Hypnotherapy can help phobias of reptiles or Herpetophobia
You’re unlikely to see a snake in Oxford, but the habitat loss and threat of extinction face many reptile species, so Reptile Awareness Day in Oxfordshire, promotes learning about the threats they face. And it’s not surprising people have a phobia of reptiles.
Reptiles include tortoises, turtles, terrapins; snakes lizards and legless worm lizards; the tuatara, alligators, crocodiles, gavials, and caimans. In fact, there are between 6,500-10,000 species of reptiles in the world, and they live on every continent with the exception of Antarctica.
Herpetophobia
A fear of reptiles – or Herpetophobia – comes high on the list of phobias, with heights and spiders equal. Interestingly I only finished with a client who came to me with snake phobia last week. According to her she had always been afraid of snakes, and her mother suggested it all started when she was 2. Her father put a rubber snake in her toy box for a laugh!
For most of her life it was never a problem as she lives in Oxford where it’s highly unlikely to come across a slow worm, grass snake or an adder. A few years ago she was on holiday in Thailand when a large snake dropped out of a tree and she was so panicked she has been unable to go abroad on holiday again.
The fast phobia method I use to scramble these feelings of panic when we think about the thing we’re afraid of helps change the thoughts and feelings. She noticed by the end of the second session that she was able to talk about snakes without shuddering.
Before, you couldn’t have a conversation with the word snake in it because she would start panicking, now something had changed. By the fourth session my client reported that her friend was surprised that she was asking to find someone with a snake to try out her response. “You would have never contemplated that before” she retorted.
My client realised that snakes are fascinating and it was the crushing or restricting she was most afraid of. The fact that boa constrictors do not eat humans helped her change the way she thought about them, and she learnt that snakes tend to attack when feeling threatened, so she now knows to tread carefully.
UK Reptiles
In the UK I have come across slow worms in Somerset and adders in Cornwall, but I luckily never developed a fear of them, I seemed to go for slightly unconventional things to form an irrational fear of such as balloons, bellybuttons and bellows.
So if you have a friend or family member that can’t go on holiday because of their fear of reptiles, spiders or other bugs, hypnotherapy could help.
Also see: A-Z of phobias