Fears are a natural and important aspect of life – at their core fears exist to keep us alive. If you think of the ‘flight or fight’ mechanism that is built in within all of us, this is generally triggered by a fear of sorts.
And, while fears are a normal part of life, and can be quite useful – they can also get in our way and interfere from us achieving what we truly want and desire. Many fears are mostly irrational – I can’t think of a single case in history where someone has been killed by public speaking, for example!
Regardless of if a fear is rational or irrational, NLP can assist you to overcome any fear that is holding you back. It might be a fear of public speaking, fear of not being good enough, fear of failure, fear of heights, spiders, dogs, mice, etc. – they can all be transformed using NLP.
Simply – everything in our awareness (physical or mental) goes through a filtering process based on our history, beliefs, ideas, values, and concepts of life and our brain automatically creates and secretes a chemical for everything. For fear, two main hormones are created and released – adrenaline and cortisol, the more chemicals released into your system, the stronger the fear will be.
Various NLP techniques will help you to address, change and re-evaluate past events, beliefs, values, ideas, and emotions to create a new neurological connection. This, in-turn changes the chemicals your brain creates and secrets. So, if a person did have a fear of public speaking – NLP could address the patterns of emotions, behaviors, and thoughts so that public speaking no longer triggers the reaction of fear!
A great thing to keep in mind when talking about fears – you are in charge of your mind and therefore your results! If fear is not serving you in your life – you have the ability to change it.
Dr. Heidi Heron PsyD International NLP Master Trainer, Worldwide Institutes of NLP
