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Complex phobias

Very often an unchecked phobia spreads to more and more situations Thus the life of a phobic person becomes ever more

constricted

A germ phobia, for example, could ultimately lead to the

phobic person existing in one highly-scrubbed room with a very restricted intake of (supposedly germ-free) food and drink

Or a person might be phobic, for instance, of driving across a bridge Then he becomes phobic of even looking at a

photograph of a bridge, so then he avoids books with

photographs of bridges and movies because there might be a bridge image, so he begins to avoid bookstores and movie

houses

In addition the man begins to avoid streets near bridges Then highways because somewhere along their length they might include a bridge

And on and on

If your life, like that of an estimated 16 million Americans, is

restricted because you’re too anxious

ƒ to drive,

ƒ or to fly in a plane,

ƒ or to take an elevator,

ƒ or to lie on a beach,

ƒ or to wash your hair,

ƒ or to enter a restaurant,

ƒ or to use a public toilet,

ƒ or to undergo surgery,

ƒ or to pick up a telephone,

ƒ or to shake hands with a stranger,

Drugs can certainly calm you down, perhaps sedate you enough

so you can drag yourself onto that plane, or across the bridge

But beneath the chemical calm, the fear lives on

8

Purposeless Phobias

There are two kinds of phobias: purposeless and purposeful

Purposeless phobias are learned They start with:

ƒ trauma, or

ƒ teaching

The case of Dr S is an example of a purposeless phobia which arose from a trauma (being attacked by a cat)

His daughter Sofia’s case is an example of a purposeless phobia that arose from teaching (her father’s example taught her to fear cats)

Purposeless phobias succumb quickly to hypnotherapy

When the cause is known (as with Dr S and his daughter) the client is taught to relax while imagining similar — but now positive and self-controlled — scenes to what really happened

If the cause is not known, hypnosis if first used to uncover the origin of the phobia

Behavioural techniques are employed to conquer a

purposeless phobia that has been learned by someone teaching the client, as in the case of Sofia (“modelling” is the term used

by therapists)

This means that while the client is in hypnosis she is gradually exposed to the feared object This is, of course, in the client’s imagination Then the client is encouraged to face the fear in real life

To cure any kind of phobia requires a change in the thinking

of the phobic