Woman with phobia of balloons finally bursts her fear

THEY’RE the harmless inflatable staple of every party.

But a fear of balloons – or globophobia – nearly ruined Stephanie Parsons’ life.

Simply spotting one was enough to paralyse Stephanie, 33, with terror, sending her spiralling into a heart-racing panic attack.

The word globophobia originates from the Greek word globo meaning “spherical” and phobos which means “deep dread or fear”.

Sufferers – who include US chat show host Oprah Winfrey, 63 – feel morbid fear at the thought, sight, touch or even smell of balloons.

For Stephanie, her phobia was so bad she couldn’t even talk about them, let alone actually hold one or blow one up.

Stephanie, of Glenrothes, Fife, said: “They made my skin crawl. It made me feel physically sick. I felt like I would cry.

“I knew it was ridiculous but it didn’t stop it from happening. There was nothing I could do.”

Garden centre worker Stephanie first became traumatised by popping balloons at pals’ parties as a youngster – but her problem became more serious as she grew older, developing into a full-blown phobia.

“I didn’t like people jumping on them,” she added. “I could hold one back then but the older I got, the worse my phobia became.

“I didn’t like the unpredictability of them. That made me nervous.

“The sound of them squeaking made my skin crawl.”

As she grew older they even affected her work.

One job in a hotel was particularly terrifying – as birthday functions, Christmas and Hogmanay were always festooned with her spherical nightmare.

“I couldn’t go out and collect glasses because the balloons were there,” she recalls. “I’d get goosebumps.”

However, when people used to find out about her phobia, many laughed. Indeed, it became a running joke among family and friends.

“When I was expecting my daughter a friend burst a balloon as I was going into a room and I got such a fright I wet myself,” she said.

Stephanie realised just how much her fear had taken over her life when she became a mum following the birth of daughter Leah, now nine years old.

And, to top matters off – her dad even took up balloon modelling as a HOBBY so he could perform at Leah’s third birthday party dressed as a clown.

“He didn’t do it to upset me,” she said. “He knew Leah would love it.”

If Leah wanted to bring a balloon home from a friend’s party Stephanie would insist she hide it in the car boot so it wasn’t near her.

But Stephanie, who also has a three-year-old son called Logan, is hoping her fear of balloons is now in the past after undergoing hypnotherapy.

A video recorded by Transformations hypnotherapists, in Fife, shows Stephanie going under hypnosis and then handling balloons, blowing one up and bursting it without suffering her usual symptoms.

Marina Collins of Transformations said she used a method called kinetic shift, which involves confronting a phobia with your “eyes open” to treat Stephanie.

She said: “You learn a phobia very fast and your subconscious can learn to change just as quickly.

“It’s good to see when people see the change in themselves.”

A relieved Stephanie said: “It’s made a big difference. Instantly, the fear of these harmless things was gone.

“I can see a balloon and it doesn’t bother me.

“Logan turns four in May so I’m going to see if I can finally fill my living room with balloons.”