Heal Anxiety and Phobias with Hypnosis
Alchemical Hypnotherapy offers unique tools for healing anxiety and phobias. By returning in hypnosis to the core memories which created a phobic response and changing those memories, we can cure these phobias in a fraction of the time required by most other therapies.
Irrational fears, those demons that tell us to be afraid of things that cannot hurt us come from the subconscious. These fears keep us from living purposeful lives. A fearful life has only one purpose, and that is to survive the fear to get through the day.
Getting through the day hoping my fears would not get me was my only real purpose. Three weeks of planning just to make a simple phone call was the best existence that I could hope for. And all the while help was just a phone call away. But how was I going to make the call?
The fear to make a phone call and an irrational shyness of peaceful adults left me constantly feeling like I was on the outside looking in. I was watching life happen to other people without participating with them. One can just imagine the depth of pain and suffering these debilitating fears gave me.
Thank God there is Alchemical Hypnotherapy and David Quigley. In just two sessions with David and his Alchemical techniques I am now free of these irrational fears. I make phone calls with ease; I answer the phone with confidence; and it is now easy to join in when there is a group of people across the room having fun.
My life has transformed from the point when people used to ask me why I was frowning and not having fun. Now with this perpetual smile and happy heart, they ask if they might join me!
Do you have irrational fears preventing you from participating in life’s rich pageant? Make the call or maybe a friend will make the call for you. Even further, take the Alchemical Hypnotherapy course and learn how to help yourself and others who have lived their entire existence in fear.
David Riddle
Alchemical Hypnotherapy graduate
"Twenty-eight million american's suffer from anxiety disorders including, phobias, panic attacks, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Alchemical Hypnotherapy has given me unique keys to work effectively with all these issues. In my new book, "Journey From Anxiety to Freedom", I show how anyone can use a variety of tools, especially alchemy, to eliminate phobic reactions and self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors."
For over a decade, I have used the tools of Alchemical Hypnotherapy to work with clients suffering from anxiety-related issues, as well as in my own personal life (as I have struggled with panic attacks and phobias). Here are two examples. The first is an experience with a client suffering from agoraphobia; the second is an excerpt from my book, Journey from Anxiety to Freedom, showing how I used the Alchemical process to contact my inner child to lessen my phobia about driving on freeways and bridges.
Barbara: Dread of Going Out
Barbara first came to me because she had great difficulty leaving her home, even to do simple errands such as shopping or going to the library. She noticed that if she could actually get out the door and on her way, she usually calmed down. But the dread of leaving the safety of her home was so great, that she usually couldn’t make it.
I started by using guided imagery to develop a relaxation response, and to have her imagine a special place that made her feel calm. It’s always important to show a client that he or she can actually have some control over the output of adrenaline. Then I asked her to tell me more about her thoughts related to going out. It soon became clear that her self-talk included many themes of feeling unwelcome, unwanted, and fear that she would be seen as faulty. Since these expectations were being projected onto the outside world, I proceeded with a regression process to go back to when she first experienced these fears.
In the interest of space, I’ll skip a few steps. At some point she got in touch with a birth memory of feeling completely unwelcome, and believing she should never come out. She then recalled having heard her mother tell the story that she started to be born too quickly and no one was prepared. The story was that her mother tried to hold her in, and even at the hospital, the nurse held her legs together to postpone the immanent birth.
As Barbara told the story, she became very emotional. She felt the primal feelings of rejection once again, but this time she knew it wasn’t the fault of this perfect little baby. She herself imagined reaching out and welcoming this new being into the world, and promising her love and safety.
From this, Barbara was able to recognize that her feelings stemmed from the past, and she could access the new experience of trust in herself and in life, when she thought of venturing out. Of course, she had to take small steps at first, and anchor her new emotional experience in daily successful action. Over time, she was able to feel calmer and more in touch with the present reality which was inviting, not threatening.
Excerpt from Journey from Anxiety to Freedom
Driving Phobia: Don’t Give Her the Keys to the Car
"The emotional pain that I could not identify or express did not go away when I ignored it….The unexpressed grief, the denied anger and the sadness were converted into worry, or expressed as a panicky voice that screamed, "I can’t—I won’t—I’ll die."
I needed to express those feelings without allowing them to take over my life. I needed to understand how suppressed feelings from the past were shaping my responses now. Using a process I learned in Alchemical Hypnotherapy, I found a format to explore emotions that might otherwise be threatening or hard to express. I used guided imagery to meet the child part of myself who knew how to act big but didn’t feel very confident inside.
To begin my process, I prepared myself by doing a relaxation process. When I was relaxed, I pictured a beautiful garden with two comfortable chairs, one big and one small, and I invited my child self to join me there. When I let my mind float, a five-year-old girl appeared, her finger wrapped around her long brown braids. She looked quizzically at me. I asked her if there was anything that she would like to tell me. At first she didn’t say anything and I accepted her silence. As I continued to relax, she finally spoke to me. She told me she was scared. She told me she felt alone. She was tired of trying so hard, of being so serious and she didn’t want to be in charge…."
I will skip some of the details here. I did let myself become the adult me again and respond to my child self and let her know that I cared about her, that I wanted to get to know her.
"The next time I needed to drive to San Francisco, I heard the scared voice in my head saying: ‘I don’t want to do this. Don’t make me do this.’ Whereas in the past this voice would have been enough to make me turn around and go home, this time I heard my cry for help in a new way. Instead of identifying with the voice, I imagined that it belonged to the child sitting next to me in the car. I pictured her as a very relaxed Raggedy Ann doll leaning against my hip. I said to her: ‘I know that you’re too little to drive this car. Your feet don’t even reach the pedals and you can’t see over the dashboard. I want you to know that you don’t have to take charge….I’m grown up and well coordinated. I have been driving for twenty years. You can rest in my heart and I will drive the car.’
This dialogue pulled me back to the reality of driving. I focused my attention on the road. I felt the breeze on my arm….I used my skills for stopping fear thoughts and relaxing the body, but I no longer felt like I was fighting an enemy. I understood that many of my fear thoughts were remnants from the past….I could love the scared child within me, but I didn’t have to give her the keys to the car."
Mani Feniger
Berkeley California
