People with claustrophobia experience fears involving small spaces or areas where it can be difficult to leave quickly, such as trains, elevators or airplanes. Some people even get claustrophobic inside MRI medical scanners. Due to their anxiety, people with claustrophobia often attempt to stay away from enclosed spaces. Sufferers also tend to linger near exits or along the walls of a room, versus being in the center. Claustrophobia sufferers frequently suffer panic attacks when they start to feel "stuck" or enclosed. For many sufferers, being in a tight place is as horrifying as the idea of being buried alive. 

Suffering an anxiety attack in a crowded area can be a scary incident for claustrophobic people and those around them. At the moment an individual's claustrophobia is triggered, they will often have panic attacks, trouble breathing, physical illness, fainting, and other, often intense, reactions. A person may develop claustrophobia at any time or due to a traumatic incident, but it often arises during childhood.

The disorder may be aggravated by various situations, which can be different between individuals. For example, some claustrophobic people might only feel nervous while on an elevator, while others find that crowds trigger their condition. In any situation, claustrophobia and other phobias often negatively affect people's lives and personal happiness. Phobia sufferers often develop avoidant behaviors and have a lower quality of life as they plan out their activities around their fears. 

For numerous sufferers, the fear of humiliation over their fears is as bad as the phobia itself. Many people recognize that their fears are overblown and irrational, but cannot seem to maintain their composure. The reason for this is because phobias come from deep within the unconscious mind, which no amount of conscious willpower can be fully effective in controlling. This poses a special challenge to the control of phobias. 

Claustrophobia is often relieved by anti-anxiety medication or therapy. Hypnosis is an ideal, non-invasive, safe form of therapy with no harmful side effects. It works by treating the underlying causes of fear in the unconscious mind to quickly eliminate a phobia. In particular, a system that has Ericksonian hypnosis techniques and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) can be used to treat a phobia. This innovative program uses multiple hypnotic techniques to help people overcome their anxieties. 

The initial phase in curing a phobia is helping the phobia sufferer become calm and stress-free. Hypnosis has traditionally been used as a form of relaxation therapy, to allow people to clear their minds and feel peaceful. 

Traditional hypnosis techniques have used direct, post-hypnotic suggestions to help cure phobias. The problem with the direct approach is that the mind tends to reject being merely "told" how to respond. So many people put up mental barricades to acceptance of suggestions. In today's society, people of all ages are particularly likely to resist direct suggestions since we are independent people who question everything.

The basis of the hypnotic state is relaxation. Once in the relaxed state, rather than using direct suggestions, a different approach known as systematic desensitization can help extinguish a phobia through visual imagery.

Ericksonian hypnosis uses a more sophisticated approach than conventional hypnotherapy. It contains indirect suggestions masked in interesting stories and metaphors to interest the unconscious mind and persuade it to follow a desirable, phobia-free line of thought. Due to the fact that indirect suggestions do not need to be specifically tailored to a specific phobia like direct suggestions do, one good Ericksonian hypnosis program will work to successfully cure any phobia or even more than one phobia.

NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is a unique form of therapy that several well trained hypnotherapists have adopted. The best NLP technique for fighting a phobia is known as the Visual - Kinesthetic Disassociation, also called V/K. The V/K is known as the one session phobia cure, and with good reason. Irrational or anxiety reactions (attacks) take place because traumatic experiences are attached to and triggered by mental images. With the V/K, the traumatic experiences are disconnected from the mental images - often in one quick session, and the fear is virtually gone.

People suffering from claustrophobia can get rapid relief using hypnosis. The combination of Ericksonian hypnotherapy with NLP techniques will help all people beat their fears. Hypnotic therapy has helped many users feel safe and confident in situations where before, they would've had a complete break down. Hypnosis techniques have provided incredible benefits for people with phobias and continue to change lives each and every day.

Alan B. Densky, CH has created a multitude of NLP methods for the management of claustrophobia based on NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis. Learn more at his Best Hypnosis Downloads NLP website using his Free article index and video hypnosis index.

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