An animal phobia can produce an extraordinarily powerful reaction to something you rationally know may pose little or no threat.
Common animal fears include fear of dogs (cynophobia), fear of cats (ailurophobia), fear of spiders (arachnophobia), fear of snakes (ophidiophobia), fear of birds and fear of insects.
You might cross the road when you see a dog, refuse to visit someone who owns a cat, become frightened entering a garden where there might be spiders or spend holidays worrying about encountering insects or other animals.
Other people may tell you, “There's nothing to be frightened of.” The problem is that your rational mind may already know that. It's the automatic fear response that continues to behave as though the threat is real.
Changing a Learned Fear
Some animal phobias begin with a frightening childhood experience; others seem to appear without an obvious cause. Either way, a response the mind has learned doesn't necessarily have to remain unchanged forever.
Through my Phobia Rewrite programme, I use clinical hypnotherapy, Rapid Transformational Therapy™ and individually selected techniques to work with the subconscious associations and responses surrounding your particular animal phobia.
