Vitality News Health Articles

Social phobia is one of the most common anxiety disorders in which a person is scared of being in certain social settings. An individual with social phobia suffers from unbearable anxiety that impacts their personal and daily life.

People with social phobia are extremely self-conscious and worried about what others may think or say about them. They are typically afraid of speaking up, out of fear that they might be judged or criticized. People with social anxiety tend to look down on themselves or suffer from low self-esteem. They are often worried about being noticed by others and find socializing to be quite terrifying.

A person with social anxiety may seem “shy,” but in the case of a phobia, this is taken to extremes. For instance, if you suffer from social phobia, you may be reluctant to make a crucial call because you’re anxious about talking on the telephone. You finally make the call, but you’re so anxious that you “freeze up” or forget what you wanted to say. Although it can happen to everyone once in awhile, for a person with social phobia it may happen every single time, until they find it impossible to make any phone calls.

Perhaps it is the night before a big meeting at work and you find yourself worried sick. You dread the idea of being in front of a room with your boss and all your co-workers watching as you talk about a project or new idea. You can’t stop yourself from feeling extremely embarrassed and self-conscious. Even after the meeting ends, you continue overanalyzing everything you did and said. You fear that you humiliated yourself in front of your colleagues by stuttering or saying the wrong thing.

Perhaps you would like to go to parties and make new friends, but you avoid social gatherings because you’re anxious about introducing yourself to new people. You find parties daunting and the idea of meeting new people frightens you. You worry about what you will say, or that you will get rejected. You might stay at home very often because you’re too scared to go out. These are only some of the ways social phobias can influence our lives.

Social phobias are irrational fears that can prevent you from reaching your professional goals or enjoying life. But even people who know their fears are irrational may not know how to handle their phobia. People with social phobia often want to be more social and feel confident around others, but are too scared to try. Despite their conscious desires and hard work, they cannot eliminate their fears because all phobias are based in the unconscious level of the mind. Ericksonian hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques are the most helpful phobia treatments because they work at this unconscious level.

It can be difficult for people with social anxiety to get cured because they can be reluctant to visit a counselor or open up about their anxieties. This is why hypnosis therapy programs work great for them. The programs foster a confidence boosting, peaceful frame of mind in a privacy, without being overwhelming or intimidating.

The first part of a proper phobia program is relaxation therapy. Hypnotherapy is a powerful tool for relieving your stress and anxiety. At the moment when you are relaxed, hypnosis techniques will foster positive ideas in your unconscious and eliminate your social phobia. NLP techniques will eliminate your fears by specifically targeting the thought process that produces a phobia.

In traditional hypnosis therapy, specifically worded post-hypnotic suggestions are used to address every unique phobia. The problem is, people tend to ignore being simply told what to think or do, so traditional hypnosis therapy doesn’t work very well. A phobia requires a combination of NLP and Ericksonian Hypnotherapy.

Ericksonian hypnosis therapy techniques work better than traditional hypnosis therapy because they utilize suggestions that are not obvious to the conscious mind, instead of direct suggestions. These ideas are placed in discussion, in the form of stories and metaphors, to convince the unconscious to adopt a new line of thought. This is why Ericksonian hypnosis therapy is far more sophisticated than traditional hypnotherapy and much more difficult for the unconscious to reject.

A program that includes Ericksonian hypnosis therapy and NLP techniques can treat any phobia, in any individual. This is because several techniques are used together to increase their success rate. People are frequently in awe of the seemingly miraculous changes they see through hypnosis therapy. Ericksonian hypnotherapy and NLP are ideal tools to help boost your confidence and beat social anxiety so you will be able to live your life to the fullest.

Alan B. Densky, CH has invented many hypnotic techniques for the management of anxiety attacks. He also offers hypnotherapy CD’s for all other phobias. His authority site offers a thorough list of hypnosis for self improvement CD’s. Visit for Free NLP videos, downloads, and newsletters.

- Alan B. Densky, CH