The difference between phobias and anxiety is that Phobias are when you see something and immediately you are overwhelmed with fear. Anxiety is a slower, gradual build-up of fear, where people go inside their minds and make pictures of terrible outcomes. In terms of phobias, the steps to overcoming them are really very simple.
People think they’re afraid of things like spiders or flying or going over to the heights or higher places having greater heights > feeling as they may not fall down. People think they are afraid of these things, but they are not. It’s neither the object nor the height that makes them afraid, it’s their brain. Why don’t other persons in the same or similar situation, don’t feel that way.
cure of the fear of phobia, we will have to understand why an overwhelming is created, out of nothing, all of a sudden. We have already discussed in the previous chapters effects of amygdale, whereby, a person, out of nothing, when watching a movie or seeing an object, out of his imagination, start feeling similar symptoms as he/she himself or herself is involved, the fear therefore overwhelmingly takes off out of nothing, without any rational or logic. The basic reason is that there are far more projections from the amygdale to the cerebral cortex than vice versa. In other words, somebody having a fear response is responding to a very small portion of their whole experience. You can treat somebody by making him/her realize the embarrassment one has to undergo and suffer when he/she faces that in others presence.
The first step, you can take is to make the patient to see a black & white image of him/her just before having a phobic response. You need to pay a lot of attention at this point. Try to change his /her phobias color to black and white in patient’s imagination. In most cases, seeing a black & white image of themselves prevents the phobic response being triggered in the client. Neurologically speaking, the amygdale requires a ‘color’ Input from various visual cortices (V2 & V4) in order to be “phobic”.
In Step Two, ask him/her to imagine stepping out of her selves (in imagination) and going to a nearby safe place. Make patient to watch black & white movie of him/her. Practice it with the patient 4/5 times.
In Step Three, Ask him/her to Step back into self (in imagination) as he/she left the body in last step, at the end of movie, re-add and run backwards.
You have to be very care full throughout that the patient doesn’t suffer a phobic attack in the process; otherwise take a break and start it after some time.