Ok, if this is in the wrong area, please feel free to move to correct one!

Basically, I need some help. My better half has an irrational phobia which she obviously no longer wishes to suffer from. It is not extreme, yet is a bit of a nuisance. Does anyone have any ideas or thoughts for helping to relax people from a phobia? Or book references, if not? It isn't anything serious like I say, but we would like as much help as possible.
Thanks guys
Bryan

See a mental health professional maybe, don't ask a bunch of entertainers.

Bryan,

Do some research into NLP, Hypnosis, and/or TFT on google.com. Maybe ring and discuss the issue with some local practitioners.

Enjoy,
M.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, is a good option for treating phobias.

Progressive exposure to the "object" of fear is also known to be an excellent treatment technique which basically extinguishes the conditioned response. (Keep in mind that in many phobias an emotional resolution is also needed besides the extinguishing of a conditioned response)

Also, this is one of the things the NLP seems to be very successful with. The NLP treatment is very similar to progressive exposure and deals with conditioning at the time of the first fear onset.

As it was wisely suggested, the best help may come from a professional that can talk to the interested parties directly.

Hi Bryan,

I used self-hypnosis to help me overcome a fear of heights. However, I wouldn't recommend it. I used to have a hypnosis practice in NYC and used NLP all the time to help people get rid of phobias - and it worked like a charm. Specifically, I'd use something called the Fast Phobia Technique first, or if the person is very suggestible, I'd build and collapse a phobia anchor. Takes about 20 minutes, but the effect is amazing. This, technically, is cognitive-behavioral in nature.

For the sake of completeness, you should also know that the progressive relaxation method that used to be touted as the best method for overcoming phobias has largely been discarded for more in-vivo treatments. In this respect, Alain's post above is pretty accurate. You'll scare the **** out of the person by in-vivo exposure, but once the mind realizes the fear response isn't reinforced, it learns something new.

Phobias are horrible, freedom-robbing things. I wish you the best of luck.

Call Luke Jermay, he can remove the phobia

I have worked with many phobias. Recently I worked with retired teacher who had a phobia of walking over bridges for more than 50 years. She also had slept with light on since she was a young child. On top of that, she was greiving for her partner and had as a result taken to excessive drinking.

During a five hour session, she got rid of all the above and we immediately jumped into the car and went looking for a bridge. For first time in over 50 years she walked over bridge with no negative response. She also slept that night with the light out. A follow up call a month later and she had only had bottle of wine.

I've worked with many bizzare phobias. Fear of children's dolls, public toilettes, flying, agrophobia and driving are a few.

In most cases it can be dealt with within a five hour period unless there is a real secondary gain to be had from having the problem.

I find Timeline Therapy to be the most useful tool to use with these problems as part of a five hour process. This is a technique that allows whole gestalts of emotion such as fear to be released in a very short time. Derived from NLP submodalities. It's how we structure time in our minds. It's also how we store gestalts of emotion. Sometimes an unconscious part will want to hold on to the phobia or other problem, such as depression, as it believes that it is beneficial for the person to have it. This is when something like the fast phobia cure might not work and other issues need to be addressed through parts integration.

What I'm saying is, it can be more complicated than first appears. There is no need to gradually expose anyone to what they fear. This is not only unpleasant, but can actually make the phobia worse in some cases by actually adding layers of fear to the gestalt.

Using the above NLP techniques, you need never be associated into your fear therefore, you don't need to experience it to release it almost immediately.

I'll second (or third, or fourth) the NLP Phobia Technique's value. I've performed it many, many times for people, I used to run a small NLP practice called Full Spectrum Communications (www.fsc4nlp.com). I still do, but very occasionally.

The phobia technique is respectful, allows the client a great deal of comfort and safety, and an amazing, almost amnesiac effect for their phobia. Someone who has a phobia of spiders, that demos high-end response to spiders (unequal pupilary response, sweating, capilary shutdown...), and goes through the process, later finds themselves allowing a tarantula to crawl up their arm, and they aren't even that surprised that they can do this... that's a worthwhile technique.

Much is available on this- be sure you get a practitioner who guarantees results- I always did- you only paid if you got results.

Good luck & best regards,

Dave

Thank you all very much for your help. Your messages are extremely appreciated. I am looking into what you have each said, and I will inform you how it goes. Shrink, thank you for the timeline theory, I have read bits about timeline therapy, but not enough to undertakle it myself. I would like further knowledge about this so I am consulting text books and people I am in contact with. Any extra help would be well recieved!

Thank you all greatly
bryan

Hi Bryan,

Also, you will find that Emotional Freedom Therapy (EFT) and Thought Field Therapy(TFT) are excellent as a do-it-yourself treatment.

You can download a Free E-book on this technique here http://prosperityplace.com/eft/

There is a better version but I can't remember the site off the top of my head. However, a quick search on google for either EFT or TFT should bring up a couple of thousand pages