The following article is taken from ...



This won't hurt a bit ... The therapy that cured Chris of her fear of the dentist's chair

Chris Madeley flicks through her diary and excitedly points out future dental appointments she's made. No big deal to some people, but to Chris it's probably the biggest achievement of her life.

"I was terrified of going to the dentist, and my phobia got to such a pitch that I even contem-plated having my jaw broken which, looking at it now, was completely stupid and people thought I was crazy," says Chris, who felt having an operation under anaesthetic was the only way she'd be able to go through with it.

While most people fear going to the dentists, Chris took hers to the extreme. She boycotted going for 12 years simply because of a phobia which took over her life. But she was determined to beat it and the trigger was a persistent jaw problem which she knew needed treating. Her only hope for a cure was the dentist, yet her phobia made her too frightened to go.

"I knew I had to get it sorted out, but I was scared and nothing could break down that barrier."

But after hearing about Bradford therapist John Ellis, she contacted him to see if he could help her confront her fear which, he believes, stems from her childhood visits to the dentist.

"I went as a child because I had a lot of problems. I had a narrow mouth and had to have a lot of teeth taken out," says Chris who noticed her phobia getting worse as she got older.

"My hands would be really cold and wet in the waiting room, and I would shake." "I'm quite a laid-back person, but the dentist fear was starting to affect my life and more."

And that's why she decided not to go, until her jaw condition became so bad there was no other way round it. Then she knew she had to kick the phobia and get her life back on track. "I was getting to the desperate stage," says Chris. "I just got to the stage where I feared my mouth wouldn't stay open." John, who's also a master practitioner of neurolinguistics, used a technique on Chris which he specialises in for helping to get rid of phobias known as Time Line Therapy TM.

He explains how the procedure basically allows clients to release their phobic reactions from their memories of past events. He also gives a cast-iron guarantee the phobia will never return.

But the key thing for John is he has to know his client desperately wants to be phobia-free, otherwise there's no point in them going through the procedure because it works by focusing on the unconscious mind.

John explains to the client a little about how their unconscious mind works during the consultation, then he'll chat to the client to find the root cause of the problem which he can then start to tackle.

Amazingly Chris's lifelong phobia was eradicated in a matter of two hours and she also tackled a few other hidden phobias too. "I'd been paranoid about moths and that went back to my childhood," says Chris, who recalls the insects flying in through her open bedroom window and gathering round her night light when she was a child. This ultimately left her with a fear of insects.

"I also used to have nightmares that somebody had broken a mirror and made me eat it. It was all in bits in my mouth," says Chris, who admits her life has changed since therapy.

"Now I've got that feeling of exhilaration every time I ring the dentist for my appointment. I just feel really pleased with myself.

"It's such a liberation, like I've been let out of prison," says Chris.

And John is confident Chris's phobia won't return.

"You get rid of the main problem, and the smaller problems which have attached to it disappear," he says.

"And once it's gone it's gone for good because it is your unconscious mind which is getting rid of it. That allows it to disappear."

But why do people have phobias? According to John, it may be triggered by a childhood experience which lingers on.

"Right at the outset, something significant happens to a person and the unconscious mind wants to protect that person. The behaviour it starts is probably OK just at that time, but it's when they are growing up that the behaviour starts holding us back," says John, who started practising four years ago.

His fascination with how people's minds work stems from seeing the vast change in a colleague who'd undergone the Dale Carnegie training course, which basically focuses on leadership, sales, inter-personal and communication skills essential to improving performance of individuals and teams in organisations.

That prompted John to embark on a nine-day self-development course in Hawaii, and it's there where he was introduced to the Time Line Therapy TM procedure.

"I learned about things there that had such a profound effect on me that I decided I'd like to study it myself." Recalling his experience, he told how he had to overcome great mind challenges like scaling a 60ft telegraph pole and firewalking, which involved tramping 25ft over red hot burning embers barefoot. "Doing that with no marks on my feet had a profound effect on me and I realised that the mind is capable of controlling the body" says John, who continued studying the programme when he returned home.

"It's a very powerful way of changing people. It allows them to release unpleasant emotions and get on and live their life," says John who, after qualifying as a master of neurolinguistics, decided to set up his own practice based at the Bradford Clinic for Alternative Medicine in Saltaire.

He was confident the technique could help sufferers overcome their phobias and he's proved it.

"In Chris's case there was a fear and with the procedure and the co-operation of the unconscious mind, Chris was able to let it go," says John, who's also tackled height and flying phobias as well as agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) and arachnophobia (fear of spiders).

"It gives me a buzz when I see people walking out of my office with joy on their faces."

But John believes we can all achieve great things.

"I have a belief that people are capable of doing far more and what I am doing helps them to achieve more."

True Life by Sally Clifford