| Here's how phobias work. There are two parts to | | | | to have all the details to know if something is |
| your mind - one that thinks, and one that feels. The | | | | dangerous. This is the basis of a phobia: a fear |
| thinking part is the conscious, rational mind that you | | | | response attached to something that was present in |
| are using now as you read this. The feeling part is | | | | the original trauma. The response is terror, shaking, |
| the unconscious, emotional mind. It takes care of | | | | sweating, heart pounding etc. And because of the |
| automatic tasks like regulating the heart, controlling | | | | sloppy pattern-matching it can get stuck to literally |
| pain and managing our instincts. It's the unconscious | | | | anything - animal, mineral or vegetable. It may not |
| mind that is programmed to act instinctively in times | | | | even be glued to the thing that caused the trauma. |
| of danger. It reacts very fast - making you run or | | | | So a child attacked in a pram by a dog may develop |
| fight - rather than allowing your thinking mind to | | | | a phobia of prams rather than of dogs. It is because |
| philosophize while you are attacked by a tiger. This | | | | phobias are created in this way, by our natural |
| has great survival value. The unconscious mind is also | | | | psycho-neurology, that they are so common. It's the |
| a very fast learner. The same emergency route that | | | | way we are wired. Approximately 10% of people |
| can bypass the rational mind in times of danger can | | | | have a phobia. It's a very human thing. And it's |
| also stamp strong emotional experiences (traumatic | | | | precisely because they are created by the |
| ones) in the unconscious mind. This makes | | | | unconscious mind that they seem so irrational. Of |
| evolutionary sense - it ensures that we have vivid | | | | course they are - the rational thinking brain hasn't had |
| imprints of the things that threaten us. And just as | | | | a chance to go to work on them. Many traditional |
| we have two minds, so we have two memory | | | | phobia treatments, including drugs, attempt to deal |
| systems: one for the facts and one for the emotions | | | | with the phobia by calming things down after this |
| that may or may not go with those facts. | | | | response pattern has triggered. They treat the |
| Sometimes, when a person experiences a very | | | | symptoms, not the cause. To treat the cause, this |
| traumatic event, the highly emotional memory of the | | | | trapped traumatic memory has to be turned into, and |
| event becomes trapped - locked in the emotional | | | | saved as, an ordinary unemotional memory of a past |
| brain - in an area called the amygdala which is the | | | | event. The emotional tag, the terror response, needs |
| emotional storehouse. There is no chance for the | | | | to be unstuck from that object or situation. This is |
| rational mind to process it and save it as an ordinary, | | | | exactly what a remarkable therapy called the Fast |
| non-threatening memory in factual storage (in the | | | | Phobia Cure does. It allows the phobia sufferer to |
| hippocampus). Like the memory of what you did last | | | | review the traumatic event or memory from a calm |
| weekend. Instead, the emotional brain holds onto this | | | | and dissociated, or disconnected, state. The rational |
| unprocessed reaction pattern because it thinks it | | | | mind can then do its work in turning the memory into |
| needs it for survival. And it will trigger it whenever | | | | an ordinary, neutral, non-threatening one. And store it |
| you encounter a situation or object that is anything | | | | in factual memory where it should have been to start |
| like the original trauma. It doesn't have to be a | | | | with. This happens very quickly because the mind |
| precise match. This is pure survival again. You only | | | | learns fast. It learns the fear response quickly and it |
| need to see part of a tiger through the bushes for | | | | learns (or relearns) the neutral response just as |
| the fear reaction to kick in again - for the "fight or | | | | quickly. And when that happens the phobia is gone. |
| flight" response to trigger - you don't have to wait | | | | Guy Baglow is a leading phobia specialist and founder |
| until you see the whole tiger or identify it exactly as | | | | of the mindspa phobia clinic ( ), the UK's leading |
| the tiger that attacked you before. In fact, it | | | | specialist private phobia clinic in Harley Street - a |
| probably only has to be something orange and black | | | | world centre of healthcare excellence in London. An |
| moving through the bushes. This is why the pattern | | | | online clinic ( ) has downloadable treatments including |
| matching process is necessarily approximate, or | | | | the Fast Phobia Cure. |
| sloppy. You err on the side of safety. You don't have | | | | |