Heidi Kyle is a well-known hypnotherapist and counsellor in private practice in the incredible Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa. Heidi started her career in the corporate world in London and has since used her experience to craft a unique style in the helping professions.
This article is about fear and the energetic changes that happen in our lives when we live in a state of perpetual fear. We will also focus on how hypnosis can help us challenge and eradicate fears.
What is fear?
Fear is truly primal. If I were to draw an emotion pyramid, fear would go at the top, funneling down into many other emotions. In fact, many people are so afraid of the feeling of fear that they use other terms to describe it, avoiding the word entirely. Clients will talk about being worried, nervous, disappointed, sad, alone, confused, angry, annoyed, desperate, fed up, or rejected, but the feeling that often underlies all these is fear. Fear is so fundamental that we must respect it and work with it carefully.
There are two types of fear: fear associated with imminent danger and the more pervasive, imaginative fears. Both have very specific functions. Healthy fear is useful when it stops us from engaging in excessively dangerous activities, but it becomes unhealthy when it is chronic and pervades our everyday life.
Your rational mind is being hijacked by an unpleasant emotion
Something to be aware of with fear is that it can easily override your rational mind. It’s a long explanation, but, basically, it involves triggering the fight-or-flight response and keeping it activated for an extended period.
The amygdala, the gland that controls the stress response, becomes overactive and cannot switch off. I liken this to a faulty kettle that can’t stop boiling. This fuels massive amounts of anxiety and causes much suffering in the world. Many people are so accustomed to living in a low level of fear that they struggle to access higher levels of functioning, such as joy or happiness.
The frequency of fear
Did you know there is a frequency of fear? David R. Hawkins developed the Map of Consciousness and based it on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 1000.
On this scale, “Enlightenment” is the highest frequency, ranging from 700 to 1000, and, not surprisingly, fear is one of the lowest frequencies at 100. According to the scale, in a state of fear, the most common emotional state is anxiety.
Switch off
Many people today are suffering from extreme levels of fear because of the endless fear narrative preferred by the mainstream media. The good news is that you can switch off the TV and phone.
You often hear people referring to themselves as “news junkies.” If you delve deeper, you’ll often find that those same people are in a constant state of anxiety about things happening in the world—often things they can’t do anything about. This is a particularly difficult aspect of 21st-century fear. We are being bombarded with information, and if we don’t find ways to filter it and take control of the information flooding in, we will quickly become emotionally overwhelmed.
Fear as a weapon
Fear is the most uncomfortable of all human emotions. It is such an unpleasant experience that people will do almost anything to stop feeling it.
This is well known and can be used to manipulate large groups into doing things they would otherwise never consider. It’s a collective desire to be released from the state of fear. As mentioned, fear can easily override your rational mind. In contrast, Ernest Hemingway once said that bravery is simply the ability to suspend your imagination. Unfortunately, the 21st century is dominated by visual images and imagination, making it much more difficult to suspend our imagination.
Our society feels fear collectively
As mentioned earlier, the imaginative mind is what controls pervasive and imagined fears, and these types of fears can last an entire lifetime. If we consider this from a global human perspective, the loss of human potential to fear is astonishing. It is so sad.
The often visual and imaginative mind is the part of the mind that pictures terrible things happening to us, such as losing loved ones, our homes being destroyed, our cities or country being in danger, or politicians making terrible decisions. The list goes on.
Once upon a time, information was limited. Consequently, the general population had a limited understanding of the world around them. In the 21st century, all you need is a smartphone to have the world and the entirety of human history in your back pocket. It is estimated that the average smartphone owner has more information at their disposal than the president of the United States had in the 1970s.
Unfortunately, much of this information predisposes us to fear, and this fear can quickly spread as a society-wide experience.
Fear spreads through collective anxiety
Our imaginative and fear-driven minds, as mentioned above, are constantly triggered by what we watch. In a society that generally experiences free-floating anxiety, that anxiety often attaches itself to other expressions of fear in an attempt to relieve the sensations.
During large events, like the 2020 pandemic, many people had strong reactions because, in their minds, this was something tangible to attach their anxiety to, something real, even though many of them were not in risk groups. This is the most destabilizing aspect of general fear. You only need to be in a state of free-floating anxiety for that experience to be manipulated and attached to something that may not be a direct threat.
It makes us sound very vulnerable, does it not? We are. Unless we manage our personal anxiety, we cannot handle the wider anxiety of society.
Breaking the cycle of fear
In 2025, new fears have taken over, and once again, the free-floating and society-wide sense of anxiety will attach itself to another big event. The good news is that it is a cycle the individual can break by understanding their own fear response.
Returning to smartphones, something we can all benefit from is guarding ourselves against the overwhelming wave of 21st-century information that creates an unhealthy experience of fear.
The psychology of fear
What is the psychology behind this? On a societal level, fear must be general and somewhat vague to provoke a widespread response. It must have enough variance for many individuals to feel some kinship with the fear but not be so specific that it excludes too many people.
Interestingly, the main difference in the fear response within the general population is the ability to retain control of the rational mind. It is also the ability to suspend imagination. Some people have this skill to a greater or lesser extent than others.
To develop the skill of retaining your rational mind, you need to practice a little. In essence, you must expose yourself to some level of danger to gain perspective on how to handle fear. Like any skill, you need to practice mastering the wave of emotions. In 1971, Martin Seligman proposed the theory that fears are related to survival instincts rather than everyday events. This means that we can become very fearful, even when actual events are happening in other countries.
Can hypnosis help a person understand and deal with their fear?
Hypnosis is highly effective for addressing fear, both individually and in group settings. We can use hypnosis to visualize actual fears, rather than the floating fear response, and drill down into the individual motivations of clients. We can also desensitize clients who may be living in a general state of fear and help them visualize more positive outcomes.
In hypnosis, we often work with primal fear caused by experiences during a client’s formative years. A client may be experiencing deep feelings of rejection or sadness, and when we explore further, we often find that something from their childhood has left them feeling afraid or unloved. Experiences before the age of three are powerful and often burn deeply into the subconscious.
This is when the hypnosis technique of regression is so useful and necessary. (I have written two articles on regression, which are available on my Brainz page.)
In regression, we take the hypnosis client back to when they first experienced fear. This experience often sows the seeds of vulnerability to other fears as they grow older. I believe these early experiences explain why some people are deeply affected by global events while others remain relatively calm.
The power of hypnotic regression therapy
In hypnotic regression therapy, we take the client back to their formative years. This can be highly emotional. Sometimes clients cry, shake, or express deep emotions as they revisit past experiences. Often, parents are involved, either directly or due to neglect, creating a significant emotional reaction. Early formative experiences can become deeply ingrained, making it difficult for adults to understand what is happening in their lives and what they need to do to break patterns.
Once we identify the first of these experiences, we have many techniques to guide the adult client under hypnosis to reframe the experience, take control as an adult, and even energetically connect with their younger self. Many clients feel great compassion for their younger selves and visualize themselves hugging and comforting their childhood self as the adult they are now. This can be hugely cathartic and bring great relief.
There is also an opportunity to understand the motivations of caregivers—often parents, but sometimes teachers, family members, or other adults. This can bring great relief, as clients are able to express the feelings they had and what those experiences meant for them. Interestingly, many clients also develop compassion for their parents, realizing they were part of a wounded system. This realization is another source of great relief and an opportunity for change and growth.
Are there other things I can do?
There are several useful techniques to manage fear, such as breathing through it, challenging it rationally, writing fears down, and allowing it to flow through and out of you. Another technique is simply recognizing what the experience is and naming it.
Laugh and the world laughs with you
One of the most effective techniques is laughing at irrational fears. Sounds crazy? It is because laughter activates other parts of the brain and allows the rational mind to reassert itself. Once that happens enough, the fear tends to lessen.
There are many ways to generate laughter. There are even laughter clubs and groups available, or you can start your own. Groups love to laugh together.
In hypnosis, clients sometimes spontaneously start laughing after they have processed their pain. It is a beautiful part of the session and brings great perspective.
Advice for the 21st century: keep laughing.
Heidi Kyle, Hypnotherapist & Counsellor
Heidi Kyle is a well-known hypnotherapist and counsellor in private practice in the incredible Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa. Heidi started her career in the corporate world in London and has since used her experience to craft a unique style in the helping professions. With hypnosis and our shared consciousness being the next frontier of evolving humanity, Heidi has developed the "Centred Consciousness" approach to take back our power in our lives and to understand our own unique role in the human story. Heidi's mission is to bring about change in the human psyche to benefit all. Heidi is currently working on her first book "Journeys in Hypnosis".
