Mesandy
01-06-2008, 05:13 PM
Most therapists that have worked with people with phobias will probably have noticed that these clients do seem to enjoy talking about them. This is possibly due to the lateralisation of the phobia to either one of the amygdala. For example, brain injured patients with damage to the left amygdala demonstrate difficulty recalling emotionally verbal material ("the story") and damage to the amygdala on the right impairs recall of 'emotional' pictures.
On a neurological level phobia's are similar in structure to PTSD (where sufferers definitely don't like to talk about there experience) but have a few important differences. In common with PTSD phobias can be a chronic and grossly disabling problem that have surprisingly quick and simple 'cure'. However, selling this quick and simple cure to a phobic can be a tricky affair as the phobic starts to attempt to convince the NLPerson that their phobia is far worse than the therapist could possibly imagine. The phobic will often claim that their phobia is the exception to the rule and will never be able to be cured and the therapist simply doesn't understand how serious this phobia really is.
This is the pattern that seems to occur with most phobics I have seen. Maybe that's just me.
For many NLPractitioners, the "fast phobia cure" and "double dissociation" are among the first techniques that are learned and have been well written up in many of the early books. However, it is also important to understand just what the technique is achieving on a psycho-neurological level, because not every "phobia" reported by a client follows the specific psychological structure that is prerequisite for the fast phobia cures to work.
For example, it is not unusual for people to report a "phobia" of "chatting up" members of the opposite sex (I am yet to meet a homosexual with this problem). And yet on enquiry the person will most likely report that they have never actually chatted anyone "up" - thus they will not possess the vital referential experience to qualify for phobia. This can prove to be a problem when the NLPerson attempts to apply the double dissociation technique - just what are they dissociating the client from?
Much of the problem with this lies in the practitioner playing the game of diagnostics without understanding the underlying psycho-neurological structure of just what they are dealing with. For example, consider the following reports from clients:
1. "I have a phobia of spiders ever since I was six when my bother put one down my shirt."
2. "I'm terrified of dogs because one bit me when I was 13 on my paper-round."
We can see the similarities to the way they are structured (cause and effect) in that both people have a definitive referential experience in order to let them know to be frightened. As a generaLIEsation, we can expect the submodalities of such memories to be quite vivid and, more often than not, associated. But what of the client who reports a phobia complete with referential experience who turns out to already be dissociated from their imprinting experience? For example, consider the following two examples:
1. "I'm terrified of flying, all I can think of is seeing myself in that plane as it bounces around in the turbulence telling myself that I'm going to crash."
2. "Whenever I think about going and talking to a girl, I see myself making a complete fool of myself."
With these two examples that may be reported as being a "phobia", we can see that not only the modalities are different (note the additional verbal auditory component), but they are dissociated and more importantly, anticipatory.
However, all too often it is the failure to spot the linguistic distinctions that leads to a failure to achieve a rapid resolution to the fear. For example, a simple phobia of spiders might have the same structure as a simple phobia of wasps or moths, but is highly unlikely to be in anyway related to the structure demonstrated by someone reporting "agoraphobia". Agoraphobia has an entirely different set of internal behaviours and will be covered in a different page on this site.
A simple phobia is also going to have a simple rule structure (see/hear wasp then freak out! - A/V-K) with a very simple and concise TOTE, whereas a flying phobia is likely to be far more complex. For example, it is a very simple experience for a bee to fly into one's ear canal or for a large spider to drop onto you from the ceiling whilst you sleep, but catching a ride in an airliner is a much more complex experience.
An important test for a phobia is too see if you can induce it. This will give you a lot of information about the way the person enters the phobic strategy and subsequently exits from it. Most of the time, this won't be difficult, since almost every phobic I have met has an expectation that the only way to have the phobia removed is for a therapist to throw a spider at them, or lock them in a room full of snakes in that favorite game of "flood therapy" or "systematic desensitization". Most clients enter the office already in the phobic state.
In absence of other knowledge, desensitization techniques kind of make sense. After all, the "successful phobic" manages to always avoid any situation whereby he may experience the threat. For example, one of the most common phobias I see in clinical practice is that of a fear of vomiting in public. This is by no means the most common phobia but given the extremes the person has to go through to avoid any situation where he may have to eat/drink in public etc, this phobia rapidly becomes an entire lifestyle. I am reminded of the story of the horse that is given a severe electric shock, via one of it's hoofs, two seconds after a bell rings. After a while, the horse gets fed up with this and naturally raises it's hoof every time it hears the bell. If the bell still rings but the electricity is disconnected, how will the horse ever discover that this is the case, unless he risks a further shock?
Whilst there is little doubt that most true phobias are a learned phenomena from an effective single trial learning (an "anchor"), a phobic response can be demonstrated in monkeys raised in zoo's when exposed to snakes for the first ever time. For those monkeys lacking this innate response, the reaction is soon cued by the behaviour of the other monkeys that are already reacting.
Recently in the city park, I was feeding a family of water voles by the pond when a small and curious child wandered over to see what I was doing. At that instant, a fatherly hand snatched said child away, as he exclaimed, "Euch! RATS!!!" in a disgusted tone, thus cueing the child to cry and become frightened.
A future client in the making!
What is curious is that in the UK, where toxic spiders and snakes are exceptionally rare, phobias of snakes and spiders are very common and yet phobias of far more commonly dangerous objects such as cars and politicians are virtually unheard of. Small creeping hairy things and long thing slithery things appear to form a blueprint in the genetic ability for phobia, although others can be learned or induced.
( this post is big , due to that i have posted it in two parts)
thanks,
mesandy:) .
On a neurological level phobia's are similar in structure to PTSD (where sufferers definitely don't like to talk about there experience) but have a few important differences. In common with PTSD phobias can be a chronic and grossly disabling problem that have surprisingly quick and simple 'cure'. However, selling this quick and simple cure to a phobic can be a tricky affair as the phobic starts to attempt to convince the NLPerson that their phobia is far worse than the therapist could possibly imagine. The phobic will often claim that their phobia is the exception to the rule and will never be able to be cured and the therapist simply doesn't understand how serious this phobia really is.
This is the pattern that seems to occur with most phobics I have seen. Maybe that's just me.
For many NLPractitioners, the "fast phobia cure" and "double dissociation" are among the first techniques that are learned and have been well written up in many of the early books. However, it is also important to understand just what the technique is achieving on a psycho-neurological level, because not every "phobia" reported by a client follows the specific psychological structure that is prerequisite for the fast phobia cures to work.
For example, it is not unusual for people to report a "phobia" of "chatting up" members of the opposite sex (I am yet to meet a homosexual with this problem). And yet on enquiry the person will most likely report that they have never actually chatted anyone "up" - thus they will not possess the vital referential experience to qualify for phobia. This can prove to be a problem when the NLPerson attempts to apply the double dissociation technique - just what are they dissociating the client from?
Much of the problem with this lies in the practitioner playing the game of diagnostics without understanding the underlying psycho-neurological structure of just what they are dealing with. For example, consider the following reports from clients:
1. "I have a phobia of spiders ever since I was six when my bother put one down my shirt."
2. "I'm terrified of dogs because one bit me when I was 13 on my paper-round."
We can see the similarities to the way they are structured (cause and effect) in that both people have a definitive referential experience in order to let them know to be frightened. As a generaLIEsation, we can expect the submodalities of such memories to be quite vivid and, more often than not, associated. But what of the client who reports a phobia complete with referential experience who turns out to already be dissociated from their imprinting experience? For example, consider the following two examples:
1. "I'm terrified of flying, all I can think of is seeing myself in that plane as it bounces around in the turbulence telling myself that I'm going to crash."
2. "Whenever I think about going and talking to a girl, I see myself making a complete fool of myself."
With these two examples that may be reported as being a "phobia", we can see that not only the modalities are different (note the additional verbal auditory component), but they are dissociated and more importantly, anticipatory.
However, all too often it is the failure to spot the linguistic distinctions that leads to a failure to achieve a rapid resolution to the fear. For example, a simple phobia of spiders might have the same structure as a simple phobia of wasps or moths, but is highly unlikely to be in anyway related to the structure demonstrated by someone reporting "agoraphobia". Agoraphobia has an entirely different set of internal behaviours and will be covered in a different page on this site.
A simple phobia is also going to have a simple rule structure (see/hear wasp then freak out! - A/V-K) with a very simple and concise TOTE, whereas a flying phobia is likely to be far more complex. For example, it is a very simple experience for a bee to fly into one's ear canal or for a large spider to drop onto you from the ceiling whilst you sleep, but catching a ride in an airliner is a much more complex experience.
An important test for a phobia is too see if you can induce it. This will give you a lot of information about the way the person enters the phobic strategy and subsequently exits from it. Most of the time, this won't be difficult, since almost every phobic I have met has an expectation that the only way to have the phobia removed is for a therapist to throw a spider at them, or lock them in a room full of snakes in that favorite game of "flood therapy" or "systematic desensitization". Most clients enter the office already in the phobic state.
In absence of other knowledge, desensitization techniques kind of make sense. After all, the "successful phobic" manages to always avoid any situation whereby he may experience the threat. For example, one of the most common phobias I see in clinical practice is that of a fear of vomiting in public. This is by no means the most common phobia but given the extremes the person has to go through to avoid any situation where he may have to eat/drink in public etc, this phobia rapidly becomes an entire lifestyle. I am reminded of the story of the horse that is given a severe electric shock, via one of it's hoofs, two seconds after a bell rings. After a while, the horse gets fed up with this and naturally raises it's hoof every time it hears the bell. If the bell still rings but the electricity is disconnected, how will the horse ever discover that this is the case, unless he risks a further shock?
Whilst there is little doubt that most true phobias are a learned phenomena from an effective single trial learning (an "anchor"), a phobic response can be demonstrated in monkeys raised in zoo's when exposed to snakes for the first ever time. For those monkeys lacking this innate response, the reaction is soon cued by the behaviour of the other monkeys that are already reacting.
Recently in the city park, I was feeding a family of water voles by the pond when a small and curious child wandered over to see what I was doing. At that instant, a fatherly hand snatched said child away, as he exclaimed, "Euch! RATS!!!" in a disgusted tone, thus cueing the child to cry and become frightened.
A future client in the making!
What is curious is that in the UK, where toxic spiders and snakes are exceptionally rare, phobias of snakes and spiders are very common and yet phobias of far more commonly dangerous objects such as cars and politicians are virtually unheard of. Small creeping hairy things and long thing slithery things appear to form a blueprint in the genetic ability for phobia, although others can be learned or induced.
( this post is big , due to that i have posted it in two parts)
thanks,
mesandy:) .