Inside a Session: Resetting the Alarm

In "How a Phobia Is Born" (10 August) I promised to take you inside a session. People often expect drama — perhaps a swinging watch, perhaps being marched toward the thing they dread. The reality is far gentler, and I'd argue that gentleness is exactly why it works.

We start by talking. I want to understand your particular alarm: what sets it off, what it feels like, what it has cost you. No two phobias are quite alike, even when they share a name. One person's flying phobia is really about turbulence; another's is about being unable to leave; a third's is about handing over control. The work has to fit the phobia, not the label.

Then comes hypnosis itself, which is nothing more mysterious than a state of settled, focused attention — rather like being absorbed in a good book, but with your attention turned inward. You remain aware. You remain in charge. Clients on screens all over the world are often surprised to find they could open their eyes and reach for their tea at any moment. They simply don't want to — it's far too comfortable to interrupt.

And if hypnosis is itself the thing that gives you pause — you're in good company. That unease is usually built from films and stage shows rather than from anything that happens in a session. Nobody is put under. Nobody is made to do or say anything. You'd be sitting in your own chair with your eyes closed, hearing every word, usually remembering it all afterwards, and free to stop the moment you chose to.

In that settled state, something rather useful becomes possible. You can look at the thing you're frightened of — properly look at it — while your body stays completely relaxed and you know, the whole time, that you're perfectly safe.

That combination is the heart of the work, and it's worth pausing on, because in ordinary life it simply isn't available to you. Out in the world, the trigger and the alarm arrive together. The moment the needle appears, or the plane door closes, the body is already off and running: heart going, chest tight, every instinct shouting at you to get out. There's no space in which to examine anything. You're too busy coping.

Hypnosis creates that space. We might bring the trigger to mind gently, at whatever distance feels comfortable — and distance is the point here. Some clients prefer to watch the scene as though it were happening on a screen across the room, with themselves in the audience rather than in the picture. Others prefer it smaller still, or further away, or in black and white. You choose. And if it ever gets uncomfortable, you can simply let it go and come back — nothing is forced, and nothing happens without your consent.

So you look. Calmly, from a safe seat, sometimes with a flicker of curiosity: so that's what my mind does with this. And all the while your shoulders stay loose, your breathing stays easy, your hands stay still in your lap.

Now think about what your brain is being shown. For years it has been utterly certain that this trigger and total emergency belong together — that one always brings the other. Here, for the first time, it gets the trigger without the emergency. The alarm is presented with evidence that contradicts everything it thought it knew: this is here, and I am calm, and I am safe.

That's not a trick, and it isn't positive thinking. It's the brain doing what brains do — updating a conclusion when the evidence no longer supports it. What it needed was a chance to notice, and panic never provides one.

Notice, too, what we don't do. We never flood you. You aren't marched up to the thing you dread and made to endure it until the panic burns itself out. That approach can work, but it's gruelling, and a good many people quite reasonably decline it.

Each time that pairing happens — old trigger, genuine calm — the automatic panic response loosens its grip a little more. For some people the shift is quick and dramatic; for others it builds over a few sessions. Either way, the change tends to feel less like a battle won and more like a weight quietly set down.

Next week, in "When the Phobia Belongs to Someone You Love" (24 August), I'll turn things around and look at the phobia that isn't yours — how to help a child, a partner, or a friend who's struggling, without accidentally making things worse.

If you would like to talk through any of this, my contact details are below.

Warmly, Denise