No need to be cowed by cows

Joy Gower

My most interesting case so far has been around a phobia about cows. The client presented with this fear and said it was spoiling her holidays with her husband and friends as they all had to protect her from the cows in the fields.

I noticed that she did not display any fear whilst we were talking, even though I frequently discussed cows. I asked her if she had any other fears and she said yes she was afraid of heights too, and would not even allow her husband to look over cliff edges. She described the feeling as one of knees shaking and tightness in her chest.

She could not find any reason why the cows were upsetting her so much, although she did say that when she was small, cows would come into the garden, so perhaps she had developed the fear from then.

I used ideomotor signals to tell me when this fear first started, and had a good idea already that she was not as afraid of cows as something else, and that the cow phobia arose from another significant emotional event that had happened sometime in her life.

Sure enough, the ideomotor signals went back to age four, and had nothing to do with cows at all, or heights. She was playing hide and seek and went into an airing cupboard that a had hot water tank and clean clothes in. This was a big space as she could walk to the back of the tank. Somehow, the door shut and she was trapped in there in the pitch dark and felt terrified.

Eventually the door opened and her sister was standing there laughing at her crying. My client did not tell her mother about the incident as she felt sure her mother would also laugh at her. 50

Going through that event again, [in hypnosis] and this time with her telling herself at a younger age that although it was a bad experience, she was okay now, and she would be protected and that all was well, that fear went away.

We went to before that event and there was no fear, so we moved on. Then her unconscious mind went to another event. She was in her teens and in Italy. She went to a toilet and went to pull the chain and the whole cistern came away and fell down. She panicked and felt as though the door was locked and that she could not get out.

Again she felt trapped. We went through that whole sequence bit by bit, and she realised that the door was not jammed at all, it was her fear that was jammed up with terror.

She went on to say that thinking about it rationally, she realised that yes it was a nasty experience but if she had been locked in, someone would have come to rescue her eventually, and she could stay calm and all would be well.

Again that fear went away, so we bought her back to now and then out into the future. I asked her now how she would feel about cows, and got her to walk through a field, and it was fine. I then asked her to imagine she was on a cliff walking along, and without me saying anything, she looked over and saw the view without fear.

She was amazed later to realise just how an old fear from the past had caused her to feel this way now. She came back for a final appointment and said that she had been on the London Eye [ferris wheel] with no fear whatsoever, and was about to go on a walking holiday and would send me a picture of her sitting on a cow.

This case was a valuable lesson to always look for the first significant emotional event, it may have nothing to do with the fear they present to you.

Joy Gower 51

Dial House

79 Plumstead road

Thorpe End

Norwich

Norfolk NR 13 5BU UK 52