Hallowe'en - It Doesn't Have To Be Scary! - by Matthew Wingett
Matthew Wingett talks about some of the things that give people a fright in this Hallowe'en special and how it is possible to banish phobias with NLP.
Hallowe'en - When Things Get Scary Unnecessarily!
Hallowe'en reminds us of some the slimy creepy things that can scare us. From snakes to spiders, to ghosts to zombies to vampires - the real or imagined things that can make the hairs on the back of our necks stand up, or our stomachs turn to ice and our legs to jelly - it seems at Hallowe'en there's a lot to be afraid of!
The run-of-the-mill phobias are just the tip of the ice-berg. There are are phobias for all manner of things, from the harmless, such as cotton wool (Bambakophobia), all the way through to the ironic, such as fear of Hallowe'en (Samhainophobia) , or fear of having a phobia (Phobophobia).
But in all these cases, no matter how silly such fears appear to be on the outside, to the person who hasn't been taught how to think differently, these fears seem very real indeed.
And what's funny about that is that people who have a phobia seem to believe, with what appears to be an unshakeable belief, that they can't possibly change.
There are reasons for that. Sometimes the person who is "doing fear" at an object is too frightened even to imagine themselves free of the fear. They scare the hell out of themselves thinking that if they get free of spiders, they'll have to sit in a room of spiders, or have to pick one up - despite the fact of course that once they're past the phobia, even if that were true, it just wouldn't matter.
...Other people have reasons to keep hold of their fears...
It's a strange double bind that some people doing phobia put on themselves to keep them stuck in their present mode. You might even look on their behaviour as a failure of imagination - or as the success of an imagination that hasn't been trained to take charge of itself.
Other people have reasons to keep hold of their fears. As Richard Bandler often reminds us in his famous NLP Practitoner training, things have got to get bad enough for someone to want to change. A little girl I once helped was frightened of cats, because she had been given a scare when she was a toddler. Her parents, though well meaning, had pandered to the fear. When she turned up at friends' houses they had asked for their friends' cats to be put away before she would enter the house. It was well meaning, but all it did was reinforce the little girl's identity as someone who was afraid of cats. She was even made to feel special by her dad, who would cuddle her and reassure her whenever she got afraid. There was a secondary gain involved. Or, as Richard Bandler once put it in a seminar I attended: It wasn't secondary gain, it was primary gain.
A friend of mine who is a vet notices the same with dogs who are pampered by their owners at the sound of fireworks and start barking. They build a "propulsion system" in their dogs that takes them in the wrong direction. The dog is afraid by the bang, and barks, and then is rewarded with snacks and cuddles for their fear. Now they have a reason to bark all the more at the next bang, until they are calmed down and pampered. It's not a good life lesson for dogs - or for kids, come to that!
As Richard puts it, you've got to want to get away from the fear in order to make that change. That means it's got to get so bad that you're fed up with it and you just want to cry out "enough is enough". Pampering just won't encourage that need for change.
...Some clients also believe that a fear must be "deep" because they've had it for a long time...
Once the conditions for change are met, making the change itself is usually pretty easy. The fastest I ever cured someone of a phobia was 4 minutes flat. The longest, I admit, was 4 four hour sessions. Looking back on that I realise that I overlooked various points, and had to go back over my work to see what I had missed.
Some clients also believe that a fear must be "deep" because they've had it for a long time.
That's like saying that a car is "deep" because you've been trying unsuccessfully to run it on maple syrup for the last 20 years, or a watch is "deep" because a plumber couldn't get it going, no matter how long he tried. The most extreme case I had of exactly that was a woman who had been a bird phobic for 60 years. She was utterly convinced that she would be afraid for the rest of her life. She had received therapy, counselling, analysis, CBT and desensitisation to get her over her fear. None had worked.
The look on her face of utter surprise when two hours after we met, we walked to the beach and fed the gulls was a picture to behold. She had been so sure that I couldn't help her when she walked into my office.
If you have a fear, or know someone who has one that prevents them from doing the things they want to do in life, the upshot of this ghostly Hallowe'en phobia discussion is this: things CAN change, and DO change quickly. You can take heart from Richard Bandler's video: "Banishing Phobias" in which he demonstrates in his inimitable style how easy it is to get over fears. Filmed live at a training, Richard works with three phobics to really show them how to make the changes they want.
The three people on the DVD are a snake phobic, a spider phobic and a claustrophobic - but it doesn't matter what the fear you have - the techniques he demonstrates are the same.
So take heart at Hallowe'en if you imagine something lurking around the corner. The thing you find there might just be freedom, thanks to NLP.
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