This weeks blog is about the most fundamental of all emotions: fear.

Fear really is primal. In hypnosis we often use regression and many clients will connect to feelings of disappointment, sadness, aloneness but the feeling that often underlies all these feelings is fear. Fear is so fundamental that we have to respect it and we have to work with it carefully – both for ourselves and and as therapists.

In hypnosis we often work with primal fear caused by something happening to the client during their formative years. The client may be experiencing deep feelings of rejection or sadness and when we explore further we find that the client has experienced something as a child that has left them very afraid either of rejection or being unloved. Things we experience before the age of 3 are powerful and often they burn deeply into our subconscious.

There are a number of useful techniques to manage fear such as breathing through it, challenging it rationally, writing it down, allowing it to flow through and out of you. However, many clients will be able to manage this but are still left with a gnawing feeling of fear. This is when hypnosis can help by identifying the fear and using several methods to permanently remove the fear from the subconscious, allowing the client to be free to make positive choices.

We use regression therapy and other techniques to identify and eradicate unproductive fear. It is important to understand that some fear is good – it’s our flight or fight response that we often use. However, fears left over from unresolved childhood issues can be draining and rob the individual of so much potential.

It’s important to point out that the experience that started all of this may not have been something terrible – it’s just that for a small child the ability to feel afraid is much greater than an adult who can rationalise. That is when we use hypnosis to help the subconscious realign itself with the adult rational mind. This brings great relief for so many individuals who are plagued with unnecessary and unidentified feelings of fear.