Childhood memories
key to fear
factor
Being tickled with feathers. Drinking copious amounts of wine. Playing
the flute to a beautiful woman.
For this writer at least, these sound like the ingredients for an
entertaining evening indoors. But if you happen to suffer from either
pteronophobia, oenophobia, aulophobia or calyginephobia (or, if
particularly unfortunate, all four) this is a vision of unspeakable
terror. For these are, respectively, the fears of feather-tickling, wine,
flutes and good-looking females.
Fear comes in many shapes and sizes not all of them dark and shadowy as
Mill Hill Hypnotherapist David Samson can well attest. For the past year
he has been conducting a survey into phobias, the irrational fears that
can take over our lives.
"Around ten per cent of people you will see walking down the street
have a phobia, yet only one per cent of them will do anything about it."
said Mr. Samson, who works at Avanti Hypnotherapy in Hankins Lane.
"The aim of this survey was to find out what is the most common fear.
"So many people come to see me and say: I think I'm weird, you probably
haven't heard of this but...' then once you've spoken to them and found
out what they are afraid of you realize they are not that weird at all,"
The results he has collated so far prove fascinating reading.
As perhaps expected, most of us will break into cold sweats at the
sight of an insect about the size of a 50 pence piece the humble spider
topping the list.
Everything from clowns, to vomiting to, quite strangely, balloons,
follow close behind.
So where do these phobias originate? Why can some people see horror
where others see happiness? Why could I walk past a bald person without
batting an eyelid while a peladophobic would be looking to hide up the
nearest tree?
Mr. Samson's method of venturing into the core of our fears is
regressive hypnotherapy.
He puts his patient under hypnosis and then takes them back to their
childhood memories, where he hopes to discover the roots of the problem.
"Imagine as a baby, seeing a spider for the first time. How would you
feel? Curious, probably. Then imagine your parents walk in and scream, and
splat this spider," said Mr. Samson.
"From that point onwards, a file is created in your mind to be afraid
of the spider, and the more you practice this fear, the worse it gets.
"By going back through regressive hypnotherapy, by visiting the point
where the fear first began, you can see how irrational it is."
He believes this is where my own personal fear the fear of clowns stems
from.
Although it is not a phobia in that I will not freeze with fear upon
seeing a man with a big red smile painted on his face, the mere mention of
Stephen King's It (which concerns an evil clown) can turn me into a big
girl's blouse.
"Clowns and masks are a very common fear," explained Mr. Samson.
"Something might have happened to you at the circus, or a clown might have
shocked you at a shopping centre. I don't think clowns are sinister. I
think they're funny.
"It's these distressing moments stored in the subconscious that put
people on guard."
By the same logic, he believes, we can understand how phobias you and I
may consider extremely odd first came to light.
"I once had to deal with a woman who was afraid of the letter V'," he
said.
"It first started as a fear of vomiting, of someone being sick on her
or being sick herself.
"This then extended to the word vomit' and then, eventually, the sound
of the letter V'.
"It's a strong-sounding letter, so that's perhaps why. This was a
37-year-old woman. Under hypnosis, it became clear that someone had been
sick on her as a child, and it was a experience that shocked her so badly
it had stayed in her subconscious ever since."
Other unusual phobias include a man who had stood on top of the Empire
State Building and felt fine, yet when halfway up the Eiffel Tower
experienced a full-blown panic attack.
Spiders, clowns, the letter V and Bolsheviks. What do they all have in
common? Somebody, somewhere, is terrified of them. And a Mill Hill
Hypnotherapist believes he can help. HUGH CHRISTOPHER finds out more
His problem turned out to be not with heights, but the fear of being
pushed.
"As a child he had been sitting on his highchair when he was pushed
from the side and fell to ground.
"When he panicked on the Eiffel Tower he was walking up a spiral
staircase alongside other people. His fear was that he was to be pushed
from the side. At the Empire State Building how- ever he was standing
alone with ever he had space around him so had nothing to worry about."
Mr Samson first became interested in the human mind as a casino manager
in the early Eighties. He would watch respectable, reasonable and rational
professionals catch sight of a roulette wheel or poker table and see them
transform into money-crazed morons.
This loss of control fascinated him. He studied psychology to learn
more about irrational behavior, before eventually finding his niche in
hypnotherapy and phobias.
He now runs two clinics, one in Mill Hill and the other in central
London.
He claims to have a 90 per cent success rate with phobias, whether the
fear is familiar (agoraphobia, claustrophobia) or unusual (bolshephobia
the fear of Bolsheviks). Hypnophobia (the fear of being hypnotized) could
prove a problem however.
As for Mr. Samson himself, he claims to fear nothing.
"I was afraid of aero plane turbulence, but as part of my job you have
to undergo regular hypnosis yourself so now I have nothing to fear at
all," he said.
To contact David Samson phone 0800 634 0512 or log on to
www.avantihypnotherapy.com
3:38pm Thursday 13th January 2005
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