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Top Five Fears

Our 5 Top Fears

By John Plester, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Norwich, Norfolk

Everybody has fears. It won't matter your geographical area, the year you were born, your skin colour or creed fear is a component of the human experience, it is a component of our make-up.

In fact, without it, our survival chances would be substantially reduced. Fear is meant to keep us safe, it stops us crossing a road when there are motor vehicles coming and it stops us touching a fire or going too close to the edge of a high cliff.

When fear is appropriate, it forces us to take steps to keep us safe, this is a natural and normal process. Fear is a normal and natural response to any situation that has a considerable component of danger. The fear reaction alerts us to potential danger in our surroundings.

Below are the top five fears that we all endure.


This is where we genuinely feel terrified of dying. When we are born our subconscious is designed to keep us alive, so, in all honesty, it would be daft not to have this fear to some degree. When we're confronted with any situation that has a significant amount of danger to our survival, we will increase our heart rate in preparation to take measures to ensure our survival.


This is about the fear of harm to our bodies that would harm our capabilities. The way that our body performs can have a big effect on our survival chances. So when we are concerned about animals and insects like bees, scorpions and even things like sharks and lobsters it is this fear that is in play.

Loss of Autonomy

This is an anxiety about losing control. Irrespective of whether that's through being paralysed, overcome or controlled by something which we have no control over.

Separation Anxiety

This is the fear of a loss of connection, or total disconnection from somebody or society itself. The fear of not being appreciated or being left out. It is this fear that is the root of plenty of social phobias that abound today.


This fear is about avoiding any scenarios where we might be embarrassed or humiliated. It is generated by potent feelings of self-disapproval and these thoughts can lower our self-worth, self-confidence and integrity so much that it seems like we have none at all.

These five fears are held deep inside our conscious and subconscious selves. Somewhere deep within you they sit and wait to help you when they're required.

If you think you are experiencing fear or anxiousness that troubles you considerably more than it should, it is time for you to take action and claim back your life. The basic five fears as listed above are there to keep us protected, alive and interacting in a constructive way towards ourselves and others.

If you are growing to be or have become an anxious person at inappropriate times, perhaps you could benefit from some professional guidance. A very worthwhile way to treat unwanted degrees of fear is by applying the powerful tools that hypnotherapy provides. We will probably all try to solve any unwanted fears by ourselves first, but on plenty of occasions we simply don't have the ability to resolve them because they are maintained at a subconscious level. This, however, is an area where hypnotherapy approaches excel.

I run a five session programme specifically to help eliminate fears and phobias integrating the leading edge therapy methods including Thought Field Therapy, NLP and Cognitive Hypnotherapy. Full details on this website. There is no need to suffer from unhelpful fears of phobias in this day and age, call or e mail me if you are ready to do something about them.

John Plester is the Founder of Norwich Hypnotherapy Practice and Principal Tutor of the East Anglian Institute of Hypnotherapy that have been established since 2001.

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National Health Service
Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council
East Anglian Institute of Hypnotherapy
Norwich Hypnotherapy Practice
Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming
National Council of Hypnotherapists
General Hypnotherapy Standards Council
Thought Field Therapy
Freedom Formula
Catalyst For Change
NLP Coaching
About John Plester
Tel 01603 626477