WHY DO WE HAVE PHOBIAS ?
Understanding Phobias: Their root cause and how to overcome them with NEMO
By Ienke Keijzer
While many people believe they understand the origins of their phobia, often attributing them to past experiences, research shows that in 99% of cases, the true cause lies in
a miswiring within the brain, rather than the events themselves.
Yes, you do read that correctly - a simple, yet hazardous miswiring in the brain causes phobias and other disproportionate emotional reactions, leading to unnecessary suffering for our clients and patients.
THE ROOT CAUSE OF PHOBIAS
As I mentioned, phobias and other excessive emotional behaviour arise from incorrect neural encoding in the brain. Simply put, when the brain encodes a past traumatic event with a negative emotional charge, it sets up an "alarm button" that, when triggered, bypasses logical reasoning and activates survival instincts, leading to excessive emotional reactions in situations where such behaviour is not necessary.
Let's take a closer look at how this works in the brain.
THE BRAIN'S ENCODING PROCESS
Our brain stores the memories of all events and experiences using sensory perceptions known as VAKOG in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) for encoding :
This means that countless neural codes are created in our memory.
TRAUMATIC EVENT
During the formative years, particularly from the prenatal stages to around five years old (including birth), children encounter events they perceive as traumatic. These events are often unknown to adults or may seem minor to them, but they are perceived as life-threatening by the child.
These events include negative emotional charges in the encoding.
CATHARSIS – THE NATURAL EMOTIONAL CLEANSING PROCESS
Normally, the brain neutralizes these negative emotional charges through a natural cleansing process called catharsis, before storing the memories.
However, sometimes catharsis fails to occur, like a process malfunction, leaving the emotional charge intact in the encoding. It is this negative emotional charge that acts like an alarm button, going off when triggered.
TRIGGER - PHOBIA SET OFF
Later in life, when a person encounters a situation that reminds the brain of the original event in terms of VAKOG, this triggers the alarm button.
And once the alarm goes off, it bypasses logical reasoning and activates survival instincts, leading to excessive emotional reactions in situations where otherwise this kind of behaviour is not necessary. These irrational, excessive emotional responses are the hallmark of phobias.
EXAMPLE
For instance, imageine a child who experienced a traumatic event during the intra-uterine period that wasn't cleansed through catharsis. Later, this child is confronted with a dog. By chance, the situation shares similarities in the VAKOG encoding with the original event, and the brain mistakenly believes that the traumatic event is repeating itself. It sets off the alarm, survival instincts take over, and disproportionate emotional reactions occur.
Even though the encounter with the dog is an innocent event, the brain interprets it as an intense danger, thus creating a phobia of dogs. The result is panic attacks whenever the child encounters a dog.
HOW TO OVERCOME PHOBIAS?
The good news is that these neural encodings can be reprogrammed, and phobias, along with other forms of excessive emotional reactivity, can be eliminated. The NEMO Emotional Cleansing technique, which I specialize in, offers a highly effective solution, enabling clients to overcome their phobias in most cases within just one session, and sometimes even in just a few minutes.
NEMO
works by:
This approach often resolves longstanding phobias and excessive emotional reactivity permanently, often in a single session.
RESETTING THE EMOTIONAL REGULATOR
Of course, this process does not eliminate emotions, as emotions are vital to our humanity. Instead, NEMO Emotional Cleansing resets the brain's emotional regulator, which may have become stuck at an overreacting level.
By resetting the emotional regulator, we ensure the brain can respond in a way that is proportional to the situation. Once the emotional regulator is reset, clients can respond to life's challenges with a balanced emotional response, rather than overreacting to minor triggers.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE NEMO EMOTIONAL CLEANSING
To gain a deeper understanding of phobias and the NEMO Emotional Cleansing technique, I invite you to read my book "NEMO Emotional Cleansing – How to get rid of excessive emotional reactivities and phobias" (2017)
"A very clear, complete and easy-to-read book. The technique is easy to practice, and
the transcript of a complete NEMO session at the end is very helpful.
Though it seemed too good to be true, I've tested it on my clients and the results have been great! ”
Nathalie - psychotherapist - France
TRAINING FOR THERAPISTS
If you're a therapist eager to empower your clients with this effective tool to overcome phobias and emotional challenges, I invite you to consider joining my specialized training sessions or on-line training. These trainings will provide you with the skills and techniques to integrate NEMO into your practice, helping clients overcome their phobias and emotional challenges.
I hope this article provides valuable insights into the nature of phobias and how to resolve them. If you've used the NEMO emotional cleansing technique - whether as a therapist or a client - I'd love to hear your experiences and the outcomes you have witnessed.
Ienke Keijzer
Neuro Psycho Practitioner - Trainer of therapists and coaches - Author
Grandis Ose
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Warm regards,
Ienke
Grandis Ose
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