Overcoming phobias using NLP Techniques
Overcoming phobias use the NLP phobia cure (‘fast phobia cure’) and light trance work as the primary interventions to facilitate phobia cures, however other techniques, including some aspects of emotional freedom therapy ™ are also used. Each person is different, and so will respond individually to different techniques. Remember one of the NLP presuppositions (see NLP Communication Model), “experience has a structure”? Our memories and how we respond to them are unique.
Phobias can remind us of two important premises of everyones’ unconscious mind, just how amazing it is at learning, and that it can only process positive information. This is amazing because your brain can take a single situation or event and learn enough from that event that it will trigger an unconscious protective response to protect you in the same or similar situations from that point on.
Unfortunately, if the unconscious mind has learnt from a negative event, e.g. being badly frightened by a dog, being in a car accident, it will try and protect you from similar situations in the future. The triggers for these events can also generalize: it’s been proven that if your brain makes an 80% match to the original situation/event a phobic response can be triggered. This generatisation can snowball, so the original fear of dogs begins to extend to cats, sheep, rabbits, and a phobia of animals has developed. A fear of swimming baths extends to the sea, to the shower, to a phobia of water.
NLP techniques for phobia cures exclude the flooding and desensitisation techniques used at times by other therapeutic approaches as phobia cures. Whatever NLP strategy used by the practitioner you can be assured that “facing your fears” will be excluded from that intervention when overcoming your phobias.
Phobias grow over time, and because of the snowball effect the brain begins to generalise phobias into other areas of your life to the point that you may have no (conscious) idea of the initial significant event. For example, falling into a swimming pool as a child leads to a fear of swimming, to a fear of getting the head wet in the shower, to a phobia of water. Fortunately your unconscious mind will know the origins of the original event and can help you in overcoming the phobia.
