Necrophobia And Hypnosis -
Curing The Fear Of Death

By Alan B. Densky, CH

One of the most common fears is Necrophobia, the fear of death. This devastating phobia affects countless people and can arise regardless of a person's health, age, or personal beliefs. It is a fear that can have far ranging consequences on an individual's life. Often, people are afraid of anything that can be associated with death, such as funerals, or less obviously, hospitals and scary movies. In extreme cases, the phobia leaves sufferers paralyzed with fear. Although this phobia is among the most severe, through education and treatment, sufferers can successfully overcome this anxiety disorder. 

Most people can identify with the fear of death, but when a person experiences a phobia, they suffer from more intense, debilitating feelings of fear that can interfere with their daily lives. The fear of death itself can lead to strong feelings of dread, paranoia, and severe anxiety attacks. Phobia sufferers often feel terrified of situations in which they are not in complete control.

While some people experience the phobia all the time, in others, it is only triggered by specific events or sights. For some people, the fear of death may develop after a traumatic incident such as watching a family member pass away. The phobia is characterized overall by the experience of a powerful, irrational fear of death, dying, and anything associated with death. 

The fear of death is rarely as straightforward as it seems. This is because the phobia is closely associated with pain, hypochondria, fear of the unknown, and other underlying fears that make it difficult to overcome. This challenge can be addressed by a treatment formulated to work against multiple phobias. Such is the case with a good hypnosis and NLP treatment program. 

Phobias can be treated in many different ways. Successful treatments include counseling and other forms of treatment such as hypnosis, NLP, anti-anxiety medication, and relaxation techniques. Hypnotherapy combined with NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) techniques tends to have one of the highest success rates among the various treatment options because it utilizes several different methods for addressing fears and relieving anxiety. 

A hypnosis regimen begins with anti-anxiety techniques that make the mind receptive to phobia-extinguishing suggestions. Relief of stress and anxiety is a key element of phobia treatment because it is considered to be the first step in preventing panic attacks and warding off negative, fear-producing mental associations. 

Systematic desensitization techniques utilized under the state of hypnosis are another effective mechanism of treatment. Under hypnosis, a patient is guided into visualizations of fear-triggering situations and is taught how to release anxiety. After successful treatment, patients are able to stay calm and rational under situations which normally trigger fear. Patients also report that thoughts that normally cause fear no longer cause them distress. Systematic desensitization can also be successfully conducted outside of the hypnotic state, but it then becomes a more challenging, time-consuming and intensive process. 

The NLP Visual/Kinesthetic Disassociation is perhaps the most effective technique to relieve irrational fears. This technique helps patients "disassociate" their fears from the underlying, unconscious images that trigger an anxiety attack, in a process that causes them to rapidly "snap out" of the sensation of fear. For this reason, programs incorporating the V/K Disassociation are often termed "instant" phobia cures by their creators and users alike. 

Hypnosis treatment has utilized increasingly sophisticated techniques for phobia treatment. Ericksonian hypnotherapy, so named after its creator, Milton Erickson, MD, has proven effective in helping to re-shape the unconscious thought processes responsible for a phobia. Using conversational language, it automatically directs the unconscious mind into a new thought process. Similarly, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is used to redirect the unconscious thought processes. With NLP Flash technique, phobia provoking thoughts will automatically be reversed to quell the fear instead, leading to near-effortless phobia relief. 

The fear of death can be successfully treated even at levels of high severity. Traditional techniques combined with hypnosis can accelerate the treatment process, while novel hypnosis techniques work at the unconscious level to eliminate fear and anxiety. Its non-invasiveness also renders it a safe treatment option as it can reduce or eliminate the need for anti-anxiety medication. Phobia sufferers regularly report dramatic and life-changing effects resulting from hypnotherapy. For many sufferers of Necrophobia, hypnotherapy provides an ideal form of relief. 

©2007 By Alan B. Densky, CH.  This document may NOT be re-printed. All Rights Reserved.