Finally someone has the guts to say what we in the NLP community have been saying all along. Anxiety, shyness, and social phobia are not mental diseases. The new book by Christopher Lane, "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became A Sickness" exposes the behind the scenes collaboration of the Psychiatric establishment and the Pharmaceutical industry to create "billable" and "prescribable" labels for what used to be considered normal behavior. Lane points out that in the past "shyness" was considered eccentric at worst. Now it is considered a mental disease!

In my private practice as an NLP Master Practitioner I have discovered time and again that shyness, phobias, severe anxiety and panic attacks are the result of emotionally charged "one time learning events" and anticipating negative outcomes. In other words, these are patterns and habits of thought and focus not sickness. The first time I worked with a phobia/anxiety client, I simply followed the process taught to me by Dr. Tad James in my NLP Master Practitioner training course.

At 10:00 AM my client could bring himself to the verge of fainting by simply thinking about driving across a bridge. Even uttering the word "bridge" caused his palms to sweat and his face to pale. By 4:00 PM the fear response was gone and he could easily think and speak about bridges, heights and driving across bridges with no emotional charge. That evening he drove across a significant bridge. His mother, a passenger in the car was amazed. She had witnessed his severe bridge phobia for over 30 years. Later, at the party he went to, he went out on a second floor balcony without even thinking about it. Previously he would have had to hug the far wall to keep from fainting.

I thought perhaps this was a fluke. But from that point onward I have consistently been able to help my phobia and anxiety clients experience rapid relief without drugs and without weeks and weeks of therapy. Usually a single all day session with a few follow-ups is enough to give them total relief.

I have helped college students who couldn't raise their hand in class or say hi in the hall, nurses with test anxiety pass their boards, business professionals who couldn't pick up the phone or go to a networking meeting, people with severe germ phobias, bug phobias, driving phobias, dating phobias, you name it. Every single one of these cases was a pattern of thinking and focus. The client was using his or her thoughts to create an intense negative experience. I just taught them to use the same process they were already using but to get a different result.

But look in any psychology book and you will fail to see even a mention of NLP ( Neuro Linguistic Programming ), Time Line Therapy ™, Ericksonian hypnosis and EFT (emotional freedom technique). These are the tools I use every day to help people transform their shyness, anxiety or phobia and become comfortable doing the very things that used to frighten them. But these traditional sources have plenty to say about drugs and "desensitization." Before you start taking some medication with dubious effectiveness and onerous side effects or commit to years of weekly talk therapy, at least do some research!

"Google" NLP, Time Line Therapy or EFT. Read Christopher Lane's book, "Shyness, How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness" (Yale University Press).

The point is: You're not sick. Far from it. You may be sensitive, imaginative, intelligent and introverted (every one of my clients has fit that description). You may have had an intense, even traumatic "one time learning event" that has resulted in you doing your best to avoid a repeat of a certain situation. You may worry yourself sick or "freak out" about something that doesn't seem to bother anybody else. But you are not sick.

You are using your mind to make yourself miserable. Using NLP you can change that...Fast.