What is an allergy?
It is an extreme physical reaction to something that one or more of our senses comes into contact with.
For example, by touching a dog, or eating a tiny amount of peanut, or smelling pollen, or experiencing a sudden temperature change. These things should not be a threat to the human body, yet for some reason they cause a huge reaction.
The body constantly assesses external factors so as to protect against the harmful ones – and that makes perfect sense. But what if the reaction to a perceived threat is far, far too extreme – how is that helping the individual?
I first started wondering about the mind-body connection when the daughter of a close friend came for help in April 2010. She had a peanut allergy that had then developed into a reaction to many other foodstuffs.
In just one session of hypnotherapy the cause of the peanut allergy was found and reframed, and since then she has been able to eat anything without reaction.
So surely our mind controls the physiological reaction to certain stimuli, and it must do so for specific reasons. Find out the reason for the reaction, and the reaction can be removed or controlled. Hypnotherapy can do that.
And to illustrate this further, a young man with a violent reaction to dogs and dog hair came for help. His new girl friend had a dog and just one dog hair on her or the furniture would cause his body to react. One session of hypnotherapy cured him of this illogical over-reaction. In hypnosis he recalled being attacked by a dog at an early age, and the event was reframed and put back into proper perspective.
So the mind is there to protect us, and it sets up protection mechanisms to warn us of things that could potentially be harmful. But protections put in place at an early age are often just left in place – they are not updated as the individual grows. Hypnotherapy can allow and cause those protections to be updated.