Alan B. Densky

Phobia Treatments That Work

According to the National Institute of Health, approximately 40 million people in the United States live with anxiety disorders and phobias. Going through life with a phobia extensively affects the quality of life. But don't worry, effective support exists.

Imagine a life restricted by anxiety and terror, where each act is analyzed and even the least decision is angst-ridden. Hours are exhausted examining daily duties or circumstances that most people manage easily. According to the National Institute of Health, approximately 40 million people in the United States who live with anxiety disorders are inflicted with this manner of life.

In that vein, nearly 18 percent of those living in the United States suffer some type of a panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, general anxiety disorder or phobias, such as a social phobia, agoraphobia, or a specific phobia, which embody common fears of things such as heights, elevators or germs.

Are you among those people? A lot of people aren't aware how to find out if their natural fears have transformed into a phobia. A phobia is classified as an unfounded fear or dread. When someone comes upon a phobia trigger, they may grow panicked with faster heart palpitation and breathing. Often, they may feel a choking sensation or their hands turn sweaty. They could additionally hear ringing in their ears and realize they are unable to focus on their atmosphere.

As with any unpleasant feeling, people will try great lengths to evade the feelings, items and settings that trigger them. If a person has a social phobia, that person could steer clear of social settings, or if it is a common phobia, like coffins or spiders, people who suffer a phobia will try to avoid those triggers.

The anxiety disorder phobia could be one of the most complex to get to the bottom of because related coping problems commonly result from the anxiety phobia relationship, such as despair or substance dependence. In fact, most people who suffer from one anxiety disorder regularly develop other anxiety disorders.

Though it can be beneficial to make an appointment with a mental health professional to analyze your phobia and inspect the core of it, the imperative step is beginning treatment for the anxiety and phobia. Several therapeutic approaches exist for successfully easing a phobia, including talk therapy, drugs, systematic desensitization, hypnotherapy and Nuero-Linguistic Programming.

Normally, medication for anxiety and phobia treatment can include sedatives, which actually exacerbate the trouble because sedatives don't tackle the underlying cause of the phobia. Other mental health professionals prefer to use talk therapy; however, talking about or even thinking about the situation or atmosphere of the fundamental anxiety phobia can produce a panic attack.

Traditional hypnosis—which simply assists the subject reach a relaxed state of hypnosis and then offering post-hypnotic commands or suggestions—can be very successful if the he or she is open to it. That said, a lot of people with phobias discard the notion that they will be more comfortable and at ease when they are challenged with the environment or situation that produces anxiety from the correlating phobia.

Given the challenges and even hindrances of other forms of treatment for phobias, systematic desensitization can be a helpful treatment. It is the practice of slowly desensitizing a person to the trigger that sets off the anxiety disorder phobia and ensuing panic attacks.

For example, if a person aims to overcome a phobia of dogs, she is asked to first be seated and imagine a dog until she is comfortable with the image. Then, she is given a picture of a dog to look at. Perhaps she progresses to holding a toy dog and so on until she is able to be in the presence of a dog without the panic symptoms—possibly even touch the dog.

The principal point is that, after each action, the client acknowledges that nothing unpleasant took pace and that she is secure. If at any time she encounters fear or panic, the therapist asks her to revert to the previous step until she has regained a sense of ease.

Fortunately, there is a way to make this process less painful and frightening: Systematic desensitization can be performed while the subject is in a relaxed state of hypnosis. While in a relaxed hypnotic trance, the client would be asked to execute the same actions, but she would actually feel very peaceful as she visualized herself feeling comfortable and relaxed in the situation that produces anxiety.

Just as in the live systematic desensitization that transpires without the benefit of hypnosis, if the subject experiences any anxiety concerning her phobia, she is coached to go back to the previous step. The only shortcoming is that this technique may need a fair amount of time to beget release from a phobia.

The fastest and most effective way to abolish a phobia is a Neuro-Linguistic Programming method called a Visual/Kinesthetic Disassociation. It commonly cures the subject of a long-term phobia in only one session. The system  actually programs the subject to disassociate, or mentally step outside of themselves at the point that they might normally experience their anxiety attack. The process literally splits the subjective feelings from the mental images that generate the panic attack in the first place.

CONCLUSION: While any phobia treatment that someone undertakes will require work and commitment, systematic desensitization coupled with hypnosis can offer an effective cure. But the NLP Visual/Kinesthetic Disassociation can offer an answer that almost seems magical by allowing the subject to triumph over the phobia quickly with significantly less—perhaps even no—discomfort or panic.

Article Tags: Anxiety Disorder, Systematic Desensitization

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