Word: phobias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That isn't a model of my brain that I feel especially comfortable with. I like to think of my brain as profound and mysterious, full of demons and neuroses and fascinating dreams that I can bore my co-workers with. But when you're fighting a phobia, CBT is your weapon of choice. It's reliable and well documented. Insurance companies love it. Often you can cure a phobia like mine in about 12 sessions...
Researchers at New York University have even gone beyond CBT. According to a study published in December in Nature, when a person's phobia gets activated, there's a period immediately afterward when the traumatic memory that the phobia is based on becomes vulnerable. During that time - which lasts about six hours - you can reshape the memory, rewrite it in a way that removes the fear. (See TIME's Wellness blog: "A Way to Rewrite Memories of Fear...
...that's all still in the realm of research. In my case, my psychiatrist - let's call him Dr. N - practices something called psychodynamic psychotherapy, which is more like psychoanalysis. But for the purposes of treating my phobia, he turned himself into a cognitive-behavioral therapist. For each session, I would arrive with groceries and watch while he ate them. I would calmly try to separate the sight and sound of a person eating from the fear it induced in me. I would try to retrain my brain to be unafraid of something that there was no reason...
...creature wanted to touch the milk, but if I tried, I could stop it. When I did, the fear went away. I practiced that - letting the creature reach for something, making it stop, making it back away. The better I got at controlling the creature, the easier my phobia was to control. I even talked to it. I asked it what it wanted and why it wouldn't leave me alone. It wasn't CBT, but it was working. (See TIME's Wellness blog: "The Psychology of Facebook Profiles...
...come when psychiatrists can wipe out phobias at will, like erasing a whiteboard. Who knows? But I suspect that my phobia is a more complicated animal than the ones they worked with at NYU. It goes back a lot further and down a lot deeper than colored cards and electric shocks...