I am not sure I have been called insensitive before, not by a stranger anyway!! She said I had more qualifications than common sense. Whilst my wife my agree with that at times I like to think I have quite a lot of common sense. I could tell she wasn’t happy…it was the sharpest email I had received ever. However she had just had the fright of her life…
Fear does funny things to us. A recent study has shown how it even makes things look bigger. A fear of spiders means you tend to see them as being bigger than they actually are. I love it when research finally backs up what Cognitive Hypnotherapists have known and been utilising for some time.
“…But this study shows even perception is altered by fear. In this case, the feared spider is seen as being bigger. And that may serve as a maintaining factor for the fear.”
Try this exercise. Trust me, it won’t be scary (I do have some common sense!).
Think of a food you absolutely love. Close your eyes and picture it. Think about how you see it. Is it close up or far away? Is it big or small? Vivid colours, faded or even back and white? Where in your field of vision is it, central, top, or to one side etc.? Is it still image or a movie?
OK, now repeat the exercise with a food you absolutely detest. Notice the difference in where you see it, closer or further away. Is it bigger or smaller? Is it more colourful or more faded? Where do you see it in your field of vision? Notice all the differences in how you see it that makes the difference.
This demonstrates how we experience things differently depending 0n how we think about them. If we think something is dangerous or could harm us and we are scared of it then we are going to see it and experience it in our mind very differently than if we were relaxed about it.
So I replied to her email apologising for her being frightened by the picture of the spider on my website. I offered her a free hypnotherapy session to overcome her spider phobia which she agreed to. She had already attended a spider phobia day at a local zoo with no affect. Yes she held the terrantula at the end of the day but like many clients I see they don’t experience them as scary as house spiders because they don’t move so quickly and they are almost unreal. Also there was an element of peer pressure on the day, which I guess is suppost to be ‘mutual support’ but unfortunately ends up being expereinces as peer pressure.
With a few minutes she was looking at pictures of spider which I had carefully ordered starting with the smallest first. She was amazed at the difference in how she saw them as well as how she felt.
The next email I received from her was quite different to her first. She recounted how easily she dealt with a large house-spider and thanked me very much for freeing from her spider phobia.
She also didn’t think the picture on the website looked that bad and decided she had over-reacted. She hadn’t. It was her brain seeing it differently because of the fear she once had.
I decided to change the picture after all!
