Sara Latta - Scared Stiff: Everything You Need to Know About 50 Famous Phobias

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

Norman Vincent Peale

I f you have a phobia or a panic disorder, first of all, know that you are not alone. As much as possible, try not to let the fact that you have a specific fear become a further source of worry. The good news is that phobias are highly treatable. Studies show that treatment is successful for as many as 90 percent of anxiety disorders; most people can see improvement within months, weeks, or sometimes even days. And if you deal with a phobia early on, you can prevent it from becoming more serious. Sometimes its possible for people to overcome their phobias, especially object-specific phobias, on their own. Other phobias, including social phobias or more general anxiety disorders, often require professional help to overcome. However, seeking help is never wrong. Make sure loved ones and family members know whats going on, then enlist their help for dealing with the fear and perhaps also get the help and advice of a trained therapist.

Remember: Not all phobias are created equal. Some are much easier to manage than others. Sometimes its relatively easy to avoid what you fear, and the impact on your life may be minimal. Someone may have a morbid fear of sharks, but if they live far from the ocean and dont swim anyway, then the fear may rarely come up. When deciding what to do, consider to what degree the phobia interferes with your daily life: Do you experience it daily, weekly, monthly, or less often? Does it cause a lot of worry simply to have it? Does it keep you from doing things youd otherwise want or need to do? And/or do your feelings of panic or anxiety seem serious enough that they might be endangering your health? If you answer yes, or are not sure, seek the advice of a professional therapist.

Here are some of the techniques that therapists use to help their clients overcome their fears. You can try these on your own or with the help and guidance of someone else.

Maybe youve heard of Pavlov and his drooling dogs. Ivan Pavlov, who was studying the digestive systems of dogs, knew that dogs drooled in anticipation whenever they saw or smelled food. Then he noticed that the dogs also began drooling whenever they saw anyone wearing a lab coat. It turned out that the people who fed the dogs always wore lab coats, so every time the pooches saw a lab coat, they were convinced that food was on its way. Pavlov decided to test this conditioning, and he found that any stimulus, such as the sound of a bell, could, over time, trigger the drool reflex in dogs. Ding-dong: Alpo time!

Just about everyone has had the experience of being classically conditioned. When you were a kid, did you learn that tinkly, happy music outside your door in the summertime meant the arrival of the ice cream truckand a delicious treat? Does the sound of an ice cream truck today get your mouth watering? Thats a typical example of classical conditioning.

What does this have to do with treating phobias? Systematic desensitization therapy works on the same principle. Through conditioning, it creates a positive association where we now have a negative one. Then, when we are faced with something scary (like speaking in public, for example), we learn to replace our feelings of anxiety and panic with calm and relaxation.

Step Number One: Relax!

You may think you know how to relax: kick off your shoes, lie on the sofa, and watch reruns of your favorite TV show. Thats one way to unwind. But relaxation techniques teach you how to switch on those calm feelings anytime, anywhere, and when you really need themwhenever anxiety takes over.

Here are some relaxation tips. Experiment to see what works best for you, and practice for a few minutes every day, until you can easily put yourself into a relaxed state when you want.

1. Breathe deep, seek peace. This was a common greeting in the book Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, by James Gurney, but its a great mantra for calming down. When people are anxious, they tend to take rapid, shallow breaths. This just makes things worse. Practice taking slow, deep breaths: put your hand on your stomach, and count to three as you inhale from deep within your belly. Count to three again as you exhale completely. Feel your belly rise and fall with each breath. Put other thoughts out of your mind and focus only on your breath. You might try saying ah to yourself as you inhale and so as you exhale. Experiment and see what works for you.
2. When we are anxious, that fight-or-flight instinct makes us tense up. Try this: clench your jawa common anxiety response. Next, release and relax those same muscles. Feel the way your throat opens up, unclench your teeth, and remove your tongue from the top of your mouth. Practice clenching and relaxing different muscles.
3. Close your eyes and think of a place that you find especially peaceful. Use all of your senses to explore this special place. If you think of sitting beside a quiet brook, for example, you might see the sunlight sparkling on the water. Listen to the sound of the water splashing over the rocks. Imagine putting your bare feet in the brook and feel the water wash over them. Enjoy that feeling of relaxation, and keep it with you as you open your eyes.

Step Number Two: Rank Your Fears

Make a list of situations related to your phobia and rank them, giving the scariest situation a score of 100 and the least scary a score of 5. Try to come up with at least ten to twenty situations that are fairly evenly scattered along the scale. Write them down on index cards, then arrange them in order, from least to most scary.

Lets say you have a great singing voice, and youd love to play the lead in the school musical, but you experience a wave of topophobia (performance anxiety, ) whenever you try to sing in public. You might give singing in the shower a ranking of 5, while singing karaoke at home with a group of friends might merit a 50. Is singing in front of a packed auditorium the worst thing you can think of? Give it a 100.

Step Number Three: Face Your Fears

Get into a comfortable position and practice some relaxation techniques. Once youre good and mellow, pick up the lowest-ranked card. Close your eyes and imagine yourself in that situation for a few seconds; if you feel anxiety creep in, just focus again on your relaxation practice till youre calm. After a couple of minutes, pick up the same card and again imagine the scenario. Still feeling mellow? Great! Pick up the next card and do the same thing, moving progressively through more difficult situations. It may take a few sessions, maybe even a lot of sessions, to work through the entire scale of fears. Dont worry how long it takes. Any progress is good progress.

Heres another example of how it works. Say you suffer from cynophobia, or fear of dogs. While you find puppies no big deal, breeds that are known to be aggressive freak you out. So, your first card might be thinking of the cutest puppy in the world. Then, you might picture an older dog snoozing, then a dog chasing a ball, then you feeding a large dog. If you can stay in your mellow place with each one, continue imagining more difficult scenarios: say, a small dog barking excitedly, then a larger dog doing the same thing, and so on. At each point, dont move on until you can imagine the scene and still remain relaxed and calm.