Phobias
Hypnosis for fear of public spaces
Comfortable in crowds and open spaces alike.
This session is for the dread of leaving the house and the feeling that the world is too open or too crowded.
It spends most of the time rehearsing a slow walk through a busy street or a wide square, keeping your feet on the ground and your eyes looking ahead.
The walk to the shop takes a long time when you stop at every junction to check how fast your heart is beating.
Crowded rooms feel like they have no walls to hold the air in, and open parks feel like there is nothing between you and the sky.
You plan routes around the busy streets just to keep the feeling of panic at a distance.
What’s in it
A grounded, unhurried ease in open spaces and crowds alike, so the world feels like somewhere you belong.
Why do it
Comfort in public is something the nervous system relearns gently, step by step, and each session makes the next outing feel a little more ordinary.
- Theme
- Phobias
- Delivery styles
- 3
- Lengths
- Quick ~10mStandard ~20mDeep ~45m
- Ends
- Calm and present
- Stages
- 4
- On this shelf
- 12 sessions
Timeline: Start to Finish
The build is designed to keep you feeling safe while the imagery moves outside. It spends the middle block gently widening the view of the world.
3 of the 4 stages are named techniques with a published origin, credited under each.
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InductionStage 16 min
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
A classic head-to-toe relaxation. Tense and release, or simply soften, each muscle group in sequence.
After Edmund Jacobson PMR (1929); Dave Elman Hypnotherapy · what progressive muscle relaxation is
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DeepenerStage 23 min
Staircase Descent
Visualized stairs descending into a deeper level of trance. Each step takes you down.
After Ledochowski, Deep Trance Training Manual
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Suggestion ScriptStage 310 min
Fear of Public Spaces — Balanced
-
AwakeningStage 42 min
Calm Alert Awakening
Awake and present, but calm rather than energized. Good for evening or pre-meeting use.
After Yapko, Trancework
Three ways to say it
The same goal, written three ways. You pick the one that sounds like something you would believe — and you can hear a different one tomorrow without rebuilding anything.
Balanced
A warm, gentle session that builds safety step by step and lets calm grow as the world opens up. The default.
Future self
Meet your easy, out-and-about self a week, a month, a year ahead and bring that calm back.
New identity
Step into being someone at home in open and crowded spaces now, not working toward it.
Where it sits
Specific fears, worked one at a time.
Before you press play
- This one asks for a bit of care. In the app it opens with a consent step before anything plays.
Hypnosis is not for everyone. If you have epilepsy, a psychotic illness, or you are under psychiatric care, talk to your clinician before using this — here or anywhere.
Why this works — and what the research actually says
Group-level, not session-level: no study has tested this exact session, and we will not pretend otherwise. Every source below was opened and read on 2026-08-25 before it was quoted.
Why do it as hypnosis?
The panic happens in the open air and in the middle of the crowds, but the rehearsal of it happens long before you leave the house. You have already imagined the worst version of the walk many times.
This puts that time to a different use, letting you sit with the idea of crowds and open spaces when nothing is actually happening. It is a way of being with the world without having to react to it.
Hypnosis and anxiety, measured
Worth knowing: The same analysis found hypnosis worked better as an addition to another psychological treatment than on its own. It is not evidence that hypnosis alone beats therapy.
The exact wording and figures
A meta-analysis of 17 trials found that at the end of treatment the average person receiving hypnosis reduced anxiety more than about 79% of control participants (weighted effect size 0.79).
At the longest follow-up, across seven trials, that rose to about 84% (effect size 0.99).
Fifteen studies and 17 trials, screened from 399 records, in the field's main peer-reviewed journal.
Valentine KE, Milling LS, Clark LJ, Moriarty CL (2019). The Efficacy of Hypnosis as a Treatment for Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. PMID 31251710.
abstract free; full text paywalled
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