Are You Freakin' Out?

By Joan HItlin

Joan Hitlin, MFA, a longtime contributor to OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, is an energy therapist and life coach who guides her clients from cowering to courageous.

I grew up with paranoidish parents. They came to their anxieties honestly: their parents had escaped pogroms, they themselves had survived the depression and witnessed the terrors of World War II and the holocaust. Their history and their genetic predispositions led them to become devout scaredy cats.

They tried to keep me safe by transferring their fears onto me.

If they could just get me to be as frightened as they were, then I might avoid harm. They tried to stop me from plugging in appliances "you might get electrocuted," from climbing ladders "you'll fall and break your neck," and from riding a bike "you'll get hit by a car." When scaring me to death didn't work, they used guilt "Do you want us to die from worry?"

As a result, I became a bit of a wuss, always aware of what might go wrong. I knew in my gut that this was not the way to live: on my deathbed I'd regret the chances that I didn't take and the transformative edges that I didn't cross. I just didn't know what to do about it. Yanked this way by my adventurous side and that way by my chicken little side, I stayed stuck in impasses I couldn't break through.

Fortunately for me - and now for you - I discovered an arsenal of techniques which dis-empower fears, worries, anxieties and phobias — without removing reasonable cautiousness. As one of my clients said, "Joan, this work makes me courageous - not stupid!"

Techniques like self-hypnosis, EFT, Focusing and Reframing help me and my clients move past their blocks, through their transformative edges, and toward their life-affirming powers and passions.

You may not eliminate your phobia as fast as the airline pilot whose irrational fear of elevators disappeared for good in twenty minutes (!) — but you can overcome your fear of flying, public speaking, exams or doctors visits; your social phobias; your free-floating anxieties; your insecurities; and those wicked worries that go bump in the night.

What's more, you can learn to manage your unease on your own, as things happen, witout having to wait for your next session. (And our work doesn't have to be a painful, long-term project requiring you to get more anxious and more depressed before feeling better and braver.)

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