Phobia Cured Live at Radio Leicester

Do you mean to tell me that I have been suffering all these years and there's a simple cure?

Dateline Monday 12th March 2007

I had been contacted by BBC Radio Leicester a few days before. They were doing a piece about phobia, and could I pop in for a chat.

So imagine my surprise when I was whisked straight into the studio - I barely had time to phone my wife to record the show!

It turned out that a newreader at the station, Jo, had a phobia about fruit.

It was plain to everyone that Jo was feeling very queasy just talking about fruit.

I talked briefly off-air with Jo, and it appeared to be a simple phobia related to an incident that had happened when she was about 6yrs old - it looked like we could deal with it using an NLP technique called Double Dissociation.

Neuroscience is still catching up with how therapies like NLP, EFT, EMDR, and the talking therapies work, but Double Dissociation appears to work by getting the Orbito-Frontal Cortex to intercede between the Pre-Frontal Cortex and the Amygdala.

Cinema

Basically, I got Jo to put together a short film about the original incident. She then sat in a cinema to watch the film. She also had to split herself in two, and take the new part of her up to the projectionist's booth, and watch herself, watching the film.

To start with, the film was in black-and-white with no sound, smells, or tastes, and we added colour, sound, smells and tastes as Jo became able to tolerate them.

Each time, she ran the film to the end, and then quickly ran down into the auditorium, grabbed her other self, and the two of them ran towards the screen and jumped into the scene and played it backwards very quickly with full colour and sensations.

Jo and the Nectarine

After we had run through the film three times, Jo was able to touch the nectarine. One more iteration and she could hold a segment in her hand. Two more iterations and she ate a segment! She actually quite enjoyed the taste.

A Word of Warning

Jo had a simple phobia and was aware of the incident that caused it - not all phobias are so easy to cure.

If you have a phobia and want to get rid of it (and why wouldn't you?), call:

David Allen practices at the Centre of Balance, 48 Montague Road, Leicester on Thursdays.