Phobias, Addictions and Obsessions

What do these three things have in common?

The answer is fear.

Phobias are pretty self-explanatory. We fear something to such an extent that it causes us problems in our present lives.  They may have come from a past trauma.  Maybe we were bitten by a dog when we were young and still become very frightened when a dog barks or bares its teeth. They may also be inherited from another person.  Maybe your mother screamed every time she saw a spider, so you learnt very early that spiders were something to be scared of, even though you didn't know why.

Addictions are habits we have developed in our lives, that produce a negative emotional response when they are taken away.  Often they are something we take into the body - common examples are cigarettes, alcohol or drugs.  However we can be addicted to patterns of behaviour or to people.  What happens here is that we are blocking a negative emotional response by seeking so-called "pleasurable" behaviour.  However, what that does is push the negative emotion down into our body, so it isn't resolved.  Every time it re-surfaces, our bodies tell us we want the addiction.  This gives us a positive "hit" and the pain is pushed aside for a while.  The trouble with this is that the pain will keep trying to resurface in order to be healed. So often we need bigger and bigger "hits" to keep it suppressed   Alongside that, we can have a physical response to addictive substances, but this is much easier to deal with if we've dealt with the emotional residue.

Obsessions are fears projected into the future.  This time there will be an initial negative experience from our past which we worry about happening again in the future.  Like the phobias or addictions, it could be experienced by us or learned from another person.   Things like believing we'll get ill if we don't clean things several times a day or worrying we'll forget to do something.  Often we create rituals to cope with these things; checking something several times or obsessive cleaning.  Alternatively, we avoid the triggering situations altogether, for example, not being the last to leave the house so we don't have to check the door is locked several times. Superstitions also come into the category of obsessions.  These are usually learned from another person. Like addictions, if we treat the underlying fear, then the ritual becomes a simple habit which is much easier to break.

So, if these patterns are causing you problems in your life, kinesiology can help you find and clear the root cause and take back control of your lives, even if you have no conscious idea of where they came from.