By Denise Billen-Mejia, MD (retired), Consulting Hypnotist
The standard advice for a phobia is to face your fear. It’s well meant, but it rarely works. It asks a frightened person to do the one thing their whole constitution is organised around not doing — which is why a great many people never get help at all.
There’s a gentler route, and it isn’t merely kinder. It’s the one people will actually agree to.
Why avoidance makes it worse
First, though, it’s worth understanding why phobias don’t simply fade.
Every time you avoid the thing, you feel a wave of relief. That relief acts as a reward, quietly confirming that avoidance was the right call. Steer around it often enough and the phobia grows a little larger each time — not because anything happened, but because nothing did, and the alarm never got the chance to be wrong.
This is why the passage of time doesn’t help, and why people so often describe something that has quietly expanded over decades. They aren’t misremembering. Avoidance really does feed it.
It’s also why “there’s nothing to be frightened of” is such useless comfort, however kindly offered. The alarm wasn’t installed by logic — often it was installed in early childhood, by watching a frightened adult or simply hearing about something alarming. Adult-level reasoning is aimed at the wrong part of the mind entirely.
What actually happens in a session
People often expect drama. A swinging watch, perhaps, or being marched towards the thing they dread. The reality is far gentler, and I’d argue the gentleness is exactly why it works.
We start by talking. I want to understand your particular alarm: what sets it off, what it feels like, what it has cost you. No two phobias are quite alike, even when they share a name. One person’s flying phobia is really about turbulence; another’s is about being unable to leave.
Then comes hypnosis, which is nothing more mysterious than a state of settled, focused attention — rather like being absorbed in a good book, but with your attention turned inward. You remain aware. You remain in charge. Clients on screens all over the world are often surprised to find they could open their eyes and reach for their tea at any moment. They simply don’t want to — it’s far too comfortable to interrupt.
And if hypnosis is itself the thing that gives you pause, you’re in good company. That unease usually comes from films and stage shows rather than from anything that happens in a session. Nobody is put under. Nobody is made to do or say anything. You’d be sitting in your own chair with your eyes closed, hearing every word, remembering it all afterwards, and free to stop the moment you chose to.
Looking at it from a safe seat
In that settled state, something useful becomes possible. You can look at the thing you’re frightened of — properly look at it — while your body stays completely relaxed and you know, the whole time, that you’re perfectly safe.
Out in the world, that isn’t available to you. The trigger and the alarm arrive together. The moment the needle appears, or the plane door closes, the body is already off and running, and there’s no space to examine anything. You’re too busy coping.
Hypnosis creates that space. We might bring the trigger to mind gently, at whatever distance feels comfortable — watching it as though on a screen across the room, perhaps, with yourself in the audience rather than in the picture. Smaller, further away, in black and white, if you prefer. You choose. Nothing is forced, and nothing happens without your consent.
Now think about what your brain is being shown. For years it has been certain that this trigger and total emergency belong together. Here, for the first time, it gets the trigger without the emergency: this is here, and I am calm, and I am safe.
That isn’t a trick, and it isn’t positive thinking. It’s the mind doing what minds do — updating a conclusion when the evidence no longer supports it. What it needed was a chance to notice, and panic never provides one.
For some people the shift is quick; for others it builds over a few sessions. Either way, the change tends to feel less like a battle won and more like a weight quietly set down.
If you would like to talk through any of this, my contact details are below.
Dr. Denise Billen-Mejia is a former emergency medicine physician turned clinical hypnotist, dedicated to helping people find relief that conventional medicine alone hasn’t been able to provide.
To explore further, find articles and resources, or get in touch with Denise directl email office@aahypnosis.com or visit her website: healandberadiant.com
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