Fear of Travel/Agoraphobia
With family and friends so often spread around the globe and the need to travel for work or family leisure, business and holiday travel can become torture for someone who's subconscious mind has decided that it will no longer co-operate with what it finds to be an increasingly stressful activity.
For most of us travel is an everyday necessity. Going to work, going to the shops, taking holidays and going on business trips. In a single week we can have ridden a bike, journeyed by bus, travelled by train, crossed a river by ferry and been on a plane. For most people, all these activities are done almost without thought.
Some, however, find that travelling makes them increasingly worried and anxious. They fret about leaving home, having to travel and leave family and friends behind, go into new and frightening places to meet strangers and do new things. They don't sleep, feel anxious and afraid all the time, dreading the time when they have to leave home. They begin to make excuses not to travel, send other people on journeys they should do themselves, begin to fein illnesses to avoid travel and eventually, begin to withdrawn into themselves. From being able to fly to Hong Kong, they find themselves not being able to travel outside their own country, then their own town and then beyond their own street and then their own front door. They become prisoners of their own subconscious mind and its fears and anxieties.
Many people who are agoraphobic are strong characters who through trauma, high levels of stress, physical and/or mental exhaustion or sudden illness find their mental resources at an extremely low ebb. In a desperate act of self-protection, their subconscious mind makes a decision for itself; it decides to take control, to protect the individual from all these stresses and strains. And it does it by forcing the indivual to withdraw from the world. By stopping the travelling and all the contact with the people who have created the unbearable stress and exhaustion. It uses overwhelming fear as its primary means of preventing the individual being stressed by the outside world.
How Hypnotherapy Can Help
Usually, by the time an agoraphobic realised that they are suffering from this debilitating illness, it has already persisted for some time; starting gradually and then tightening like a noose. Treatment with anti-depressants and tranquillisers can help restore a degree of functionality to allow the suffer to work and travel short distances. However, they do not address the root cause of the problem, which is a massive loss of self-confidence in the ability to cope with the outside world and a dread fear of being away from the safety of home and family.
There is no fast cure for agoraphobia, but it can be brought under control and functionality restored without needing long-term reliance on medications. As hypnotherapy is a complementary form of healthcare, it can work in tandem with medications, gradually increasing self-confidence, encouraging exploration of the world, enhancing trust and engagement until the sufferer feels confident enough to ask their GP if they could begin to reduce their reliance on drugs.
I have a particular interest in working with agoraphobics and I do home visits as well as making tailor-made CD's so that therapy can continue between sessions.
Work has to be done at the client's own pace. Agoraphobics are usually very strong minded individuals and so they do a huge amount of work themselves to keep practicing all they are taught. But they also need to be reminded that they should not push too far too fast; exposure to too much stress will push them backwards again. They have to learn to "feel the fear but do it anyway," to learn coping strategies, reinforced by hypnosis, and the practical things they can do to help reconnect their subconscious mind with the world and allow it to regain its lost equilibrium.
If you would like to discuss any of the issues above and how I could help with your particular problem please give me a call for a free, no obligation, consultation.
Keith Jefford DCH, DHP, GQHP, PSTEC Advanced
T: 01708 224698M: 07970 111657
