WHAT IS A PHOBIA?
AND WHY DO WE HAVE PHOBIAS ? 

by Ienke Keijzer

What is a phobia ?

And why do we have phobias?

By Ienke Keijzer

• Do you have a phobia or do you suffer from unexplainable anxiety?
• Are you sometimes overwhelmed by emotional reactions and do you suffer from it?
• Do you get angry a bit too often?
• Are you overly jealous?
• Do your hands get wet when you have to drive on the highway or speak in public? 
• Do you liquefy at the sight of blood? Do you avoid hospitals?
• Can’t you help overreacting like you do when your phobia is triggered?

     Many people suffer from phobias and other excessive emotional reactivities. I would even say, almost everybody knows of situations in which he or she overreacts emotionally. Panic and anxiety are part of many, many lives and make many people suffer.

     Over 500 phobias have been listed, and you can here find a, not exhaustive, list of phobias and their more complicated names.

But what exactly is a phobia? And why do we suffer from phobias and disproportionate emotional reactions?

Are we obliged to live with them?

     To start with the good news, the answer to this last question is NO. We are not obliged to suffer from phobias, we are not obliged to live with them. It is indeed possible to put an end to all the excessive emotional reactivities we might suffer from. A “normal” emotional reactivity is possible for each and everyone. And what if I told you that, on top of that, it is easy to achieve?

     But let’s start at the beginning.

WHAT IS A PHOBIA?

In two words, we can say that a phobia
     

• is an excessive emotional reaction triggered by a situation that doesn't require such an emotional reactivity
• is emotionally over- or underreacting to a rather normal situation
• causes suffering and makes life more difficult than it is, than it is supposed to be, than it could and should be
• prevents us from living the life that we want to live.

     Unless you find yourself facing a huge, venomous spider that could really kill you, which is quite rare in most countries in the world, there is no real reason to be afraid of such a small animal in your livingroom. There is no reason to start screaming and jumping on chairs at the sight of one. And yet!

     There are all kinds of phobias. You probably all know the phobia of spiders (arachnophobia), the blood phobia (hematophobia), the school phobia, the phobia of snakes, the phobia of vomiting, the phobia of snakes or birds, the phobia of heights or of voids, … More than 500 phobias have been listed !

     But there is also the fear of speaking in public, excessive shyness, unhealthy jealousy, anxiety and panic attacks, fear of success, hypersensitivity to stress, fear of failure, procrastination, and much, much more ... actually almost anything that is about excessive emotional reactions.

     Most people imagine they know why they have their phobia. They have had a bad experience, seen something somewhere one day (for real or on TV), heard something, inherited it. Whatever the reason, they rationally explain that their phobia is because of this or that reason. But what if I told you that 99% of the time this is NOT the reason and that this reason is not what actually triggers the emotional overreacting?

     It all comes down to an encoding in the brain. A wrongly wired neuronal connection.
Any negative emotional reactivity which is excessive and disproportionate in a certain situation, any emotional overreacting which is triggered automatically in certain situations, any situation "forcing" us to emotionally overreact, to react in a way that is too much or too little, is a sign of an encoding in the brain that needs to be reprogrammed, that can be reprogrammed.

SO, WHY DO WE HAVE PHOBIAS?

     We could say that it all starts with a bug in the brain.

     To understand what happens when a phobia is triggered, it is important to understand what happens in the brain at that very moment. I will guide you through the process and hope that at the end of the article you will understand that our emotional overreacting, our phobias, are caused by a default in the brain that can easily be reprogrammed.

ENCODING OF A TRAUMA IN THE BRAIN

     Everything we experience  is encoded in our brain in the form of sensorial perceptions. These perceptions are visual (images), auditory (sounds), kinesthetic (sensations), olfactory (smell) and/or gustatory (taste). In NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming), these sensorial perceptions are known under the acronym of VAKOG. Everything related to the event is encoded, every single detail, and even all the details we don’t perceive consciously. Our brain thus contains countless well stored VAKOG codes. Encodings in bits and pieces. So far all is good.

     Then, at the beginning of our life - in intrauterine, during birth and in our youngest childhood up to our 3, 4, 5 years old - we all experience events that we perceive as traumatic.

     These are not necessarily traumatic events such as car accidents, drownings or other dramas we could imagine when we mention the word trauma. It is about events that the foetus, the baby or the infant experiences as traumatic, as a confrontation with its own death. The child, at these moments, “thinks” something like “Help, I'm going to die”.

     The traumatic events we are speaking about are, for example, events such as when a baby lacks oxygen in his mother's uterus, an exterior discomfort causing sensations that are intense and hard to cope with for a foetus, a foetus losing a twin brother or sister that decomposes in the amniotic liquid or is medically evacuated, a young child that falls on his head and loses consciousness for a split second, or that slips in the bath tub or the swimming pool and has his head under water for a short moment, a child having difficulties breathing at night with his face on the pillow or mattress, and so on.

     There are hundreds, if not thousands of experiences a child may consider traumatic. Often, these are events where the child experiences a short loss of consciousness, even if very briefly, just a fraction of a second. But it could be anything. What happens in such a moment is very distressing and intense for the child.

     When we experience an event as traumatic, the encoding of the brain contains this sensation of dying and thus the negative emotional charge of the “Help, I'm going to die” that the foetus or infant has experienced. The encoding includes the negative emotional charge. And it is this encoded negative emotional charge that might later trigger our phobias and other emotional overreacting.

CATHARSIS – A NATURAL EMOTIONAL CLEANSING PROCESS

     Fortunately for us, not all these events will cause us to react with excessive emotional reactivities or phobias. Life would be unliveable. Normally, a natural emotional cleansing process, called the catharsis, kicks in automatically to cleanse the events of their negative emotional charge before storing the encodings in our memory.

     Sometimes, however, this natural emotional cleansing process gets stuck and doesn’t do its job (properly). The traumatic event then keeps its negative emotional charge which will, as of then, work as an alarm button, as we will see shortly.

THE BRAIN COMPARES AND LOOKS FOR SIMILARITIES

     Our brain works by comparison. Automatically and at an enormous speed, it looks for links, 24/7. It looks for links between what we experience, see, hear and feel, and what we have already lived, seen, heard, and felt.

     If, one day, later in life, the brain detects a similarity between the encoding of a present situation and the encoding of a traumatic event recorded with a negative emotional charge, it notices the presence of the alarm button.

THE SURVIVAL BRAIN TAKES OVER

     When the brain detects a similarity, it imagines that the traumatic event might be taking place again and that it is in danger, that  it might die again.

     To prevent this, it triggers the alarm button, thus automatically disconnecting the logical brain. Our survival instinct takes over and the logical brain doesn't have anything to say anymore. The survival instinct makes sure that we react in a way that is supposed to assure our life and survival, it forces us into an emotional response that is disproportionate to what we are experiencing in the present situation.

     For example, although we know that this little spider isn't going to kill us, the moment we see one the brain might notice a similarity with the encoding of a traumatic event that hasn’t been cleansed. It imagines the current event is linked to a danger for us, as was the first event. It freaks out and bypasses the logic brain. We automatically start screaming and jumping on chairs, or otherwise overreacting. We automatically start to overreact emotionally. For the brain, it is about our survival.

     It is therefore important to understand that it is NOT this little spider, the height, the elevator, the water, or whatever else, that triggers our emotional hyperreactivity or phobia. It is the recall of a past event that is triggered. And all this is an automatic process of the brain, we can’t help overreacting like we do.

     So, as we now understand what happens in the brain when our phobia is triggered, it is time to ask the question if we can get rid of a phobia. And the answer is: YES, definitely!

HOW TO GET RID OF A PHOBIA?

     It is possible to put an end to all excessive emotional reactivities and phobias. We can re-encode the original traumatic event without a negative emotional charge and thus deactivate the alarm button. I am specialized in the NEMO emotional cleansing technique, and I form therapists and coaches to use NEMO with their clients and patients. In one session a lifelong phobia can be done with.

     The NEMO emotional cleansing takes place at the level of the reptilian brain, at the level of our survival instinct, and it is accessed through our physical sensations. There is no need to believe anything in particular, there is just an easy protocol to put follow and to let the sensations do the cleansing work. The neuronal connections then automatically reprogram themselves. End of phobia. End of story.

PUT THE REGULATOR BACK AT ITS NORMAL PLACE

     I am sometimes asked if after the emotional cleansing there will be no more emotions at all. Of course not! The emotional cleansing is not about getting rid of emotions. Emotions are part of us, and very important for that matter. It wouldn't be OK if we could get rid of them!

     The emotional cleansing comes down to a regulator reset. Instead of being blocked at a too high or too low level, it is put back at the right position from where we can react to what is happening in life with emotions, but without excessive and disproportionate emotions that take over control way too often, without our phobia being triggered. The sight, or even the thought of a little spider will no longer trigger a panic attack. A very dangerous big spider, however, will still make us go into survival mode to guarantee our safety.

     Emotions are natural and important. Excessive and disproportionate emotions are not.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE NEMO EMOTIONAL CLEANSING? 

     To learn more about why we have phobias, and to fully understand the NEMO emotional cleansing technique, I have written the book "NEMO Emotional Cleansing – How to put an end to excessive emotional reactivities and phobias" (2017)

"A very clear, complete and easy to read book and the technique is easy to put into practice.

I also like the transcript of a complete NEMO session at the end of the book.

It has allowed me to really get an idea of the NEMO emotional cleansing technique.

And even if the technique at first seemed too good to be true, I have tested it several times now and the results are great!

I'm not afraid of snakes anymore, and yet it was a really limiting phobia.”

Nathalie – France

     I hope this article has been of use for you. Feel free to share your experience(s) with the NEMO emotional cleansing technique, whether you are a client or a therapist. It is always a pleasure to hear from you!

Ienke Keijzer

Neuro Psycho Practitioner - Trainer of therapists and coaches - Author
Grandis Ose