Mesandy
01-06-2008, 05:15 PM
Neurologically speaking, there are two primary pathways that mediate the phobic response. Rather inevitably, both these pathways lead the information into the amygdala, a region discussed elsewhere in this site. Pathway one takes input visual information to the visual cortex where the visual recognition process takes place. Once categorized as dog/snake/threat, information about this category is retrieved from the hippocampus before being passed to the amygdala.
Pathway 1: Visual Input - Thalamus (relay station) - Visual cortex (recognition) - Hippocampus ("Oh Shit!") - Amygdala ("Panic!!!!!!!")
The second pathway is more direct and involves activation of the "fight or flight" system mediated by the hypothalamus and triggers the physiological reactions that occur with true phobia via the sympathetic nervous system.
Pathway 2: Visual input - Thalamus (relay station) - hypothalamus - amygdala
What is curious for many people is just how such severe reactions can be produced by seemingly innocuous stimuli. For example, in my practice, as well as the usual suspects I have seen people with a phobia's of wings (any wing, sanitary towel, bird, plane, bee, etc), a phobia of jelly pudding, a phobia of bare feet; and, my all time favorite - a man who complained that his life was "utterly ruined" by a phobia of "ships in a bottle" (a phobia that was, bizarrely, shared by his sister, mother and stepfather). Psychiatry likes to speak of genetic predisposition to phobia, but what I have often been curious about is that people rarely report ever having more than one phobia. They often can have a collection of fears, but rarely ever possess more than a single true phobia at any one time.
One fun thing that I like to do to demonstrate submodalities is to switch phobias around. For example, one lady brought to me by a psychiatrist for a "pathological phobia of spiders" (!!!??) sat in my office hyperventilating whilst the psychiatrist told me how resistant she was (despite the ridiculous quantity of psychiatric drugs in her system - thus anchoring the symptoms to a medicated state and then experiencing that medicated state every day). Her representation of spiders involved making a moving 3 dimensional, 30 foot spider in full techno-color with surround sound, before freaking out and screaming her way up the street. It was quite straightforward to anchor this response to the carton of Thorazine before taking the representation of the spider and reducing it down in size.
This unfortunate woman had been seeing the psychiatrist for "systematic desensitization" for 11 months without success and had been subjected to SEVENTEEN different psychiatric medications.
One thing of curiosity is that true phobias are a particularly visual phenomena. Show the phobic the dreaded stimuli (like a bee) and they will immediately freak out. But when they hear the buzzing, in neurological terms the response might be delayed or inhibited until they actually see it or vividly visualize it.
Joseph LeDoux writes:
...when rats are exposed to a cat, they give off calls, sounds that warn other rats to stay clear of where the sounds are coming from. These sounds, it turns out, are in the ultrasonic range (the range beyond human hearing). Since cats can't hear in this range, the calls are like secret encrypted messages that pass undetected through enemy lines. In recent experiments Fabio Bordi and I found some neurons in the rat amygdala that responded especially briskly to ultrasounds similar to warning calls. The rat amygdala may be evolutionary prepared to respond to these sounds and to learn about them. In fact, the amygdala of all creatures may be prepared to respond to species-relevant cues. For example, faces are important emotional signals in the lives of primates, and neurons in the monkey amygdala respond briskly to the sight of monkey faces.
LeDoux goes on to speculate about the differences between phobics who can vividly remember the imprinting event (formed in the temporal lobe memory system) thus remembering that they are supposed to be a phobic and the phobics who do not remember the imprinting event.
The brain's ability to generalize phobia's leads to two interesting distinctions between phobic clients. Those phobics who vividly remember the imprinting experience will hold a specific phobia - ie a wasp crawled into their ear when they were 5 years old and they now have a specific phobia of wasps. The client who does not remember the imprinting experience, will more likely possess a generalized phobia to all small flying things that resemble wasps.
Broadly speaking, cultural expectation may also play an important role in the generalization of phobic response. As my colleague Dr. Mike Jones points out, a phobia is socially acceptable. For example, it is acceptable to announce that one might be a "social phobic", but it might not be so easy to say, "I lack the skills and experience for social interaction." The main descriptive differential lying between an identity level statement and a capability level statement, where stating an inadequacy as "I am..." is culturally preferable to stating it as, "I cannot..."; a phenomena I believe to be a tragic hangover from our debacle of an education system.
Broadly speaking, phobics who have a definite 'cause and effect' relationship to the referential experience, (ie, "I am phobic because a dog bit when I was 6") will respond very quickly to even a clumsy, technique orientated "double dissociation" technique. Next time you work with a phobic client who does not know why they have the phobia (ie they have deleted the referential experience) listen carefully when you ask them how they do the phobia. The answers typically take the form of:
"I just look at the wasp and go 'ahhhhhhhhhhhh' and freak out."
"I just see the dog and go 'SHIIIIIIIIT!' and have a panic attack."
"I just watch the thing getting closer and just start screaming."
Listen closely for the sequence that the modalities occur (V-A-K). If it is this auditory component that is the link between the visual stimuli and the kinesthetic reaction, then the NLPerson can begin to understand different ways of approaching the problem that don't depend on the diagnostic-technique approach.
But then, if we followed the psychoanalytical literature, we'd be focusing on the size of horses penis's and "oedipal complexes". Whilst demonstrating a particularly effective (I was so pleased), thirty second "fast phobia cure" to a herd of clinical psychologists, I was collectively criticized for failing to administer a "real cure". Despite the fact that sat before them was a lifelong phobic now happily handling a dead tarantula (the pet shop wouldn't trust me with a live one and I only knew at the last minute what sort of client they would provide me with). The criticism revolved around the fact that the true "internal conflict" had not been resolved and that I had only provided a "gimmick" - and besides, the spider was dead.
It was during this time that a truly fantastic moment in history occurred as the taratantula, right on cue, gave a slight twitch of the leg and began to revive. This occurred much to the delight of the client who by this time was getting as annoyed as myself and who promptly gave a whoop of glee as he plonked Lazarus down on the lap of the psychologist who surprisingly didn't look at all comfortable with the idea. That night we certainly found one of the fastest ways of clearing a room of all it's clinical psychologists.
Curiously, they didn't invite me back.
thanks,
mesandy:) .
Pathway 1: Visual Input - Thalamus (relay station) - Visual cortex (recognition) - Hippocampus ("Oh Shit!") - Amygdala ("Panic!!!!!!!")
The second pathway is more direct and involves activation of the "fight or flight" system mediated by the hypothalamus and triggers the physiological reactions that occur with true phobia via the sympathetic nervous system.
Pathway 2: Visual input - Thalamus (relay station) - hypothalamus - amygdala
What is curious for many people is just how such severe reactions can be produced by seemingly innocuous stimuli. For example, in my practice, as well as the usual suspects I have seen people with a phobia's of wings (any wing, sanitary towel, bird, plane, bee, etc), a phobia of jelly pudding, a phobia of bare feet; and, my all time favorite - a man who complained that his life was "utterly ruined" by a phobia of "ships in a bottle" (a phobia that was, bizarrely, shared by his sister, mother and stepfather). Psychiatry likes to speak of genetic predisposition to phobia, but what I have often been curious about is that people rarely report ever having more than one phobia. They often can have a collection of fears, but rarely ever possess more than a single true phobia at any one time.
One fun thing that I like to do to demonstrate submodalities is to switch phobias around. For example, one lady brought to me by a psychiatrist for a "pathological phobia of spiders" (!!!??) sat in my office hyperventilating whilst the psychiatrist told me how resistant she was (despite the ridiculous quantity of psychiatric drugs in her system - thus anchoring the symptoms to a medicated state and then experiencing that medicated state every day). Her representation of spiders involved making a moving 3 dimensional, 30 foot spider in full techno-color with surround sound, before freaking out and screaming her way up the street. It was quite straightforward to anchor this response to the carton of Thorazine before taking the representation of the spider and reducing it down in size.
This unfortunate woman had been seeing the psychiatrist for "systematic desensitization" for 11 months without success and had been subjected to SEVENTEEN different psychiatric medications.
One thing of curiosity is that true phobias are a particularly visual phenomena. Show the phobic the dreaded stimuli (like a bee) and they will immediately freak out. But when they hear the buzzing, in neurological terms the response might be delayed or inhibited until they actually see it or vividly visualize it.
Joseph LeDoux writes:
...when rats are exposed to a cat, they give off calls, sounds that warn other rats to stay clear of where the sounds are coming from. These sounds, it turns out, are in the ultrasonic range (the range beyond human hearing). Since cats can't hear in this range, the calls are like secret encrypted messages that pass undetected through enemy lines. In recent experiments Fabio Bordi and I found some neurons in the rat amygdala that responded especially briskly to ultrasounds similar to warning calls. The rat amygdala may be evolutionary prepared to respond to these sounds and to learn about them. In fact, the amygdala of all creatures may be prepared to respond to species-relevant cues. For example, faces are important emotional signals in the lives of primates, and neurons in the monkey amygdala respond briskly to the sight of monkey faces.
LeDoux goes on to speculate about the differences between phobics who can vividly remember the imprinting event (formed in the temporal lobe memory system) thus remembering that they are supposed to be a phobic and the phobics who do not remember the imprinting event.
The brain's ability to generalize phobia's leads to two interesting distinctions between phobic clients. Those phobics who vividly remember the imprinting experience will hold a specific phobia - ie a wasp crawled into their ear when they were 5 years old and they now have a specific phobia of wasps. The client who does not remember the imprinting experience, will more likely possess a generalized phobia to all small flying things that resemble wasps.
Broadly speaking, cultural expectation may also play an important role in the generalization of phobic response. As my colleague Dr. Mike Jones points out, a phobia is socially acceptable. For example, it is acceptable to announce that one might be a "social phobic", but it might not be so easy to say, "I lack the skills and experience for social interaction." The main descriptive differential lying between an identity level statement and a capability level statement, where stating an inadequacy as "I am..." is culturally preferable to stating it as, "I cannot..."; a phenomena I believe to be a tragic hangover from our debacle of an education system.
Broadly speaking, phobics who have a definite 'cause and effect' relationship to the referential experience, (ie, "I am phobic because a dog bit when I was 6") will respond very quickly to even a clumsy, technique orientated "double dissociation" technique. Next time you work with a phobic client who does not know why they have the phobia (ie they have deleted the referential experience) listen carefully when you ask them how they do the phobia. The answers typically take the form of:
"I just look at the wasp and go 'ahhhhhhhhhhhh' and freak out."
"I just see the dog and go 'SHIIIIIIIIT!' and have a panic attack."
"I just watch the thing getting closer and just start screaming."
Listen closely for the sequence that the modalities occur (V-A-K). If it is this auditory component that is the link between the visual stimuli and the kinesthetic reaction, then the NLPerson can begin to understand different ways of approaching the problem that don't depend on the diagnostic-technique approach.
But then, if we followed the psychoanalytical literature, we'd be focusing on the size of horses penis's and "oedipal complexes". Whilst demonstrating a particularly effective (I was so pleased), thirty second "fast phobia cure" to a herd of clinical psychologists, I was collectively criticized for failing to administer a "real cure". Despite the fact that sat before them was a lifelong phobic now happily handling a dead tarantula (the pet shop wouldn't trust me with a live one and I only knew at the last minute what sort of client they would provide me with). The criticism revolved around the fact that the true "internal conflict" had not been resolved and that I had only provided a "gimmick" - and besides, the spider was dead.
It was during this time that a truly fantastic moment in history occurred as the taratantula, right on cue, gave a slight twitch of the leg and began to revive. This occurred much to the delight of the client who by this time was getting as annoyed as myself and who promptly gave a whoop of glee as he plonked Lazarus down on the lap of the psychologist who surprisingly didn't look at all comfortable with the idea. That night we certainly found one of the fastest ways of clearing a room of all it's clinical psychologists.
Curiously, they didn't invite me back.
thanks,
mesandy:) .