A phobia is an example of a one-time learning. It is a reaction to a stimulus or trigger that fires off an intense associated response. The client will often not differentiate between the label of the experience (e.g. the word "mouse") and the actual external trigger (e.g. seeing a mouse). A phobia brings the client into a fully associated, intense, usually uncomfortable state.
How do you remove a phobia?
- Establish a resource anchor
- Acknowledge the one-time learning and the client's ability to learn
- Discover the strategy for firing the phobia
- Use the timeline and have the client go back to the earliest possible occurrence
- Make a movie screen above the timeline and have them watch it from a projector booth (dissociated)
- Run the movie forward fast in black and white, like a Charlie Chaplin movie
- Freeze frame at the end and white out or black out the image
- Associate fully into the end of the movie and run it backwards at normal speed in full colour
- Repeat until the client cannot get the feeling back or until the memory is inaccessible
- Check ecology — does the client have an alternative strategy?
- If necessary, use the Swish Pattern to install a new desired state
- Test and future pace
See also: What is NLP?