As a child, Mavis Driver would not go into the reptile house at the zoo.

It was not that she disliked iguanas or chameleons, and she didn’t mind tarantulas or turtles. It was snakes that set her teeth on edge.

“I couldn’t go in there, I would have been terrified,” she says, “I could not even watch snakes on TV, and if one came on unexpectedly I had to close my eyes or quickly look away. The sight of a snake used to turn my stomach, I didn’t even like to think about them.”

Mavis suffered from ophidiophobia, an intense fear of snakes – a condition whereby even a picture of a snake in a magazine is disturbing.

“I cannot explain how I felt or why, but it was dreadful,” she says. “I hated the look of them, and the way they moved.”

As she grew older her fear did not diminish. And, occasionally, she came across the reptiles in the most unlikely places. “I used to work at Clayden’s womenswear shop in Market Street.

“One lunchtime I was walking past the Wool Exchange when I saw a snake. I couldn’t believe my eyes and tore back into the shop. It turned out that it was real and had escaped from a pet shop.”

As the years went by, Mavis began to think about seeking help with her phobia. “My husband and I have a house in Turkey and I knew there were snakes around, so I wanted to be able to deal with that,” she says.

She sought help from Bingley-based hypnotherapist Patricia Jackson. “I’d worked with Patricia for a long time and didn’t realise I lived near her. When we got back in touch she gave me her card which I carried around until I spotted an article about her work in the T&A. I then booked an appointment.”

Patricia began by asking Mavis how she felt when she looked at a picture of a snake. “I told her I felt sick, and revolted,” recalls Mavis.

To help her, Patricia used emotional freedom techniques, known as EFT, which draw upon various areas of alternative medicine including acupuncture, neuro-lingustic programming and energy medicine. The client focuses upon a specific issue as tapping takes place on the end points of the body’s energy channels. She combined these techniques with hypnosis and past-life regression.

“I felt different after the very first visit,” recalls Mavis, “It was gradual, but over two or three visits I was able to release some emotions. Patricia asked me about any early experiences of snakes in frightening situations, but I didn’t have any.

“I told her I remembered reading that if you’re in a darkened room with snakes you can’t see them but they can see you – that added to the fear.”

She adds: “I don’t fear spiders, and I’m not squeamish – it was just snakes.”

Regression techniques revealed a link to a cave. “For some reason, I can’t explain, I remembered snakes in a cave and the fear that image brought. There was no other reason for it, and I still have a vision of the cave – it is quite amazing.”

After a couple of sessions with Patricia, Mavis was handed a toy snake, and was amazed to find that she didn’t panic. “It moved like a real snake, but I coped with it. It felt okay. There was no way I could have done that before.” She also found she was able to look at pictures of snakes.

But the real test came a few weeks later when Mavis was on holiday in Tenerife. “I was sitting beside the pool with a friend when a man walked up to us with a big snake wrapped around his neck. It was huge.

“Normally, I would have got up and run away but I just looked at it. I put my hand up to stop the man from coming over to us, but I felt fine – I didn’t experience that awful sense of fear. I couldn’t touch one, but they don’t bother me now.”

Mavis is the third person with the condition that Patricia – who tackles a range of phobias from flying to fear of heights – has treated.

“I haven’t seen it often, but then we rarely see snakes in everyday life. The most common condition I treat is fear of spiders.”

The most unusual fear a client has presented is that of ticking clocks.

“With Mavis, there was a past life link with a cave which she hadn’t known about, but which proved to be vital in explaining her fear.”

She stresses that the client must want to change, and must trust the hypnotist. “They are in a susceptible state, but can also stop the process at any time.

“If you detach the person from the cause of their fear and put the image onto a screen, you can turn it into a cartoon figure that is not threatening,” she says.

After employing techniques similar to those used on a tape recorder to wipe unwanted images from the subconscious mind, the fear subsides and eventually disappears.

“The use of toy snakes is my way of testing them,” she adds. “Mavis can now face snakes, and look at pictures of them with no fear.”

For more information, visit hypnotherapyhelps.org; e-mail patricia@hypnotherapyhelps or ring (01274) 510773.