All of a sudden, my telephone has not stopped ringing from people wanting help with their phobias, fears and confidence building, and I have to be careful how I answer the calls, as these are not unwanted calls I wrote about.
So, today saw me in Central London, working with a client who would not travel on the tube (metro). She also had a fear of escalators.
A phobia is an irrational fear that has got out of hand.
A phobia is a learned reaction to a stimulus or situation that creates an internal response or feeling which is inappropriate to what is happening.
Symptoms can be very varied, from panic attacks, extreme sweating, blushing, fainting, the list goes on.
If something can be learned leading to an irrational phobia or fear, then an alternative better response can be learned, and that better response run to the stimulus or situation.
This learning of a new response can be installed in a very short time, I usually only work with a client once, and for as long it takes for the new response to be installed, two minutes or ten hours.
I do not use an office, I do not have a consulting room with a couch, and I do not usually have clients visit me. I go to my clients, or I meet the client wherever the fear or phobia takes place, a departure lounge of an airport, a swimming pool, open spaces, in a dogs kennel, a hospital or dentists waiting room, wherever is suitable.
I have worked in a swimming pool in Sri Lanka with a lady who I had just met with a fear of spiders, and within minutes we were searching the bushes in the surrounding gardens for spiders.
So there I was in a crowded London street near a London Underground Tube station entrance, surrounded by shoppers, tourists, families and groups of friends unknown to me, with a client who just wanted to be like other people racing about us, getting on with their life.
Unseen by others around us I went to work, we were just two people talking, with me being a little more animated than normal. It was as if we did not exist to people.
After a few minutes, with a smile on her face and happiness in her heart, we entered the tube station, walking down the steps into the ticket hall to buy a ticket, through the barriers to ride the escalator down to the platform.
She tried to get those unwanted feelings of what had been, but they were just not there anymore as we stood waiting for the train along with many more passengers.
We chatted, and watched others not even noticing us, passing through many stations until I got to Waterloo, my stop, when I bid her farewell, never to see her again, as she can now move on in life, do the things she had wanted to do.
Oh I love my job.