How To Escape The Hold Of A Social Phobia
Social phobia is an anxiety disorder in which a person is afraid of being in certain social settings. A person with social phobia experiences unbearable fear that impacts their personal and daily life.
People with social phobia are very self-conscious and worried about what others may say or think about them. They are typically afraid of speaking up, out of fear that they might be judged or berated. People with social phobia tend to look down on themselves or suffer from feelings of low self-worth. They are worried about being noticed by others and find social situations to be quite terrifying.
Some people with social anxieties may seem “shy,” but in a phobia, this is taken to extremes. For instance, if you suffer from social phobia, you may hesitate to make an important phone call because you are nervous about talking on the telephone. You pick up the phone, but you are so anxious that you “lock up” or forget why you called. Although it happens to everyone sometimes, for someone with social phobia it may happen every single time, until they find it impossible to make any calls.
Perhaps it is the night before a big presentation at work and you find yourself panicking. You hate the thought of being in front of your supervisor and all your co-workers watching as you talk about a new idea or project. You can’t stop yourself from feeling very embarrassed and self-conscious. Even after the meeting, you keep overanalyzing everything you said and did. You fear that you embarrassed yourself in front of your colleagues by stammering or saying something wrong.
Or maybe you want to go to parties and meet new people, but you avoid socializing because you are nervous about meeting new people. You find parties intimidating and the thought of meeting new people frightens you. You worry about saying the right thing, or that you’ll get rejected. You might end up staying at home very often because you are too scared to go out. These are only some examples of the way social phobias can affect our lives.
Social phobias are irrational fears that can stop you from reaching your professional goals or fully enjoying your life. But even those who know their fears are irrational may not be able to rid themselves of their fears. People with social anxiety often want to be more outgoing and feel confident around others, but are too afraid to try. In spite of their conscious desires and best efforts, they cannot control their phobia because all phobias are seated in the unconscious level of the mind. Ericksonian hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques are the most helpful phobia treatments because they work at this unconscious level.
It can be difficult for those afflicted with social phobia to get cured because they are too scared to visit a counselor or discuss their fear. This is another reason why hypnosis therapy programs are appropriate for them. The programs foster a confidence boosting, calm mind frame in a private setting, without being overwhelming or intimidating.
The first stage in a phobia program is relaxation therapy. Hypnotic therapy is a powerful tool for relieving your stress and anxiety. When you are anxiety free, hypnosis techniques will shape positive thoughts in your unconscious and extinguish your social phobia. NLP techniques are used to extinguish your fears by directly targeting the process of thought that is responsible for a phobia.
In traditional hypnotherapy, specifically worded post-hypnotic suggestions are used to treat each different phobia. Unfortunately, people have a tendency to resist being simply told what to think or do, so traditional hypnotherapy doesn’t always work. A deeply rooted phobia calls for a combination of NLP and Ericksonian Hypnotherapy.
Ericksonian hypnosis therapy techniques work better than traditional hypnotherapy because they utilize suggestions that aren’t obvious to your conscious mind, versus direct suggestions. These suggestions are hidden in conversation, in different stories and metaphors, to persuade your unconscious to adopt a different line of thought. This is why Ericksonian hypnosis therapy is far more advanced than conventional hypnosis therapy and much harder for the unconscious to resist.
A single program that includes Ericksonian hypnotic therapy and NLP techniques can treat social phobia and any other phobia, in any individual. This is because several techniques are combined to maximize their effectiveness. People are often in awe of the seemingly miraculous results they see through hypnotherapy. Ericksonian hypnotherapy and NLP are ideal tools to help boost your confidence and beat social phobia so you may fully enjoy your life.
Alan B. Densky, CH is a certified hypnotist and NLP Practitioner. His website offers self hypnosis CDs for self-confidence. His Self Confidence CDs were reviewed by Personal-Development info in England. Visit him for Free hypnosis & NLP newsletters and MP3s.
- Alan B. Densky, CH
