Fears and Phobias: Misinterpretations and Misunderstandings

 

A phobia is a pathological fear of something or a situation. A Phobiais more than a dislike for something, it is an uncontrollable fear. The person who suffers from panic attacks is all too aware of the problem. They know what that all-consuming fear is like, but of course, the phobic sufferer is experiencing that most strongly in the presence of the triggering situation.


Take a look at a working description of the anxiety attack:

The heart is beating significantly faster than we are used to. There is a shortness of breath, as though we fighting for air; which can be accompanied by a tightening of the chest. An increase in sweating will commonly accompany a desire to remove themselves from the current environment. At times that desire is not successfully achieved as the individual will feel rooted to the spot. The observer will note that the behaviour shows all the hallmarks of a person in intense danger.

The individual who is in the presence of their phobic stimulus will be experiencing some or all of those reactions. Even the idea of being exposed to the phobic stimulus will produce those symptoms in a mild form. Only once they are removed from the triggering situation will that panic dissipate, but you can be sure that they will be extra ready next time and will make changes to their day to day life to avoid such a happening again.

Phobia Maintenance: Negative Reinforcement

Each panic experienced confirms the belief that there is something to be afraid of. All the evidence they needed to assure them that their terror was justified has been gained first-hand. Of course, they consciously want to avoid the same thing happening again, so they avoid the same situation again and other associated situations/experiences. They guard against the possibility that something might happen.

It makes sense that we should default to overestimating the potential threat rather than underestimating.

Early hunter/gathers who saw that suspicious movement in the grass as they were out hunting had two choices. One would be to think: I bet that isn’t really a wild animal who might attack me. It was just the wind. On the other hand, they could think, That could be a wild animal stalking me and I’m at risk of an attack. You can see that it makes sense to choose the second option.

Overestimating the potential threat and getting it wrong, then no harm is done and he survives. However, if he took the first option and underestimated the threat and was wrong; then he is more likely to die.

Observe the phobic reaction and we see a pathological overestimation of threat. The individual’s mind is making an overestimation of the potential threat from a certain situation/stimulus. Once this is successful, the tendency to overestimate threat in other aspects of their life increases, and we notice the phobia making greater demands on their life.

Specific Phobias

Social Anxiety (often referred to as social phobia) is probably the most common symptom I am asked to assist with. The social phobic person will report that they have become more anxious and fearful about being around other people in social situations. If they were to fight against it they feel an overwhelming fear coming over them until they had to get away. Sometimes it is described alike claustrophobia. Everything seemed to be closing in on them and they just ‘knew’ they had to get out.

This phobia has many negative repercussions for the person, most obviously on their social life and the pleasure they could get from mixing with friends and acquaintances. They find they are refusing invitations more and more, and this can be frustrating to others as well. Even when the social phobic’s friends know about their difficulties, they begin not to invite them along “because they won’t want to”.

The anxiety (transformed into a phobia) has an effect upon the sufferer’s life. Likewise, those who do not know the problem may think our sufferer is anti-social which has the added effect of creating more anxiety for our social phobic. There is little they can do to explain the problem, they begin to feel less confident and their self-esteem takes a hit too.

Another common phobia is Arachnophobia, the pathological fear of spiders. Again we are talking about a terror, not simply a dislike. The person who tells you they have a phobia of spiders and goes on to explain that they have to quickly put glass and piece of paper under it to get it outside has a strong fear, but watch the person with a phobia and the terror and panic is clear. They will scream and fight desperately to get out of the room. It’s worth noting here that they would also demonstrate all the beginnings of that panic when you showed them a picture of spiders and even touching the photograph would cause them distress.

It is important to understand there is a difference between disliking something and the terror the phobic will experience. Many times people will describe to me that they have a phobia of flying. They will tell me how they are terrified and that they have to have at least three drinks before they get on the flight and calming medication from their doctor. All through the flight, they are gripping the armrests or their partner's hand or both!

The person certainly has a fear of flying, but the individual with a pathological fear (Aerophobia) feels that fear with an ever-increasing intensity. That is not to belittle the fear the nervous flyer feels, rather we acknowledge that the intensity of a phobia will find the fear is making itself known in more ways than just at the airport or on the plane.

The person with the pathological fear of air travel would not be able to get on the plane. They would, in all probability, not book a holiday that required a plane journey. In fact, I would be willing to bet that they even felt vaguely anxious as they passed their local travel agent. Remember we have said that the phobia will begin to make greater demands on the individual and their behaviour, so we would expect other changes to occur to fend off the potential fear.

Am I saying that strong fears are not anxiety related? 

No. They are projections of inner anxiety just the same but are less intense than the phobic reaction I have described. I would also suggest, that the strong fear given time has the potential to develop into a pathological fear (phobia). The more ‘use’ it is to our mind as a pressure value for inner anxieties, all the more reason for it to develop and become more troublesome to the individual; after all, it’s doing a good job of getting your attention. 

Anxiety itself (that rumbling panic and dread inside a person) is not separate from phobias, panic attacks, depression or some physical problems, it is symptomatic of it. The symptom is an outward expression of internal anxiety. It is a symbolic representation of the anxiety, created to mediate the confusion we feel consciously for the unexplained unsettling feeling inside ourselves.

Quite often we make an erroneous association for our anxiety; we explain why we think we have developed these symptoms in the first place. It must be erroneous (false) because if it was correct the person would have surely understood where their anxiety comes from and as a result, it would most likely disappear. The person’s mind would not need to create symbolic versions of the anxiety because the person knew where it came from; surely then the anxiety would have less ‘power’ over them because they had ‘seen’ their anxiety for what it was. Nevertheless, they still hang on to the erroneous association: well a false explanation is better than none when you are trying to manage your anxiety from day today.

But …I’m sure I know where my Phobia came from…

Now I’m going to throw a spanner in the works and say sometimes a person’s explanation will be correct. They will tell you of an experience that really was the starting point of the anxiety; it really did cause that internal anxiety/stress and therefore the symptoms they now suffer with. So why do they still have the anxiety?

In my experience, there is some aspect of that explanation that they do not understand. Some part of it they have forgotten about or remains unprocessed; after all, it was a long-time ago and it was likely upsetting at the time.

Sometimes part of their memory of the incident(s) has been misunderstood. If a person’s explanation for their anxiety was a memory they had when they were a child then surely they ‘understood’ it at the time with a child’s view of the world? Their perception of what happened would be without the benefit of an adult perspective. What seemed upsetting to that young, maturing mind, is unlikely to be as upsetting to the adult mind, once they have consciously understood and processed it.

The Development of Anxiety and the Resulting Phobia

Let’s imagine that you are chatting to someone who is very shy and tells you they have always been that way. They explain how they avoid social situations because they don’t like the feeling of being on show; they feel others are judging them.


Let’s also imagine that you ask them what caused it; something must have happened to make them so shy and socially anxious. Of course, they remember very well what caused it…


One day at primary school they had to stand up in class and read aloud a poem from a book. Each child had to do it, but when it came to our hero, they stuttered and stumbled over the words and they remember everyone laughing at them until they burst into tears and had to run out of the classroom. They also tell you they remember their mother had to go with them to school the next day and take them into the classroom because they were so nervous about going back. Even thinking back now, they can hear the other children laughing and they remember it felt like they were still sniggering in the playground. Ever since that moment, all their social confidence has gone.


Makes sense, right? We can certainly see how that experience might explain why they are shy and socially phobic.

But let’s suppose that part of that experience had been missed. Let’s imagine that what’s been omitted from that memory is that they felt so fearful and embarrassed, they wet themselves. The other children were not laughing at our hero stumbling over the words in the poem but were actually laughing at the wet patch on their school uniform and the puddle on the floor. 

Let’s also imagine that the next day their mother took them into the classroom as remembered but also took in a bag with some spare underpants, in case of another accident. Suppose they were so embarrassed and shameful at the time, that part of the experience was missing. The experience was contributing to their anxiety, but they hadn’t fully understood the full experience and what it meant to the young them at the time.

We can see why this person may have gone on to develop anxiety, particularly in social situations and why they would avoid anything like public speaking. We can also see why the anxiety might focus quite often on the fear of being judged (that’s what it felt like the other children were doing in the playground). It would be my guess that this person would also tend towards taking lots of toilet breaks if they were going on a long journey so as to avoid any sort of ‘accident’. This might have led to the development of shy bladder (Paruresis), making public toilets particularly stressful.

It is also quite likely that they may stutter or at least trip over their words more than we would expect if having to read anything in front of people. We wouldn’t be too surprised to find they are prone to blushing (because of the inner anxiety, and no doubt the little them blushed in that classroom). It may be that they actually fear blushing (Erythrophobia) because that will be like a signal to everyone that they have done….what? They don’t even know because they haven’t fully understood it all.

If they were to have children of their own, they would feel anxious themselves about going to parents evenings. The sight and smell of that classroom would certainly be enough to make them feel uncomfortable. The shame and embarrassment they felt at the time haven’t been fully processed and as a result, they are still desperately trying to avoid situations that they might feel the same in; although consciously they do not know this.

Misunderstood Experiences

By following this explanation we are suggesting that to resolve a person’s anxiety they have to understand what motivates it; what has caused it. Rather than stifling the anxiety down the individual has to understand it and process it. From the safe distance of hindsight they are able to ‘see’ it for what it was and understand why they felt the way they did and from that understand more about how this may have created the symptoms they are experiencing. That requires a full understanding, rather than just the parts we have erroneously associated with the anxiety.

The concept of not fully understanding an experience is not really that difficult to accept. Take a moment and use your own memory. Think of a memory from your childhood and run through it again in your thoughts. It could be a birthday party you had or a memory from school. Then you could recount it to someone else who was there at the time, and you are quite likely to find that they remember it differently. 

They will have understood it in a different way and even parts of it will differ factually. This doesn’t have to be a traumatic memory, but it is not difficult to see that if that happens with a happy memory then surely it will also happen to those more upsetting recollections. After all, there was more reason for your mind to miss out on some aspects of it to protect you from that emotion again. The emotion (inner anxiety) is still there, just helpfully missing.

Knowing something is very different from understanding something and gaining insight about it.

We can know the facts of a situation, but understanding the implications for those facts takes much more insight. Add to that the fact that what you understood as a child is different from what you understand as an adult. As a child, we can feel greater emotion for a situation than we do as an adult. What seems so important to a child will be indifferent to an adult in the same situation. 

We have experience as an adult; we understand much more about how the world works. This gives us greater resilience, but as we were acquiring that strength of ego during our childhood, we were still having those experiences and feeling those emotions. 

As we go along we accumulate experience and emotional memory until we reach a point of critical mass and the only thing for our mind to do is to create an emotional symptom as a way of letting some of that pressure out.

Life stresses exacerbate the inner anxiety, they intensify a person’s symptoms. From this we can suggest, that when a person has fully understood where their anxiety came from, what drives and motivates it, and they have insight into it, the stresses and pressure they experience in life will be easier to cope with. They will still be stressed by events (that’s a normal emotion) but their inner anxiety will not intensify the experience.

Analytical Hypnotherapy

Hypnoanalysis is a type of talking therapy that follows the view of cause and effect. Rather than seeking to simply control the symptom, the therapy aims to uncover and resolve the root cause of the problem. Hypnoanalysis is a way to rethink, reprocess and understand those experiences that can lead to anxiety, helping to bring back a person’s resilience.

Far from using post-hypnotic suggestion to control the symptoms, Hypnoanalysis removes the root cause of the anxiety and as a result, the symptoms are relieved for good.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to make that phone call, attend that social event, be free from that phobia or give that presentation without the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety getting in the way?


Find out more about anxiety and Hypnoanalysis or contact me to book a free, no-obligation consultation, at www.ketteringhypnotherapy.com or call direct on 01536 350328