People with claustrophobia experience fears related to enclosed spaces or areas where it may be impossible to exit quickly, such as airplanes, elevators or trains. Some people even feel claustrophobic inside MRI scanning machines. Because of their fear, people with claustrophobia tend to avoid small areas. Sufferers also tend to sit close to exitways or along the sides of a room, versus approaching the center. Claustrophobic people frequently have panic attacks when they start to feel "stuck" or closed in. For some people, being in a tight area is as horrifying as being buried alive.
Suffering an anxiety attack in a crowded area can be an alarming time for claustrophobic people and people surrounding them. At the moment when a person's claustrophobia is triggered, they may experience panic attacks, difficulty breathing, nausea, passing out, and other, often intense, reactions. One can develop claustrophobia at any age or because of a traumatic incident, but it often arises during childhood.
The disorder can be aggravated by many different situations, which may be different between individuals. For instance, some claustrophobic people might only feel nervous while riding an elevator, while others find large crowds trigger their condition. Regardless of the specific situation, claustrophobia and other phobias often negatively affect people's daily lives and personal satisfaction. Phobia sufferers frequently become avoidant and enjoy a decreased quality of life as they arrange their activities around their phobia.
For many people, the fear of embarrassment or humiliation over their phobia is as debilitating as the the phobic condition itself. Some phobia sufferers know that their fears are overblown and irrational, but cannot seem to keep their composure. The reason for this is because phobias arise from deep within the unconscious mind, which no amount of conscious willpower can fully control. This makes controlling phobias especially challenging.
Claustrophobia can be cured with anti-anxiety drugs or therapy. Hypnosis therapy is an excellent, non-invasive, safe type of therapy with no harmful side effects. It works by pinpointing the underlying causes of fear in the unconscious mind to quickly cure a phobia. Specifically, a program that has Ericksonian hypnosis therapy techniques and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) can be used to cure a phobia. This revolutionary program uses numerous techniques to help people overcome their phobias.
The first step in curing a phobia is helping the sufferer become at ease and stress-free. Hypnosis therapy has traditionally been used as a type of stress-relief therapy, to help people clear their minds and calm down.
Conventional hypnosis techniques have made use of direct, post-hypnotic suggestions to help relieve phobias. The disadvantage of the direct approach is that the conscious mind tends to resist being simply "told" how to respond. Many people throw up mental barriers and disregard suggestions. In modern days, both children and adults are especially likely to ignore direct suggestions because we are mostly independent people who question everything.
The basis of hypnosis is deep relaxation. Once set the calm state, instead of using direct post-hypnotic suggestions, a different approach known as systematic desensitization can often help eliminate a phobia using visual images.
Ericksonian hypnosis therapy techniques use a more refined approach than traditional hypnotherapy. It utilizies indirect suggestions concealed in fascinating stories and metaphors to interest the unconscious mind and convince it to adopt a better, phobia-free thought process. Because indirect suggestions do not need to be specifically worded to a single phobia like direct suggestions do, a single good Ericksonian hypnotic therapy program can work to successfully treat any phobia or even more than one phobia.
NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is an innovative type of therapy that several highly trained hypnotherapists have adopted. The best NLP technique for curing a phobia is known as the Visual - Kinesthetic Disassociation, also called V/K. The V/K is known as the one session phobia cure, and with good reason. Irrational or anxiety reactions (attacks) occur because traumatic emotions are associated with and triggered by mental images. With the V/K, the stressful emotions are disconnected from the mental images - often in one quick session, and the fear is virtually cured.
People suffering from claustrophobia can attain rapid relief using hypnosis therapy. The use of Ericksonian hypnosis therapy and NLP techniques can help anyone escape their fears. Hypnotic therapy has helped countless people feel comfortable and secure doing activities where earlier, they would have suffered a breakdown. Hypnotherapy techniques have provided incredible benefits for sufferers of phobias and continue to change lives all the time.
Alan B. Densky, CH has created many hypnosis methods for the treatment of symptoms of anxiety attacks based on NLP and Ericksonian hypnotism. Learn more at his Neuro-VISION hypnotherapy CDs website using his Free research index and video research library.