How to Overcome a Phobia

When I was young, I had a phobia of dogs. Every time a dog ran toward me barking, I panicked. Afterwards, I would become angry. I would reproach myself for panicking. The anger exasperated the problem. This article describes how I overcame my phobia.

How does panic become a spontaneous reaction to an event? It happens gradually. Consider a woman who is afraid of mice. She screams and jumps up on a table or chair every time she sees a mouse. Each time she does this, she is training her mind and her body how to respond to the event. Soon the response becomes spontaneous. She does it before she realizes what she is doing. The whole situation appears hopeless to the person suffering from a phobia. Facing the phobia will cause more panic if the proper measures are not taken.

I found that people who try to persuade others to face their phobias often forget to give the most important instruction. Then they are surprised when the person panics again. That most important instruction is one simple word: Relax.

An effective way to overcome a phobia is to reverse your spontaneous reaction to the object of your fears. You need to retrain your mind and body how to react to the situation that causes you to panic. Here is how I conquered my phobia of dogs. I did it in accordance with instructions from a Psychologist.

I would sit down in a chair and repeatedly tell myself to relax. I would take even breaths and hold one hand horizontal in the air. Then I'd try to visualize the word "relax" in my mind. My hand was a good indication of how relaxed I was. Relaxation is the key to reversing your spontaneous reactions because your mind is most susceptible to new ideas when you are relaxed. When I was totally relaxed, I would imagine that a dog was approaching me. This took a lot of effort at first. Sometimes I would close my eyes and visualize a dog I had recently encountered. I would imagine the dog barking and growling at me. If I got anxious or if my hands started shaking, I would repeatedly tell myself to relax. I would tell myself to stay calm. When I was totally relaxed, I would say to myself. "The next time I encounter a dog, I will relax. I will not panic. I will not run away. I will relax." Then I would repeat the whole process over and over again.

Every day I would repeat the process for about 15 minutes. I was training my mind and my body how to react to a dog. Eventually relaxation became a spontaneous reaction to encountering a dog. Three weeks after I started this therapy, my girlfriend opened her front door to find me sitting on the porch petting the dog I had feared so badly in the past. Yes, my legs were shaking. But I was not panicking.

As I continued my use of this method, I found it easier and easier to control my fears and phobias. Today, I rarely need to tell myself to relax. The relaxation is spontaneous.

I also learned that there are certain commands almost every dog understands. One day while I was walking in a local park, a dog came running toward me barking. I stopped and stood perfectly still while the dog charged me and then prepared to charge again.

"No!" I yelled in a sharp loud voice, "Sit!"
The dog sat down and moaned. Then the dog got up.

"No! Sit!"

The dog was confused and sat down again. Every time the dog got up to charge me, I repeated the same commands. Eventually the owner came and took the dog away.

I learned another method of handling dogs from my father. One day, two large dogs were running toward him. He picked up a piece of metal and started banging it against a metal fence. Dogs hate the sound of metal against metal.

A friend of mine always carried a small plastic bottle of ammonia when he rode his bike. If a dog came after him, he would spray the ammonia on the ground. The smell of ammonia would confuse the dog. The dog would smell it and walk away.

Understanding how dogs react to things increased my confidence in myself when dealing with dogs. Learning how to increase my control of the situation made me more comfortable and enhanced the results of the method I used to overcome phobias.

I became comfortable enough to actually own a dog. When my wife and I were training our dog, Penny, not to chew our socks, we used a metal can containing pennies to emphasize our command not to chew the socks. It also worked when we wanted the dog to stop barking. We would shake the can of pennies and say "No."

I began to apply the method of overcoming fears to other situations where I became nervous or uncomfortable. When I was working with high voltage, I would tell myself to relax. It worked. I no longer was visually tense.

While driving I would command myself to be alert. When going to a doctor or the dentist, I would command myself to relax and enjoy the visit.

The method has great therapeutic value. If you use this method, you may be very pleased with the results. Good luck! I hope this works for you as well as it has for me.