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| Barlis authors one of many good books on how to overcome irrational fears. |
Phobia is the ancient Greek word for fear, but today we mainly use the term to describe an extreme or irrational fear of something most people would not see as at all dangerous or life threatening.
For example, claustrophobia is a fear of being in a closed in space like a closet or an elevator. Agoraphobia is an irrational fear of being in crowds, buses, planes, tunnels or bridges, especially places where one may fear being trapped or unable to escape. Glossophobia is an irrational fear of speaking in public, something some 40% of people deal with.
Rational fears are God-given gifts that can serve as a kind of alarm system to alert us to actual danger, but phobias can cause undue distress and anxiety and can be debilitating. Most of us have some irrational ones that we would clearly be better off without.
Among mine is the fear of diving headfirst off a diving board, something many can do without the slightest hesitation. Another is an aversion to touching snakes or certain kinds of rodents, like rats for example, or even mice. Fortunately, these are things I can normally avoid without their causing me any problems.
But if the only job I could find to provide for myself and my family was to serve as a lifeguard, or to work in a pet shop where I would need to handle pet snakes and rodents, I do know what I would need to do to overcome my phobia.
First, it's helpful to remember that all of us have already overcome multiple irrational fears since we were young. Some examples may be the fear of being alone in a house, to venture out alone in the dark, to get on a school bus and go to school for the first time, to drive on a public road or an interstate, or to travel by plane. We know, rationally, that all of these things can be considered safe, since the likelihood of being in an airline crash, as a case in point, is statistically far less than having a fatal accident on your way to and from the airport.
The steps in overcoming any or all irrational fears are actually quite simple, but can be far from easy. We need to first name and acknowledge the phobia, picture the desired fear-free outcome, then take deliberate steps toward them and refuse to move away from them or avoid them.
In the case of the fear of handling a snake in a pet shop, we might take the following steps:
1) Spend considerable time observing a harmless snake in its cage and gain an ability to maintain calm while imagining no longer being afraid of handling it.
2. Take time to observe someone else holding a snake, again imagining yourself having the same ability to do so without fear.
3. Repeatedly touch the snake while someone else is holding it, then have someone else hold the head end of the reptile while you hold the other end.
4. Have the other person remain present while you hold the snake by yourself, then release it and retrieve it yourself.
5. Repeat as often as needed, and with ever larger reptiles!
I can assure you this kind of step by step "desensitization" works. Remember, each of us has already overcome multiple fears through gradually moving ever closer to them rather than away from them, although we may not have always have been conscious of the steps we were taking.
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