The human mind has an amazing ability to learn fast ... maybe even faster than you believe possible.

In fact, this is exactly how you "learn" phobias. And you can remove your phobia just as quickly.

Imagine stepping across a snake and then having to think "Hmmm, I wonder if I should be afraid or wary of this snake. It may be poisonous or it may be harmless. Hmmm, let me think about it."

We all now that this doesn't happen, does it. Thank goodness!

Instead a signal gets sent to our brain to immediately respond. The "fight or flight" response kicks in straight away, bypassing the slow conscious response.

It may well be that the snake is harmless. And our conscious brain can determine that once the immediate danger is out of the way.

So what happens in a phobia?

The phobic response occurs naturally. Everything we experience passes through a part of our brain called the amygdola which compares our current ongoing experience with all of our previous past experiences.

If there is a match between our current experience and a past trauma then the "fight or flight" response is triggered automatically - our breathing gets heavy, we start to perspire, our heart-rate increases, the adrenalin begins to pump through our body. Hey, we've spotted something that caused us a problem in the past, and now we need to get away from it!

Which is why some people can have phobias of such strange things - balloons, clowns, feathers.

We all know that it is ridiculous to be afraid of balloons, don't we. Yes, consciously we do. But it has nothing to do with the conscious process of thinking. The phobic response is uncontrolable consciously.

Which is why hypnosis is so good at quickly and efficiently eliminating phobias.

Who's afraid of oranges?

My favourite phobic treatment to date has been a man who was afraid of oranges!

At some point in his past, a trauma occurred during which an orange or maybe several oranges appeared in the "picture". Perhaps the oranges were in a fruit bowl when his mother spilt hot milk on him.

I do not know.

The fact is we don't need to know the exact details of a trauma to fix the phobic response.

This man was cured in less than 20 minutes, having suffered with his phobia for over 20 years.

How much longer do you need to wait before you can have your 20 minute cure?