Teen with ghastly Halloween phobia driven to try hypnosis

Dylan Andrews has a fear of Halloween (Image: Steffi Andrews)A teenager with a phobia of all things Halloween will try hypnotherapy in a desperate bid to enjoy spooky festivities with his pals.Dylan Andrews, 14, becomes nauseous when he spots items such as scary decorations in shops – and can even start vomiting.The fear, known has samhainophobia – a fear of the October 31 celebnration – leaves him fearful of reacting badly in public so he stays at home on Halloween while his friends are out partying, avoids dressing up and doesn’t take part in trick or treating.Now mum Steffi, 48, has decided the unusual aversion needs tackling by experts – booking her son in for therapy, which will include hypnosis.Speaking from the family’s home in Abergavenny, south Wales, Dylan said: “I miss out a lot. My friends go to lots of parties and Halloween really is the best time of the year for teenagers, so it bugs me how I can’t enjoy it with them.”I feel really sick. It makes me feel so nauseous. So it is upsetting.”I hope something, like hypnotherapy, will work. Most things, this time of year, are covered in decorations in town so it is hard to go out.” Even the sight of pumpkins can leave Dylan (not pictured) anxious (Image: Reuters) I miss out a lot. My friends go to lots of parties and Halloween really is the best time of the year for teenagers, so it really bugs me how I can’t enjoy it with themDylan AndrewsSteffi, who is a photographer, said the trouble could have been caused by a Halloween stomach bug Dylan had when he was about six.She said: ‘I am desperate to help him. He’s a confident, outgoing and adventurous boy, and usually very active so it’s a shame.”When he was younger, we went to a restaurant for lunch and it was decorated for Halloween. “There were spider webs and skeletons. He had a stomach bug but we were unaware and he was later sick at home. Now he makes that connection.”He cannot look at pumpkins, for instance, without going as white as a sheet, and feeling nauseous and sick.’Hypnotherapy can be an effective method for coping with stress and anxiety. It uses hypnosis to try to treat conditions or change habits. A Halloween skeleton hangs on a tree (Image: Reuters)Dr Martyn Quigley, lecturer in Psychology at Swansea University, said people suffer certain phobias as a result of “traumatic experiences”.He said: “With traumatic experiences, you just have that one event and that can be sufficient for you to show fears of that for the rest of your life.”So you could go into a lift, and never have a bad experience and then have one bad experience, and that’s it for 50 years of your life. It seems odd because you may have had 1,000 experiences in a lift and it takes just that one experience to cause a phobia. “Simple phobias or specific phobias, as those terms are used interchangeably, particularly tend to occur during childhood or teenage years. Others tend to occur much later in life. You do tend to see them in childhood but they do tend to stick around, so this story is consistent to that.”The good news is all types of phobias are the psychological disorders which are the easiest to treat.”There are effective treatments for simple phobias, which are exposure-based treatments. There are a variety of different treatments but the key is a gradual exposure to the thing that person is scared of, in this case, Halloween.”Halloween derives from the pagan festival of Samhain, celebrated as early as 2,000 years ago to mark the night before the Celtic druids’ New Year.