How is your phobia impacting your relationships? It all depends…on what that phobia is of…if you have a phobia about being committed in a relationship, there is a huge impact. If the phobia is of rattlesnakes and you live in an area, where there aren’t any…and you don’t plan on visiting a place where there are…well then….
What would your life look like…if that phobia was gone…think of all the possibilities….
How Do You Know it is a Phobia not Just a Fear?
There are fears and there are phobias. While it is normal and natural to have the odd fear, it is debilitating to have a phobia, for some people. A phobia is an exaggerated response of the fear system. A phobia is an amplified, magnified TERROR.
When you have a phobia, there is a compelling need to avoid that situation, thing or event. For example, if you have a fear of snakes, you would be able to see a picture of them on television, feel some revulsion and be able to shake if off quickly.
If you have a phobia (and of course, responses are greatly varied, in real life)…you might scream, hide your eyes, feel a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, start to shake, sweat, shiver…you will go to ANY lengths to avoid seeing one, hearing about one…in fact, the very word “snake” can be a problem…
Symptoms of a Phobia
- Sweating, perspiring a lot
- Vivid images
- Quickened breathing
- Unable to move
- Glassy eyes
- Terror
- Panic
- Overwhelm
Common phobias are snakes, spiders, elevators, flying, small dark spaces…and the list can go on…germs, moths, butterflies, water, dentists…you get the picture, right? Some people even have commitment phobias…yes, that’s right…it can be real, not just a catch phrase that people use when they don’t want to be in a relationship with you and then go off and marry someone else! : D
Is It Just Men Who Have Commitment Phobias?
No. While we might be more aware of men who are literally terrified to commit to any form of relationship, there are also women who have a commitment phobia. These people have casual relationships. They can date and have fun, as long as there are NO strings attached. For some, they are embodied by the perpetual bachelor image or that of the eternal spinster.
People who have a commitment phobia are literally terrifying themselves when they think of taking any step that can be seen as being a commitment. You might have had the experience of dating someone who dumped you as soon as there was the first inkling of commitment coming. If this is a pattern that happens to ALL of the people that they date, then the possibility exists that they have a commitment phobia. It would require a few questions to make a determination, though.
How Do Phobias Develop?
When I was four years old, we lived in Germany because my Dad was stationed there, as part of Canada’s peacekeeping mission. I needed to see a dentist and have a filling done on one of my teeth. ( As a side note, because of having undiagnosed celiac disease, my teeth have suffered but that’s another story).
The dentist decided that anesthetic was not necessary and as a result, drilled into that extremely painful and sensitive tooth with no freezing. Imagine…how that little girl felt…sitting there, not able to move, with a dentist drilling…yes…I developed a full blown phobia of the dentist…just a terrifying experience…that did turn into a full blown phobia…
So that is one way to develop a phobia. Another way is to IMAGINE an event so clearly that you thought you were there. When the movie "Jaws" was released in the seventies, a lot of people developed phobias of the water, just because they saw that movie…that is the power of the imagination…
What Can Get Rid of A Phobia (including a Commitment Phobia)
- Determine, first of all if it is a true phobia or a deep rooted fear
- Discover the underlying root cause
- Do a fast phobia cure (find a licensed NLP practitioner for this!), EFT, hynpnosis, timeline work
- Install a new strategy
For relationship based phobias, like commitment phobia, it can occur because of an extremely negative experience that had such deep emotional impact, it created the phobia in the person’s mind….
When you realize that all phobias are created first in the mind…whether it is the result of a real or imagined event…then you do have the power to change it. Yes, you might need the guidance of someone else…I believe that a lot of NLP techniques can be done by yourself…this is one that needs help since it deals with such a powerful emotional response…terror.
Phobias do impact relationships and especially the one you have with yourself, the most powerful relationship of all…if you have a phobia, seek out help…you really deserve to live a life free of it…don’t you?
“Drive your own life…you deserve to, don’t you?” Sherie Venner
P.S. Yes…I did get rid of my dental phobia…just like that!
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