A client will call and say “I am standing in a queue at a supermarket and my heart is pounding and I feel I am going to pass out! It does not make sense how can I feel so panicky among so many people?”

Another client will call and say “I know the chances of a plane crashing is lesser than a car having an accident but I am happy driving my car but I will just not get on the plane; my family has had no holidays in the last ten years because of my fear o flying!”

Fear of sickness, flying, presentations, and anxiety over exams, heights, interviews or else panic attacks in trains, lifts, and closed spaces are all very common and real in our world and the sufferers usually are silently suffering because they feel ashamed of talking about it because it does not make sense to the logical mind!

Make no mistake: phobias, fears, anxiety and panic attacks are felt by very intelligent, capable and efficient people as well as by single mothers or adolescents etc…. there is no age or IQ that differentiate fear in one against another.

What does differentiate a normal fear from a phobia, a normal feeling of panic over a marriage to a full blown panic attacks at the altar, a normal anxiety over exams or running out of the exams room out of an anxiety attacks is simply this:

How safe is the emotional/right brain feeling?
How secure and relaxed is the mind to let the intellect take control?
How much is your right brain listening to you?

The biggest mistake we all make is we try rationalising with the right brain but it is a fact that it does not listen to logic; it has been called the unconscious brain, the creative brain, the emotional brain and it works best under a state of relaxation and safety and it listens mostly to our senses, emotional level and our imagination.

So when you are sitting in a restaurant and imagining yourself stammering if you are asked a question the chances are that your right brain has already gone into alarmed mode and has already triggered what has been called “the flight or fight response” to protect you; you will feel the heart pounding, the sweating and the tingling in your fingers simply because your right brain has signalled danger to your body and the latter is getting ready to run and escape; but you are a social being so you stay there but get more and more panicky with each seconds.

Hypnotherapy works directly with the right brain and helps it develop a much more relaxed and safe state of mind with regard to those triggers that are at the moment making you panicky, anxious or fearful. The same right brain which perceives the plane in the sky with dry throat and fearful eyes can see it with curiosity if the right brain has got no alarm trigger associated with it; when it is neutral or even positive about the flight it can hear it, see it and imagine being in it very relaxingly.

How does hypnotherapy help with anxiety, fears, phobias and panic attacks?
Hypnotherapy/NLP in Reading, Wokingham, Windsor and Maidenhead.

Hypnotherapy works directly with the right brain that controls our instinctive and emotional responses; which is why despite logically trying to calm yourself you may have found that the right brain refuses those commands and seems to have a life of its own and reactions of its own! The right brain responds to a very deep relaxed state which is why you find you are achieving more work in a state of calm. When it comes to symptoms e.g. fear of presentation, fear of sickness, blushing, insomnias, IBS, stress created disorders, we have lost that ability to relax enough to listen to our logical explanations; we can only respond from the "fear" triggers in our unconscious brain.

Hypnosis is a state of mind where the unconscious/right brain is more powerful and this happens constructively for all of us when on a beach, driving, dancing or listening to music; in a destructive mode we are gone into that emotional world and is responding form there when worrying, panicking, and responding in a symptomatic way is all we can do out of old habits or defences we have learned to protect ourselves in the short term.

Via hypnotherapy that works directly with the right brain (where we store our unconscious habits of responding to the world: healthy responses are driving, dancing or singing that after a while have become unconscious with us; but unhealthy responses are responses that are defences against stress, anxiety or even anger e.g. nail biting, eczema, skin diseases, insomnia, anger bouts or tics and stammering), we can help clients let go of those alarming triggers that create even more alarm bells and set the body into a state of "fear and flight" (as if their life is in danger and they need to escape) with Hypnosis techniques that works directly with the right brain in a state of deep relaxation.

Hypnosis help their unconscious mind regain the safety and trust that the world is worth exploring; we all know it logically but the logic only works for the left brain and when the unconscious brain goes into alarm and creates phobias (spiders, heights, closed spaces, presentations) the logic fails and the client finds that he/she is saying “come on relax!” but the body is responding hypnotically to the right brain’s fear and not the logic of the left brain!

For more information visit www.innerpotential.info or call Amreeta Chapman on 0118 926 9978/0786 129 3634 or mail amreeta@innerpotential.info.

Amreeta Chapman (Psychologist/Hypnotherapist/NLP Practitioner) practises Hypnotherapy and NLP in Reading, Wokingham, Windsor, Maidenhead and Berkshire for five years and specialises in emotional/mental issues such as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, low self-esteem and sexual abuse.