How My Mum’s phobia Disappeared After 40 Years: A Personal Story of Hypnosis and the Cascade Effect

When One phobia Heals, Others Sometimes Follow

When I first began practicing hypnosis, my mum wasn’t convinced.

Not because she didn’t believe in me, but because, like many parents, she found it hard to imagine her own child supporting her in such a deep and personal way. Hypnosis felt unfamiliar, and at first, she preferred to keep some distance. And if you are a therapist you know the family is your most difficult client. Family members are often the most difficult clients in hypnosis because emotional history, fixed roles, blurred boundaries, and power dynamics undermine trust, authority, safety, and the ability to surrender, causing the subconscious to resist change. Hypnosis requires the client to temporarily accept the practitioner’s guidance.

Family members already have a fixed perception of you (child, sibling, partner), which unconsciously blocks therapeutic authority.

“You can’t guide me, I know you too well.”

With strangers, defences can soften.

With family, the psyche stays guarded to protect identity and power dynamics that have existed for years.

With family, there’s a fear of:

• being emotionally exposed

• being judged later

• losing privacy or autonomy

So the subconscious says “not safe.”

Hypnosis requires openness; family relationships trigger control and resistance.

For a long time, she watched from the sidelines.

Then one day, everything changed.

She came to me and asked me to try with her phobia she had for 40 year since my brother was born. Her body would tense, her heart would race, and anxiety would take over despite knowing logically that she was safe. This time, she was ready and she asked me if I could help.

I explained the process gently. She listened. And for the first time, she trusted me enough to fully follow the instructions.

We worked together using hypnosis, focusing on helping her nervous system move out of alarm and back into a state of safety and calm. There was no force, no “fighting” the fear, just allowing the body to relearn safety.

And it worked.

The fear she came for disappeared.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Some time later, she casually mentioned something unexpected: another long-standing fear, one that had nothing to do with what we worked on, had also gone. A fear she had carried since childhood had simply… dissolved.

She was surprised. I wasn’t.

What Happened? The Cascade Effect

This phenomenon is often referred to as the cascade effect or root-level resolution.

From a psychological and neurobiological perspective, many fears are not isolated problems, they are expressions of the same underlying mechanism: a nervous system stuck in a state of threat.

When hypnosis is effective, it doesn’t just target a single symptom. It works at the root level, helping the brain and body update their understanding of safety.

Why Fears Sometimes Dissolve Naturally

Fears are stored and maintained through emotional learning circuits involving the amygdala and autonomic nervous system. When a person repeatedly experiences fear, the body learns to respond automatically, even when danger is no longer present.

In hypnosis:

• The nervous system enters a regulated, receptive state

• Emotional memories can be reprocessed

• The body learns a new response: “I am safe now”

Once this learning occurs, the brain often generalises it.

This is known in psychology as stimulus generalisation, and in therapeutic practice as a cascade effect, where resolving one core fear leads to the spontaneous reduction of others linked to the same emotional circuitry.

In simple terms:

When the root is healed, multiple branches can change, even fears held for decades.

Why This Matters

This doesn’t mean hypnosis “magically fixes everything.”

It means that when we work deeply and respectfully with the nervous system, changes can appear beyond the fear you consciously targeted.

Importantly, this is not suppression or avoidance. If it were, the fear would return. Instead, what disappears is the need for the fear response.

A Personal Reflection

For me, this experience was meaningful not just as a practitioner, but as a daughter.

It marked a moment of trust, healing, and understanding, both personally and professionally.

It reminded me why I do this work.

Because sometimes, when we help the body feel safe again, it knows exactly what to let go of, even fears held for more than 40 years.

Could Hypnosis Help You?

If you or a loved one struggle with fear, anxiety, or old patterns that feel stuck, hypnosis may help your nervous system find calm and safety, sometimes in ways you wouldn’t expect. Only when you are really ready to let go.

Book a session today to explore how root-level fear healing and the cascade effect could gently dissolve fears in your life.