One of my posts deals with Flying Phobia so it is always nice to get a text back from a recent client when they arrive home from their holiday and no phobia. A recent client wanted to go to Spain with her friends but was absolutely terrified of flying and had already backed out of a previous holiday for that reason.
We had one initial session a few weeks before she was due to fly and she immediately found that she really was not worrying about it anymore at all. However as the date got closer she began to experience some of the old feelings so thought she had better come and see me for a back up session.
It is interesting working with something such as flying since the conscious mind is often not quite sure whether any change has occurred. Until you experience stepping onto the plane you don’t know consciously if the therapy has worked. Although our conscious mind knows that our fear is irrational and unfounded it is interesting that when our unconscious allows us to let go of the fear the conscious often still needs proof and is still not always totally convinced. This is where we need to trust this creative part of ourselves and avoid too many internal questions as the positive change becomes a natural experience.
Hypnosis allows us to bypass our conscious questioning and that is exactly what we did in the session just a couple of days before her holiday. It also allows us to visualise a sequence of events in such a way that they become, in a sense, real. Visualising the flight and other important details whilst connecting it to feelings of relaxation and calm can, according to research, be as powerfully compelling as experiencing the real thing.
Oh yes, and here is the text she sent me when she got home:
“Hi Roger just bk my hol was absolutely fab i was gr8 on plane was a bit nervous at 1st then completely went away quite enjoyed it defo do it again i even fell asleep on the way back … thanks very much”
The initial “bit nervous at 1st” is an example of the conscious mind still not quite believing that it really can feel safe. However when the unconscious has been reprogrammed powerfully enough the conscious mind is then able to take a back seat and just relax. Somewhere within us we really do know how to make these changes and by allowing that part to do what it needs to do and change what it needs to change the new feelings will naturally become fully integrated into our actual live experience.