You’re surrounded by shadows in a room with the walls
closing in. You can hear mumbles of concerned voices around you, everything
becomes blurred and you can’t see anyone. The voices fade and you concentrate
on the hiss of your breathing, you can’t control it, it fastens and your body
starts to jolt in rhythm with the irregular breath. Your throat becomes sharp
and it becomes harder to breath. Now you’re holding yourself, alone, hearing
and seeing nothing but emptiness and you start to rock back and forth, shaking
and still crying with shock. You’re not alone, you just can’t control yourself
or calm yourself down enough to focus on anything else but the one thing that
made you collapse into a heap of despair.
This is the debilitating effect of a phobia; although they
may all be different they affect everyone in the same way. That feeling of distress,
panic and despair can be caused by anything: snakes, water, sick, spiders, wind
or perhaps travelling. And even the strangest of fears such as buttons are not
unheard of. In fact many ‘normal’ people go through these emotions on a daily
basis.
19 year-old Harriet Wollaston knows what it is like to have
a phobia, having to lock fear away in the back of her mind, finding it
extremely traumatising having to travel to and from work daily via the train.
After seeing, first hand, someone attempt suicide when jumping in front of a
train almost seven years ago.
“I have to face my fear twice a day, every single day
and it never gets any easier.”
Not only is the daunting factor of getting on a train enough
for Harriet; the lack of space on a train at rush hour means she also suffers
from claustrophobia,
“If I feel like I'm getting too panicked I have to dig
my nails into my palms because it's really difficult to avoid the fear,
sometimes so hard that they cut and bleed.”
To the average person this may seem out of the
ordinary, but Cognitive Behavior Therapist (CBT) Paul Blenkiron states that
fears, “cannot be explained or rationalized.” A sufferer of fear or anxiety thinks
that there are no solutions and that no one understands, and that’s what they
keep telling themselves. But fear is a norm, because “it is a natural human
reaction to danger. It helps us to survive.”
For the older generation, what they may fear and the
anxiety paired with that may continue into later life, making it harder to
manage, even though they have had many years to face it.
Jan Bates still trembles at the thought of slimy and scaly
creatures despite living with her phobia for sixty years. She recalls: “as a small child my uncle told me to close my eyes and hold my hand out,
I thought it was sweeties that he was presenting to me, but it was a worm.
At that stage it was very near to my mouth, and from that moment on I've been
petrified.”
Now her fear has grown worse. “I don't
cope well at all. I still check my bed every night for fear of snakes at
the bottom of the bed.”
When fear continually
interferes with daily life and is not dealt with it can develop into a much
rarer case of a ‘complex phobia’, named complex because
these are more pervasive and underline lots of other specific phobias.
Another problem with not acknowledging your fear is that it could lead to an anticipatory
anxiety which involves becoming nervous ahead of time, constantly worrying
about coming into contact with or being in the same place or situation with your
phobia.
This is why it is “important to face
that situation very soon after treatment and get the real live feedback that
actually you can face it and deal with it,” according to renowned
hypnotherapist Lynda Hudson.
In her line of work, Lynda comes across the most
common terrors as well as some unheard of anxieties and molds the recipient’s
early thoughts associated with such fear to ‘rewind the movie’.
“You have to find a method to break the original
association between the originating object, situation etc. and the fear
response.”
For both Dr Blenkiron and L Hudson a fear is
recognized by the person affected as being a problem, one that interferes with
their daily life and in order for them to overcome such a problem they must
firstly address it.
“I don't think people talk about them
enough. It’s such an inwards thing.” Jan understands the problem with phobias
being so personal, as no one wants to feel insecure about their flaws. She also
states “I don't think my fear is normal at all but I think everyone has a fear
of something.”
Phobias are the most common type of anxiety disorder,
in the UK an estimated 10 million people are affected by their phobias in daily
situations. Phobias can affect anyone, regardless of age, sex and social
background. There’s no reason to be afraid of addressing your fear especially when over 15% of the UK suffers.
Take it upon yourself to accept your fear it may be a
scar but it makes everyone who they are.
“I know that my fear is irrational and I wish I didn't
have it, but it's a part of me and I have to try to accept that.”
You are
not alone.
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