This is a question that many people ask. Quite simply a phobia or phobic response can be defined as an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something, where the response is out of proportion to the trigger.

• Phobias are a learnt response and often learnt as a one trial learning also known as conditioned learning.

That means that if someone had a strong, powerful or overwhelming experience their brain makes a connection between that experience and what they were doing at the time, this becomes the trigger. So that the next time that person thinks about the trigger or is exposed to the trigger their brain automatically recalls the experience or emotional response from the last time they thought about the trigger or were exposed to it.

It becomes a learnt response very much like Pavlov's dog's where the dogs learnt to associate the sound of a bell ringing to being feed. Pavlov proved that he could ring the bell and the dogs would start salivating. Although people and dog's are different in many ways this is also how human brain's learn. Think about it, you hear a sound from the past or a piece of music, see something or smell something and a memory comes flooding back to you. Advertisers use this principle all the time, they create associations between their product and good feelings or maybe between a product and a successful person then link it to a piece of music so that when you hear the music or see the famous person from the advert you think of their product. There have been many jeans averts that use this principle linked to hit pop records. This is how alot of advertising works because this is how your brain works.

• The good news is that because phobias are a learnt response your brain will learn a new response to the trigger when it is done in the correct way.

It is true that people are born with only 2 fears - falling and loud noises -and all the others are learnt. We utilise the principle of how your brain works to teach your brain how to unlearn the phobia response. It makes complete common sense, utilising the way your brain learnt the phobia to unlearn it. And one of the many great advantages about doing this way is that it is not only very effective it 's also very fast.

Contact us from the web form here or by email or call 07768 877 719 and find out how we can help you to make your phobia a thing of the past.