Aspiring Spirit

One of the most common phobias is social phobia, a condition in which a person is scared of being in a social setting. An individual with social phobia suffers from incapacitating anxiety that impacts important aspects of their life.

People with social phobia are extremely self-conscious and concerned about what others may say or think about them. They are often afraid of speaking up, out of fear that they will be criticized or judged. People with social anxiety tend to look down on themselves or suffer from feelings of low self-worth. They are frequently worried about being noticed by other people and find social situations to be quite stressful.

Some people with social anxieties may seem “shy,” but in the case of a phobia, this is taken to irrational extremes. For instance, if you suffer from social phobia, you might hesitate to make a crucial call because you are nervous about talking on the phone. You dial the number, but you are so anxious that you “lock up” or forget what you were going to talk about. Although it happens to everyone once in awhile, for a person with social phobia it may occur every time, until they find it near impossible to make any calls.

Perhaps it is the evening before an important presentation at work and you find yourself worried sick. You dread the idea of being in front of a room with your boss and all your colleagues watching as you present a project or an idea. You can’t stop yourself from feeling extremely self-conscious and embarrassed. Even after the meeting ends, you continue overanalyzing everything you did and said. You worry that you humiliated yourself in front of your co-workers by stammering or saying something wrong.

Perhaps you would like to go to parties and make friends, but you avoid socializing because you are nervous about meeting new people. You find crowded parties intimidating and the idea of meeting new people frightens you. You worry about what you’ll say, or that people will not like you. You might stay at home a lot because you are too worried to go out. These are only a few examples of the way social phobias can influence us.

Social phobias are irrational fears that can prevent you from achieving your professional goals or fully enjoying life. But even people who realize their fears are irrational may not be able to handle their phobia. People with social anxiety would love to be more outgoing and make new friends, but are too scared to try. In spite of their conscious desires and efforts, they can’t control their phobia because every phobia is rooted at the unconscious level of the mind. Ericksonian hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques are the most helpful phobia treatments because they resolve issues at the unconscious level.

It can be difficult for people with social anxiety to get help because they can be too scared to see a counselor or open up about their anxieties. This is among the reasons why hypnosis therapy programs are perfect for them. The programs foster a tranquil and confidence-boosting frame of mind in a privacy, without being intimidating or overwhelming.

The first stage in a good phobia program is stress relief. Hypnosis therapy is a powerful tool for relieving your stress and anxiety. At the moment when you are relaxed, hypnotic techniques will form positive thoughts in your unconscious and end your fears. NLP techniques are used to eliminate your fears by directly targeting the process of thought that is responsible for a phobia.

In conventional hypnotherapy, specially worded post-hypnotic suggestions are utilized to treat every different phobia. The problem is, people often reject being simply told what to do or think, so conventional hypnotherapy does not work as well as it could. A phobia requires the use of Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and NLP.

Ericksonian hypnosis therapy techniques are more effective than conventional hypnotherapy because they use suggestions that are not obvious to your conscious mind, instead of direct suggestions. These suggestions are placed in discussion, in various stories and metaphors, to persuade your unconscious to adopt a different line of thought. This is why Ericksonian hypnosis therapy is much more effective than conventional hypnotic therapy and far harder for the unconscious to resist.

A program that utilizes Ericksonian hypnosis therapy and NLP techniques can treat social phobia and any other phobia, in any person. This is because a variety of techniques are used together to increase their effectiveness. People are frequently amazed at the almost miraculous changes they see through hypnotherapy. Ericksonian hypnotherapy and NLP are excellent tools to help you build confidence and overcome social phobia so you will be able to enjoy life.

Alan B. Densky, CH is a certified hypnotist and NLP Practitioner. His ecommerce site offers self hypnosis CDs for building confidence. His Self Confidence CDs were tested by Personal-Development info in England. Visit him for Free self hypnosis & NLP newsletters and articles.

- Alan B. Densky, CH