It’s pretty common to worry about certain situations or have a dislike of specific things.  A phobia is where these thoughts and feelings become debilitating and cause large amounts of fear or anxiety.

Have you stopped doing things you love or avoided situations which you might have enjoyed because one element of the situation caused you to panic? The fear and anxiety triggered by the phobia can be so strong that even the thought of the object or situation can be enough to trigger the feelings.

You can develop a phobia of almost anything. While the exact mechanism that causes a phobia to develop isn’t totally understood, there are effective and fast treatments that successfully remove the emotional change from the situation.

If you’re struggling with a phobia, you know how debilitating it can be.  You may not know where it’s come from, perhaps it’s something that you learned from a parent or it developed in early childhood while you were learning to make sense of the world. Perhaps there’s a specific incident like a particularly turbulent flight which triggered a fear of flying. Can you imagine what life would be like without that fear holding you back?

If you’ve had a very strong phobic reaction in the past, you might have developed an intense sense of anxiety or embarrassment about encountering the situation which intensifies your anxiety about ever being in a particular situation again.  Living with these feelings long term can lead to anxiety and depression and over time you might notice that the fears are generalising to more and more situations or things.

There are many different ways to approach phobias, from trauma therapy interventions designed to remove the emotional reactions to the situation or the object, Rewind Technique, desensitisation and hypnotherapy to uncover the root causes of the issue. Through all of this process you will be in a safe and supported environment where you’ll feel safe to explore and understand more about your emotional responses.