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“Nightmares often reflect an ongoing fear -- a phobia. The nightmares can’t be stopped until those phobias are cured.” -YOUR DREAM TEAM
The recent publication of THE PHOBIA SELF-HELP BOOK by Keith Livingston has proven to be a godsend to those who want help in conquering their fears and phobias.
THE PHOBIA SELF-HELP BOOK: This eBook (electronic book) contains a wealth of information about phobias and what to do about them… This book is not available in print - only on the internet… You can get a 5 day free preview (The preview includes 16 of the book's 40 sections), in just seconds.
Dictionary.com defines a PHOBIA as;
"A persistent, abnormal, or irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid the feared stimulus."
Some mental health professionals would add that a phobia is a fear that interferes in a person's life. So, if you have a fear of flying and it causes you to cancel trips or plan around your fear it would be considered a problem.
Some estimate that twelve percent of the population will experience a phobia at some point in their lives.
Common symptoms include shortness of breath, redness in the face, heart palpitations, excessive sweating, dizziness, nausea and an inability to speak or think clearly. Various sufferers experience various combinations of these symptoms (and other symptoms).
Livingston explains that “There are three types of phobia - simple phobia, social phobia, and agoraphobia (with and without panic attacks) - as well as panic disorder…"
The most common of the three phobias is simple phobia, a phobia of some object or situation. Fear of spiders, heights and flying are examples of simple phobias. There are no proven drug treatments for simple phobias.
The insight by most phobics that their fears are not justified doesn't necessarily help. This is why insight oriented therapy is not effective in the treatment of phobias.
Social phobics are often afraid of being judged. People with social phobia often tell me that they are afraid of being the center of attention or "in the spotlight." The level of anxiety often corresponds with the perceived authority or importance of the social group. In simple English, it is more frightening to speak in front of a group of Nobel prize winners than a kindergarten class. Social phobics may have difficulty thinking clearly, remembering facts, or speaking clearly when in a social situation. A fear of blushing often accompanies social phobia.
People suffering form panic disorder are subject to episodes of panic that are unexpected and seemingly without cause. The person having a panic attack may fear they are going to die or lose control.
Panic disorder is diagnosed when patients experience repeated episodes of such panic attacks. People with panic disorder can not predict when they will suddenly be struck by panic.
Agoraphobia comes from a Greek word meaning "fear of the open marketplace." Agoraphobia is often thought of as fear of fear itself or fear of having a panic attack. Some people who suffer from panic disorder go on to develop agoraphobia, which may prevent sufferers from leaving their homes unless accompanied by someone they know and trust. Agoraphobia may occur with or without panic disorder.
Then Livingston begins to explore how phobias work on the nervous system and on the mind. He then follows with a comprehensive study of cures: Psychotherapy --Cognitive Behavioral Therapy -- Virtual Reality Therapy -- Drug Therapy -- NLP -- Hypnotherapy -- EMDR -- EFT…
In addition, the following techniques are in the password protected section...
The Fast Phobia Cure is a technique for dealing with memories of past phobic experiences and imagined future situations. The fast phobia cure comes from NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming™), an extremely effective and fast form of cognitive-behavioral therapy.
Finding Root Causes is actually quite simple when you know how. Finding and resolving these root causes of phobias can reduce or eliminate a phobia. Many people don't know what experience "initialized" or caused their phobia. Use this simple technique to discover the root cause of your phobia.
The Visual Swish helps get rid of disturbing images.
The Auditory Swish decreases or eliminates discomfort from our internal dialog or other sounds. Often used in treating fear of public speaking (and other phobias).
Collapsing Anchors allows us to put good feelings into situations that have felt bad in the past.
Future Pacing Allows us to use role models, people who react like we want to react, as guides for our subconscious minds.
Livingston does a thorough job of explaining the reasons for phobias. In his Chapter HOW PHOBIAS WORK, he writes: “In a nutshell, here's how it works. At some point you are in a situation or imagine a situation. The subconscious mind perceives this situation is dangerous. It generates fear and links the fear to this situation. This link is now automatic (a conditioned response). Each time you are about to get into the situation or imagine getting into a similar situation the subconscious automatically generates fear.
“The way it knows to generate fear is based on some quality of the thoughts you are having. We must now retrain the subconscious and use its ability to generate automatic thoughts and generate feelings automatically to help you feel more comfortable.
“Using techniques you'll find out about in this eBook you can remove the linkage between your current situation and those old memories and feelings. Alternately, you can go back to those initializing events and take the sting out of them. A third plan of attack is to take the thoughts themselves and modify them permanently so they don't create the feelings anymore.”
He goes on to explain: “Most phobias are what could be called ‘One Trial Learning.‘ By this, I mean that a Pavlovian conditioned response was learned in one incident. These events are called ‘Initializing Events’ or ‘Root Causes.’
“The brain is very good at associating feelings with situations. The brain can attach panic or anxiety to a situation in an instant. When you think about it, it makes sense; it's a great survival mechanism to recognize real or imagined dangerous situations without repeated exposure to them. Phobias are simply a valuable natural ability which has been linked up to the wrong situation.
“Although it's often not this simple, here's one way it can happen. Let's say somebody snuck up behind you and said BOO and you just happened to be looking at the letter ‘L.’ Even though you're not consciously aware of what's going on, whenever you see this letter your unconscious mind could refer back to that earlier situation and get that scared feeling back. It has made the association between ‘L’ and that feeling.
“Now this is just an example. You should know that phobias do not necessarily have to come from an outside source, they can be created solely within our own minds. They don't have to make sense (as you can see by the example above) nor do they have to be the result of a traumatic event.”
What follows is a compelling analysis of the psychology of phobias. In THE RETICULAR ACTIVATION SYSTEM AND THE AMYGDALA, Livingston says: “There is a brain structure called the Reticular Activation System (or RAS). One of the functions of this brain structure is to route sensory information to various places in the brain. When a person sees, feels, hears, smells or tastes something, a nerve impulse travels through the RAS. The RAS acts as a filter, deciding where to send this information. The RAS can categorize the sensory input as important enough to call to your attention. It may then send the sensory input to your thinking center where you'll notice it. The RAS can also send information to another, more primitive part of your brain. Let me give you an idea of how this works...
“Let's suppose you've just bought a shiny, new black convertible. Suddenly everywhere you go, there are black convertibles. You begin to notice them driving down the street, in parking lots etc. Your RAS has been set to detect these cars and attract your attention.
“The cars were always there, it's just that your filtering system hadn't been set to pick them up.
“The RAS also sends information with high emotional content to the Amygdala. The Amygdala is a structure of the brain and has to do with emotional learning. It is part of our older, more primitive brain. The Amygdala has projections into multiple brain systems involved in the production of fear and is one of the brain structures that helps control fear chemicals such as adrenaline (it connects to structures which can release stress hormones, suppress pain and produce the "deer in the headlights" effect). The Amygdala also has connections to various areas of the body; the heart, the intestines, sweat glands, breathing functions etc. These are the same areas in which phobics experience symptoms; shortness of breath, rapid heart beat, excessive sweating....
“Basically, in a phobic situation the sensory input gets routed from the Reticular Activating System to the Amygdala. The Amygdala becomes excited and sends messages to release fear producing chemicals, speed up your breathing, increase sweating and your heartbeat.
“In simple terms, somewhere in the brain, there's a fork in the road. At the fork, a judgment call is made and things we see, hear, feel, smell or taste either get routed to the fear center or the thinking center. The decisions at this fork are usually based on past experiences.
“The problem with most drug, counseling or physiologically based phobia treatment methods is that they focus on what to do after the Amygdala gets tweaked. That seems to be too late in the process to do much good (As my grandmother would have said "That's like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.").
“Most of the anti-anxiety drugs are believed to work by damping the fear response. So, you sense something, the RAS categorizes it as dangerous and routes it to the Amygdala, the Amygdala attempts to send fear chemicals and signals to the body but the drug attempts to prevent this from happening. As you can imagine when the drug is removed the phobia still exists (in children this may not be the case).
“It's my belief that the most effective treatments for phobias are focused on the RAS. If you can train the RAS to route the sensory input to the cognitive, thinking center of the brain and away from the emotional center then you'd be fine. You'd think about the situation rather than react to it…”
Livingston then follows with a richly detailed description of the most effective treatments available.
This book is a much-needed response to those who are haunted by Nightmares and Phobias. We recommend it!
YOUR DREAM TEAM Book Rating: * * * * *
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Reviewed by YOUR DREAM TEAM
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