The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners.

by Eva M. Clark

I read a very negative statement the other day in my local newspaper that prompted me to write this article:

“Allergies Never Go Away”.

That is the same thing many people think when it comes to anxiety, fears and phobias. But we know as hypnotherapists that those emotions can be changed and, sometimes, quite quickly. And so can allergies. To do that, however, we must first understand what an allergy really is:

Michael Levi, an award-winning immunologist, describes an allergy in the following way – “Allergies are formed when the immune system has an over-reaction – a phobic reaction- to a certain substance that is not inherently dangerous.”

Once the immune system has this response to a substance, it marks it as an ‘allergen’. From that moment on, any time we are close to or tasting that allergen, the immune system sets up its defense mechanisms against it and we experience ‘allergy’ symptoms.

What caused the immune system to create the phobia and mark something as dangerous? In my experience, I can tell you that the reasons are surprising and unexpected – an irrational childhood fear, a subconscious association with a parent’s allergies, a mistaken connection between a food item that was eaten during a very upsetting conversation, the comfort food one eats every time one is highly stressed, something that reminds the immune system of a painful divorce, superstitions, the exact type of grass on one’s mother-in-law’s enormous lawn…

So how do you eliminate these allergies? By treating it as a phobia and eliminating the immune system’s phobia of that substance.

There are many ways it can be done – desensitization, changing the meaning of the substance, associate the substance to something that is very similar yet it doesn’t consider dangerous, and any other techniques you’ve used with phobias.

I have found that treating an allergy as a phobia and eliminating the phobia not only helps my clients no longer over-react to cats, pollen, and bell peppers, its also possible to education the body to not over-react to cold temperatures in the case of Raynaud’s Syndrome.

So when you hear your clients complaining about those dreadful allergies that never go away, consider offering to change that.

Eva M. Clark, MA CHt, is a medical hypnotherapist trainer. She specializes in autoimmune disorders and chronic disease. For more information visit http://MINDbasedHealing.org and Healingmultiplesclerosis.com