A Focus on Phobias

The most common phobia?

One of the most common issues that people encounter, yet seldom talk about, is that of phobias. With the impending arrival of Hallowe’en there will be fake cobwebs and spiders on display in every large supermarket. Furthermore the real things have now decided that indoors is a much nicer place to be. Arachnophobia seems to be so incredibly common that you could be forgiven for thinking that it is the most widely held phobia in the country. It is the one people talk about, joke about, even make films about (Arachnophobia 1990, 2023/4).

Strange as it may seem, there are more people afraid of heights or public speaking than there are afraid of spiders. Glossophobia (fear of public speaking) is a fear that many are able to avoid by not taking on roles or jobs that require public speaking.

Origins of a phobia

If you’ve ever wondered where such a phobia might come from you often need look no further than the classroom. I remember the occasional child having to read in front of the class, stumbling over their words and getting laughed at by other children. The result was shame, embarrassment and what we now label as trauma. On this basis it is no surprise that glossophobia is so common.

This kind of one-stop learning leading to a phobia can seem obvious… but it isn’t the only way a phobia can start.

In our early years our parents, grand-parents, siblings and even teachers are crucial in helping us form patterns of behaviour that keep us safe and well. No-one is born with a fear of wasps, yet watching a sibling or parent freak out at the sight of a yellow-jacket teaches us that this is something dangerous, something we need to protect ourselves from. In this I speak from personal experience, having learned Spheksophobia (wasps) from my big brother, even though I had never been stung. My brother had been stung badly as a toddler.

There is a well known connection between PTSD and phobias. Something neutral, such as a piece of fruit or a particular scent may have been present at the time of a traumatic event. The association can be enough sometimes to trigger the phobic response, often without the sufferer being consciously aware of it. Knowing this it is easy to understand how panic attacks might come out of nowhere.

Be assured that neither me nor my brother inherited a phobia in the way that we inherited our eye colour. We are all born phobia free and ideally that is how we should stay.

It used to be thought that babies  were born with an instinctive fear of heights. The experiments that lead to this conclusion were flawed and incomplete; modern research1 has demonstrated their conclusions to be false.

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As hypnotherapists we are used to eradicating phobias quickly, without stress and without requiring anyone to face up to their fear. If a phobia has been limiting your life, no matter for how long, you can be free of it.

Simply get in touch to find out more. You can email us at plymhypnos@gmail.com, call us on 07905 732802 or 07952 956576, or contact us via our website.