Caroline explains how hypnotherapy reaches the subconscious mind to rewire phobias. She describes regression therapy, where a client traced her bird phobia to childhood trauma and resolved it by imagining giving birds haircuts. Most phobias resolve in 2 to 3 sessions.
Chapters
Hi, my name's Caroline, and this is the third in a series of video clips where I've been talking about phobias. The first couple were very much focused on what are phobias, how are they created, but today I want to talk to you about the work I do that helps people overcome the phobias that often they've been struggling with for years, that's really affecting their life, but there is a relatively easy solution. Now, back to some of the, the medical stuff. There are 2 parts of our brain. There's the conscious part, which is the rational bit. It's the bit that's going, yeah, that spider isn't going to hurt you, what's the issue? Or, this big open space, it's fine. But then there's the subconscious part, which is going, I don't care, I'm scared, let's get out of here. And that part will always, always, always win out in the end. So, conscious, subconscious. Now, in the second video clip, we spoke about this bit called the amygdala, which is deep in the subconscious part, and that's responsible for the emotions. So very much it's responsible for that fear, that panic that sets in when you see that spider, or that risk of your phobia, it becomes apparent. The way that we access and make the changes Is through hypnosis. Now, some of you may go, oh God, there we go, all these weird people that jump up on stage, start jumping around like loonies. That is so, so different to the process of hypnotherapy. Now, most adults will have had an experience at some point in their life of driving down the road and getting to their end destination with no memory whatsoever of how they got there. Your conscious mind is off thinking about what you're going to cook for supper or how your day went, whereas the subconscious is the bit that's controlling the behavior. It's running the body. And so we all drift in and out of a hypnotic state on a regular basis. It's a completely natural state. And so the process of hypnotherapy is using that very natural state to access these parts, like the amygdala, where the programming has been instilled that creates these behaviours. So let's— let me give you an analogy that I like to use. It's very much if you imagine your mind like a computer. You have the software which is doing all the glam and fun stuff on the surface. That's like the conscious. But that wouldn't work if you didn't have the huge operating system lying underneath. And the subconscious mind is like that huge operating system, trawling along in the background. We're not very aware of it, but if it goes wrong, the software doesn't work very well either. And so what we do under hypnosis is it kind of shuts the software bit of you down by sending it to sleep. It's still there, it still knows what's going on, it's just got pretty dozy, which allows us to access The subconscious mind, where that deep programming, that whether it was programming from a trauma, whether it was programming from learned behavior as a child, has been created. And having that access means that you can rewrite the code. And again, some people may go, you're not mucking about with my mind! All I can say to you is any professional hypnotherapist is It is there purely to help you. And we don't reprogram your mind, you do. All we do is open the door and give you the opportunity to say how you want that behaviour to be in the future. Now, to give you an example, a lady I worked with last year, she'd had a phobia of birds for many years. Using a technique called regression, which is really, all it is, is accessing a lot of those memories that have been forgotten, they've been buried in that deep down file cabinet that you don't regularly access. To understand how her bird phobia had been created, and in her case it was through a trauma in childhood. Looking back on that as an adult, she could say, okay, I now understand where that phobia has come from. I don't need to be scared anymore. Her reprogramming was— she happened to be a hairdresser. She then decided every time she saw a bird in She'd give it a haircut. So when now she goes for a walk in the beautiful woods that she lives in, she's looking at all the birds going, hmm, Mohican, hmm, Bob. And when you take that approach, the birds are no longer scary at all. And so her phobia was completely overcome. I didn't give her that suggestion. I just gave her the opportunity to understand through accessing her memory bank, to see what had happened, And then to make the decision of how to change those beliefs based on her own knowledge, skills. She came up with a solution completely by herself. So I am the guide, you take the steps. There is no control involved. In fact, hypnosis is actually a heightened state of control. And anyone that's understood hypnosis and experienced it 9 times out of 10, when they open their eyes, they go, wow, I knew exactly what was going on. I could hear your voice, and I could choose which bits of your voice I wanted to listen to or not. So, if you are someone that's struggled with a phobia for a long time, I have worked with lots and lots of people, and their phobias typically are cured within 2 to 3 sessions. It's a very small investment, that will change a whole area of your life very much for the better. And so the next clip, which will be coming out very shortly, is going to be presenting a solution that you may like to consider that will help you change your life, rid your phobia once and for all, at a very cost-effective price. And I look forward to presenting that to you very soon.
