In October 2006 JustBeWell.com team member Tina Taylor personally cured five severe spider phobias in 45 minutes on live TV (GMTV)

'A couple of weeks ago I was asked to help Paul McKenna for the GMTV Face your Fear week.  The plan was that I would head up a team of four hypnotherapists and go to Cardiff Castle in South Wales to help people with spider phobias; apparently there are more spider phobics in Cardiff than anywhere else in the country!  Another of my friends took a team up to Manchester to work with people who had height phobias.

All fears of spiders tend to operate in the mind in the same way

We met 14 people who had come along in the hope of being able to get over their fear of spiders, many of them not really convinced that this was going to happen.  Any although they all came from different areas of the UK, and had acquired their fear in different ways when they explained what it was exactly that they were afraid of, I could have been speaking to the same person.

A phobia of spiders is a learned experience

As we go through life we learn a great many things by experience, things we are not even aware of.  An unconscious learning, fear is one of these experiences.  A phobia is a demonstration of how quickly we learn an automatic response and each time the response is felt the fear is re-enforced.  These people had their fears for many years and were so good at being afraid of spiders that now just the thought was enough to create fear.  They imagined spiders running across the floor and attacking them, although they never did.  They thought of spiders attacking them when there were no spiders and they checked rooms “just in case”.  They hated the way they looked, the way that they moved.  And even though they knew that their fear was illogical they still couldn’t stop it.

The power of your imagination

From one experience the mind can generalise and attach fear.  Then the flight or fight response kicks in.  Your imagination is far more powerful than conscious will and the area of the brain that you use to imagine something is the same area that is used when experiencing things.  Which is why your nervous system can’t tell the difference between a real or vividly imagined experience.  For example, when you remember something, an experience thinking of it as if it were happening now, the feelings increase and have more emotional intensity; whereas if you look at something that had happened as if you watching a movie, seeing yourself having the experience you can remove any emotions attached to that memory.

One of the biggest tarantulas I had ever seen

At 7.20am GMTV had their shot of the ladies before we had done any work.  They were all lined up in the library and a spider was brought into the room.  Not your usual everyday house spider but one of the biggest tarantulas I have ever seen.  They all ran away and screamed.  No one at home watching could be in any doubt that these women were terrified of spiders

Now my colleagues and I had just under an hour to help these women overcome their fears.  We used a variety of techniques including the NLP Fast Phobia cure, Thought Field Therapy and hypnosis.

The way we represent reality to ourselves changes our feelings.  When we are afraid our muscles tense up – our mind and body are linked, with one always affecting the other.  Our thoughts and feelings also affect the biochemical releases in our body.  So you could say our state at any one time is a total of the neuro-biological processes that have taken place within us. 

When afraid your body releases certain chemicals which affect the way you feel and view the world.

Learning to change the way you think

Our feelings are linked to the way in which we remember (imagine) things.  By changing the way we look at things we can change the feelings that the situation evoked.  When thinking of something that scares us we remember the fear as if it were happening again now, and get the feelings completely.  By remembering the experience this way, “as if it were happening now” you re-experience and re-enforce the fear.
People scare themselves with their thoughts all the time.  It’s the way that you think of something – what you do in your mind that scares you.  Once you have learnt to be afraid of something, you always remember your fear, although you have probably not actually encountered “it”.  The fear comes from your thoughts of “what if”.  Changing your perspective – the way you look at, think of something will change the feelings. 

The techniques worked quickly, and worked effectively

The next time the spider was brought in there was a marked difference you could see just how calm everyone was.  Many of them now able to hold the spider; and one of the things that they all noticed is that rather than having a spider rushing onto their hand.  This very delicate creature, for spiders are indeed very delicate carrying their skeleton on the outside of their bodies, took his time and actually seemed to be thinking whether or not he wanted to be held by this person.  By the end of the program there was another shot in the library, this time all the women were lined up and the spider walked across all their hands whilst they were laughing and smiling.’

Tina works from Caterham in Surrey, and on Saturdays and Sundays from our Harley Street clinic in London.