Category

Phobia

Dog Trauma Phobia Fear PTSD Release Hypnosis Melbourne Hynotherapy Counselling Online

You Can’t ‘Erase’ Bad Memories, But You Can Learn Ways To Cope With Them

By Phobia, Therapy, Trauma

If someone has a fear of dogs, a therapist might try to reframe their beliefs to ones such as: ‘most dogs are friendly’ Erik Odiin/Unsplash You can’t ‘erase’ bad memories, but you can learn ways to cope with them Carol Newall, Macquarie University and Rick Richardson, UNSW The film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind pitched an interesting premise: what if we could erase unwanted memories that lead to sadness, despair, depression, or anxiety? Might this someday be possible, and do we know enough about how distressing memories are formed, stored, and retrieved to make such a therapy possible? Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is a common treatment for anxiety disorders. The basic idea of CBT is to change the fear-eliciting thoughts that underlie a client’s anxiety. Read more: Explainer: what is cognitive behaviour therapy? Imagine the instance where a person has a dog phobia. They are likely to believe that “all dogs are dangerous”. During CBT, the client is gradually exposed to friendly dogs to cognitively reframe their thoughts or memories into something more realistic – such as the belief “most dogs are friendly”. CBT is one of the most scientifically supported treatments for anxiety disorders. But unfortunately, a recent…

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April 7, 2020
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Clive Girdham Modified Rewind Phobia PTSD Anxiety Hypnosis Hypnotherapy Release Melbourne Counselling

Review: Clive Girdham – Modified Rewind Online Training

By Hypnotherapy, NLP, Phobia, PTSD, Trauma

Review: Clive Girdham – Modified Rewind Online Training When Clive first started posting about the Modified Rewind, it immediately caught the interest of everyone. How could one approach be so effective at helping so many people overcoming their fears, phobias, and PTSD? One of the things I will say about Sydney based hypnotherapist Clive Girdham is that this man can definitely walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Scratch beneath the surface and every claim Clive makes about his work is absolutely true. For a few years, Clive offered a free online Mastermind series of presentations and, following that, produced a Stop Smoking online course that many consider being one of the best out there. Having worked with Clive on a few in-person workshops, Clive also has the uncanny knack of being endlessly engaging. While some training may have you feeling a bit sleepy after lunch, there is something about the energy that Clive brings to his work that provokes curiosity and interest. Perhaps he is using his own Jedi mind tricks in his presentation style but when it is being used for the purposes of good, you have to be grateful for that. Expanding the hypnotherapy toolkit…

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March 2, 2020
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Halloween Phobia Spiders Death Release Hypnosis Melbourne Hypnotherapy Counselling

How Halloween Can Trigger Phobias and Anxiety

By Phobia

How Halloween Can Trigger Phobias and Anxiety It can be interesting watching a genuine phobic response. You can tell when someone truly has a phobia of something because their fight or flight will kick in and they will need to get away from that trigger as fast and as quickly as possible. This can manifest with some truly unusual triggers and, in other cases, can be an overly sensitive response. Allow me to explain via an example. One of my very dear friends has a phobia of spiders. Her phobia of spiders is so intense that you can’t even say the word ‘spider’ around her without getting an automatic anxiety response, and often some level of verbal abuse for your comment. She has worked on this issue in the past and has made progress although at one point there, even the mere suggestion that a spider could be at a certain location, such as a hint of cobweb on a rear-side mirror of a car, would have her refuse to get into that car. The worst time of year for her though is Halloween. During Halloween, she will ever refuse to go into a supermarket due to all of the…

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October 19, 2019
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Doctor Who Arachnids In The UK Spider Phobia Fear Release Hypnosis Melbourne Counselling Hypnotherapy

When Your Fear of Spiders Makes It Hard To Even Watch TV

By Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy, Phobia

When Your Fear of Spiders Makes It Hard To Even Watch TV For most of my life, I’ve been a massive fan of the UK sci-fi television show, ‘Doctor Who’. While it may be a topic for another day, even the thought of the central character, The Doctor, being able to change who it is without losing the memories or the experiences of the previous incarnation can often be a wonderful metaphor for life itself. I did tend to wonder though just how many people were going to watch this week’s episode when they say the title ‘Arachnids In The Uk’ come up on the screen. The Doctor and Spiders Now, this isn’t the first time that Doctor Who has had spiders in the show. In fact, Doctor Who has helped science in their research of spider phobias in the past! The Third Doctor lost his life due to a giant spider and the Tenth Doctor also came up against arachnid lifeforms from another planet. The differences between those experiences and this latest episode though are fairly obvious. The effects that were available back in the mid-70s when the Third Doctor’s ‘Planet Of The Spiders’ aired was pretty basic, to…

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October 29, 2018
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Pumpkin Head Fear of Halloween Phobia Release Hypnosis Melbourne Hypnotherapy St Kilda Rd Melbourne Counselling

Phobias: Why Halloween Is More Frightening For Some

By Phobia

Phobias: Why Halloween Is More Frightening For Some While some may picture Halloween as being a time of fancy dress, trick or treat and ghoulish stories, for people who have phobias, Halloween can be a very difficult time. Let me illustrate this point by way of example. A friend of mine was telling me that her phobia of spiders was so strong that she avoids going into supermarkets around Halloween. All the display spider webs and plastic spiders bring her anxiety to such a point that she recalls walking into a supermarket once, spotting a display, screaming in sheer terror and running out of the store. Yes, she admits that it might’ve looked like she was crazy however around Halloween, I am pretty sure if you were to ask your friends, you’ll find at least one person you know who would agree with this experience. Considering that Halloween is meant to be about all those things that bring a sense of terror into our world, it’s easy to understand why there would be some things that may trigger a phobic response. There is even Samhainophobia, which is a fear of Halloween itself! The term Samhainophobia originates from ‘Samhuin’ meaning summer’s…

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October 30, 2017
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Mental Health Wellness Hypnotherapy Hypnosis Internet Youtube Release Hypnosis Melbourne

Getting Mental Health On The Line – Weekending 19/03/17

By Anxiety, Confidence, Habits, Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy, LGBTQI, Mindfulness, NLP, Phobia, PTSD

Getting Mental Health On The Line – Weekending 19/03/17 This is a weekly post to act as an additional resource for both clients and fellow therapists alike. This week, we’re presenting some of the best from the past week featuring topics as diverse as the infamous rewind technique for phobias with a Dan Jones twist, a Trolls Mindfulness exercise for kids, looking at Persuasion, overcoming challenges for public speaking, hypnosis and PTSD, self-sabotage and PTSD, and lastly, a look at how mental health, sexual health, HIV, and Drugs are all tied together with gay men. If you have a video that you would like featured in our weekly roundup, then drop Lawrence a line with a link to your video. Overcome a Fear of Needles: Phobia Treatment: Rewind Technique By Dan Jones Hypnosis In this video I guide you through the rewind technique to help you overcome a fear of needles. The process is interactive and quite fast, so you may need to listen a few times to get used to the process and to following the process, and to deciding on what memories to use to de-traumatise. It is usually best to use the first memory (often the cause),…

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March 20, 2017
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Fear Anxiety Phobia Release Hypnosis Removal Hypnotherapy Hypnosis Melbourne St Kilda Rd

High Anxiety: How I Use Mental Exercises To Ease My Fear Of Flying

By PhobiaNo Comments

High anxiety: how I use mental exercises to ease my fear of flying James Kirby, The University of Queensland In the last five years, I’ve become quite anxious during flights – especially when turbulence hits. And while my wife Cassie never feared turbulence before, she has recently “caught” my anxiety, for which I feel inherently guilty. Now, we’re as bad as each other, and that can make for some terrible flight experiences. A recent case in point was our return flight from an otherwise lovely holiday in Bali. It certainly didn’t help that Mount Raung’s ongoing eruptions clouded the air with volcanic ash. This led to many cancelled flights and scores of tourists stranded at airports. When some flights finally did resume, the ashy air made the journey more turbulent than usual. We’re both clinical psychologists, so you would think we’d easily be able to manage our turbulence-related anxiety. But counselling others is one thing; applying the same strategies to yourself is another. I know how anxiety works and practise the commonly taught technique of controlled breathing in anxiety-provoking situations. It works sometimes, but I still feel on edge during turbulence. During this flight, I employed a different strategy to…

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January 16, 2017
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When Fear Takes Over – A Look At Phobias

By Anxiety, Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy, PhobiaNo Comments

When Fear Takes Over – A Look At Phobias I had an experience yesterday that may not seem like much to many people but truly signified something extraordinary to me. I had a blood test. And it was the first time I knew my childhood fear of needles had definitely gone. What was so amusing about this one for me was that, when the needle went in, I let out a bit of a giggle. It was the first time ever that I had experienced a blood test where I knew the needle was in my arm but I didn’t feel the usual short, sharp sting that you come to expect with the needle breaking the skin. It caught me so off guard that I let out this little giggle and commented at how expertly my nurse had done it. Additionally, I’ve often found that when you’re having a blood test, you can feel like the needle is just sitting there for such a long time however this seemed over in seconds. As a child, my fear of needles was pretty much a phobic reaction. I can recall one instance where there had been several attempts to get blood from…

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June 7, 2016
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