Overcoming Fear of Flying With Hypnosis, Part 1

(This blog was originally posted on May 14, 2014)

Image courtesy of Fotolia

It is officially Summer and many people are preparing for/going on their summer vacations. Even if you plan to take a cruise, at least part of your travel itinerary is likely to be by air. If you are afraid of flying, hypnosis and guided imagery can alleviate this anxiety and help to make your journey more comfortable. In this blog, I will suggest some ideas and concepts to help desensitize you to any negative associations you may have with flying and air travel.

• Wrong words: Airport staff, flight attendants and ground crew often make a lot of unintentional negative associations with flying: e.g., terminal (airport building), departure lounge and last and final call to board the airline, final destination of your journey. These are just words and part of flying jargon; they are not meant to imply negative consequences of flying and air travel.

• Flying is still one of the safest forms of travel and is statistically less dangerous than driving an automobile.

• Airplanes are constructed to have several safety (and back-up safety) mechanisms and computers to keep the crew and passengers safe throughout the journey.

• Pilots have thousands of hours of training in flight simulators before they sit at the controls of a commercial jet; even then, they will be working with/supervised by a pilot with more experience to deal with various flight conditions, turbulence and other air emergencies.

• Air-traffic control centers are trained to and responsible for monitoring each commercial airplane at specific parts of the flight, from takeoff until landing. The pilot, co-pilot and any other officer on board will be in constant verbal and radar contact with the air-traffic control officers that are monitoring your flight.

• The pilot(s) and flight crew all have a vested interest to have a smooth flight and a safe (and timely) arrival. They are well-trained to handle various air emergencies and are highly unlikely to do anything to jeopardize their or their passengers’ safety.

• Finally, since the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001 passengers and flight crew are aware of potential risks and have proven they are prepared to physically subdue a potential or suspected threat during the flight.

In my next blog, I will describe some hypnosis and therapeutic guided-imagery techniques that I use to help people work through and overcome their fear of flying.

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Are You Afraid to Lose...or Win?

(This blog was originally posted on May 14, 2014)

Photo by Rick Hustead

Have you ever refused to participate in an activity because you didn’t want to look bad or ruin your current performance record? Have you ever refused to participate in an activity in which you were likely to succeed? Both of these examples are potential causes of performance an­­xiety, and recognizing what triggers this anxiety is the first step to successfully managing and treating it. 

Fear of success is often more difficult for people to imagine feeling, because who doesn’t want to succeed and to be the best at something, right? But success comes with its own kinds of pressure and stress, including responsibility. Suddenly, it does not matter to that newly minted executive that he or she has years of training and experience to validate this promotion. It does not matter that the person has a proved track record of being able to execute profitable negotiations in the boardroom and is willing to make tough decisions about that will benefit the company. Once you get the big promotion that you have been working so hard to receive, you have to do more work and probably take on more roles than you previously had, to earn the new title and salary that you now earn. You will have to use the skills you have honed during your tenure in your previous role and put them to a real test in a leadership position. Like it or not, when you make a decision the buck will start and stop with you.

Or, imagine an honors student at high-school student who has received two letters of acceptance from two different universities. He or she may decide to accept a place in the state university because he or she feels intimidated by the anticipated course demands and his or her family’s expectations about what it means to be a student at Harvard. It doesn’t matter that you have earned academic letters or were the captain of your sport or debate team. It doesn’t matter how many awards you have received for community service or other extracurricular activity. Once you leave the security of high school (and childhood) where you were the top-ranked student of your class, you will be starting over in a new environment that is populated by hundreds of young adults just like you. You may well become the head of your class and set a new standard of academic achievement, or not. Whatever you do academically, high-school graduation and attending college are a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood.

The physical manifestations of performance anxiety take many forms, including trembling or shaking, feeling nauseated or “blanking out” (forgetting) the lines or music you are going to perform or the information you are supposed to present. Hypnotherapy and therapeutic guided-imagery techniques can help you to manage these symptoms and overcome this anxiety so you can do the performance or presentation.

• Systematic desensitization to the stimuli that trigger the anxiety/fear response.

• Creating hypnotic scripts that reinforce the client’s recent achievements to boost his or her self-confidence about ability to achieve the stated goal.

• Use guided-imagery techniques to help the client re-experience those previous successes and further reinforce his or her self-confidence about being able to achieve a new goal.

• Teach the client how to practice diaphragmatic breathing and to activate an “anchor” to help relieve symptoms of anxiety.

• Educate the client about the relationship between nutrition and anxiety; specifically, the correlation between drops and spikes in blood-sugar level and feeling anxious or afraid.

• Instruct the client about using the Emotional Freedom Technique (tapping) to reduce anxiety and replace negative responses with positive/desired responses to achieve a goal.

Performance anxiety affects most people at some time in their lives. As John Kappas, Ph.D. explains in his book Success Is Not an Accident: The Mental Bank Concept, every person has the ability to achieve success. You do not have to be afraid to fail or to succeed to achieve your goals. Now is the perfect time for you to turn your dreams into reality.

Summer Promotion: Hypnosis for Weight Loss

Let the power of your subconscious mind help you release extra weight and increase your motivation to make healthier eating/nutrition and exercise choices. Book the entire 10-week series and save $250!

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2019

When the Presenting Issue Is Actually a Symptom

(This blog was originally posted on June 10, 2015)

Photo by Rick Hustead

Sometimes, an issue that a client presents to the hypnotherapist during a therapy session is a symptom rather than the cause of another problem. For example, increased anxiety and various signs of physical discomfort such as light-headedness, headache or nausea may suggest that the individual is experiencing symptoms of low blood-sugar levels rather than just responding to a specific stress trigger. Low blood-sugar levels can also trigger a phobic reaction. (For more information about this relationship, see my blog titled Nutrition and the Development of Fears and Phobias.) In this case, it is important for the hypnotherapist to work with the client’s physician to create an appropriate nutrition program to control the blood-sugar level and incorporate suggestions about nutrition and healthy eating during hypnosis to reduce these symptoms.

However, it is also possible that a client’s behaviors or emotional responses/reactions are actually manifestations of his or her repressed emotions: i.e., a body syndrome. Once a licensed medical doctor has ruled out a physical etiology (cause) of the symptom, the hypnotherapist may explore the cause of the symptom in the context of body syndromes. For example, persistent pain in the client’s shoulders and upper back (Responsibility Syndrome) may provide a secondary gain of being “allowed” to avoid participating in certain activities undesirable at work or with the person’s family.

For example, Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., explained how a client’s persistent hoarse throat and fatigue was actually a symptom of her subconscious resistance toward the woman’s husband/manager’s pushing her to accomplish something. The client, a singer, also experienced symptoms of low blood-sugar that were brought on by her husband’s demands for perfection in her performances. The hypnotherapist determined that his client was subconsciously motivated to use her hoarse throat as a way to avoid having to sing when she didn’t feel like it. Consequently, Dr. Kappas approached her therapy by first addressing her behaviors (e.g., feeling tired and hoarseness). He explained how her nutrition contributed to her feeling tired and recommended ways to change her diet that would increase her energy. Next, he explored with her the various reasons why (cause) she was experiencing the hoarseness and addressed the client’s perception of her husband’s perfectionist tendencies as a source of her stress and subconscious resistance.

Once the client understood how the various sources of perceived external and internal pressure on her to perform were affecting her behavior, the hypnotherapist discussed ways of treating her symptoms. First, Dr. Kappas encouraged her and her husband to separately work with a therapist to work out some of their professional conflicts. Then he worked with the client to help her husband agree that they could change their interactions with each other and how this behavior change could be achieved. Ultimately, the woman’s symptoms would dissipate as her relationship with her spouse/manager improved, thus ameliorating her subconscious desire to avoid singing/performing because their pattern of interacting with each other became less stressful.

Summer Promotion: Hypnosis for Weight Loss

Let the power of your subconscious mind help you release extra weight and increase your motivation to make healthier eating/nutrition and exercise choices. Book the entire 10-week series and save $250!

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2019