Phobias are incredibly difficult to live with. It doesn’t matter what the fear is—whether it’s heights, spiders, needles, or driving—it can be completely debilitating. It can stop people from going places, seeing friends and family, or even doing everyday activities. The impact isn’t just on the person with the phobia; it affects their loved ones too. And because the distress is so intense, people are desperate for a solution.

Hypnotherapy is a common choice, but all too often, clients leave feeling deflated and disappointed. I’ve worked with hundreds of people who have had multiple hypnotherapy sessions—some as many as 12 sessions—and their phobia remained exactly the same. Why? Because too many hypnotherapists are treating phobias as if they’re just another form of anxiety.

The Problem with the Usual Approach

Phobias are not generalised anxiety, and they shouldn’t be treated as such. Yet so many hypnotherapists focus on mindfulness, relaxation techniques, or trying to explore what’s going on in a client’s life at a broader level. While these methods can be helpful for managing stress or anxiety, they do very little to actually eliminate a phobia.

I’ve even had students who, despite learning my one-session approach, have ignored it and gone back to working with clients over multiple sessions, focusing on anxiety instead of the phobia itself. If you’re working with a client for three, four, five or more sessions on a phobia, you’re doing something wrong—and the chances of ever curing that phobia are slim.

Reliance on the Rewind Technique and Fast Phobia Cure

Another common mistake many hypnotherapists make when working with phobias is relying too heavily on NLP techniques like the Rewind Technique or the Fast Phobia Cure. While these can be useful tools, they are often treated as a one-size-fits-all solution. In reality, phobia treatment needs a much more structured and tailored approach to be truly effective.

Both the Rewind Technique and the Fast Phobia Cure focus on dissociating the client from their fear by having them mentally ‘rewind’ or reprocess the experience. While this can create some emotional distance from the fear, it doesn’t always break the response completely—which is the ultimate goal. Many hypnotherapists run these techniques without considering whether they are actually working for the client in the way they should.

I’ve found that a far more effective approach is one rooted in imaginal exposure, combined with CBT strategies and anchoring techniques. Instead of just creating distance from the fear, this approach actively reshapes the client’s response to it.

A More Effective Approach

The key to eliminating phobias isn’t just about getting the client to ‘think differently’ about their fear—it’s about breaking the conditioned response at a deep, subconscious level. That’s why my method focuses on:

• Imaginal exposure – Safely guiding the client through imagined experiences of the feared situation, in a way that rewires their response.
• CBT integration – Using cognitive restructuring to shift their perception of the phobia, so they no longer see it as something terrifying or uncontrollable.
• Anchoring techniques – Helping clients associate calmness and confidence with situations that once triggered fear, creating a new automatic response.

The Goal: A True Phobia Cure

I rarely use the word cure in therapy because most issues are about symptom management. But with phobias, cure is absolutely the right word. The goal isn’t to help a client cope with their fear—it’s to break the connection entirely, to change the response at a fundamental level. When done correctly, clients don’t just feel a little better—they leave cured.

In The Phobia Fix, I’ll teach you the exact approach I use to achieve these results, usually in just one session, with a follow-up if needed. This isn’t about managing a phobia—it’s about eliminating it.