Phobias

Dr. Dyan thinks of phobias as a way that the unconscious sometimes can contain and focus stress and anxiety into one targeted area.

People often seem to develop an effective unconscious psychological strategy whereby they put excessive stress, fear, or a sense of threat into one thing that can maybe be avoided (e.g., spiders, elevators, flying, etc.), rather than feeling overwhelmed or helpless about life itself or about things that can’t be controlled.

For example, elevators can perhaps be avoided but feeling trapped by having to go to school, by parental rules or behaviors, by a job and the pressures of surviving, or something like that, is much more difficult to avoid or manage. So putting all of those emotions about feeling trapped seems, to the unconscious mind, much simpler and easier to tackle if they manifest as a specific phobia rather than as a more pervasive fear that covers more territory that can’t so easily be controlled.  

Of course, each case is different and sometimes fears or phobias can be related to a trauma. When working with individuals in her private practice, Dr. Dyan takes very careful note of a client’s history so that she can come up with a unique treatment strategy for each person.

Some of the techniques that Dr. Dyan utilizes include:

• Somatic Experiencing® – a way of working with the nervous system in terms of the way the body holds emotions and the activations of the fight, flight, and freeze response
• Advanced hypnotherapy  
• Helping her clients to learn strategies for what she deems the best self-hypnosis for the phobia to empower them to understand and feel more in control of their fears  
• Various psychotherapeutic methods

Dr. Dyan works with clients to de-mystify the phobia and to compassionately understand what triggered their phobias, to examine why the phobia has lasted for so long, and to transform it to bring about freedom from fear.

She generally teaches people how to use self-hypnosis to change those unpleasant states into pleasant ones so that they feel empowered and confident.

Dr. Dyan has found that, when people set a goal to use self-hypnosis for relaxation or to alleviate anxiety, including using self-hypnosis audios for phobias, they can easily learn to use self-hypnosis strategies as part of their daily routine.