Have you ever had a fear of something? A fear that is irrational but so bad that you cannot face the thing that frightens you? If you do, then you probably have a phobia. There are many types of phobia including clowns, spiders, heights, needles, flying, and dentists. However, it is possible to have a phobia of almost anything, and it can be so debilitating, it can cause severe problems dealing with everyday life. There are ways that you can try to overcome your phobias, and here are a few tips to help you.
Identify Your Fears
The first thing you need to do is to think about what gives you the most fear. You might have a fear of a few things, but one or two might be more severe than others. You should also think about what it is about a situation that gives you the fear. For example, if you are afraid of the dentist, then what is it about the dentist that frightens you? If it’s the needles, then you need to try and beat the phobia of needles and not the dentist. By doing that, you will also be able to help yourself with any situation involving needles.
Set Yourself Goals
The next step is to try and set yourself some tangible goals that you think you can achieve. It is better to set small goals so that you can feel motivated to continue. The act of writing down your goals can be a good way to achieve them because it makes you more inclined to stick to them. Your goals can include where you want to be with your success of beating your phobia, and what steps you will take to achieve that success.
Making a Strategy to Cope with Your Fears
While you are thinking about how to treat your phobias, you need to start finding ways to cope with the fear. One way that you can do that is to imagine the things that frighten you and think about how it makes you feel. Now think of something that distracts you and try to do that while dealing with your fear. For example, if you know that singing to yourself will distract you, then try that technique while facing your fear of the dentist. It won’t make the fear go away, but it might make it more manageable until you can overcome it.
Try to Talk Through Your Fear
Feeling fear is a perfectly normal human response to something that could endanger you. While it might be happening at the wrong times, the fear itself is perfectly normal. One way that you can try to overcome your fear is to talk yourself through the feelings that you are experiencing. At first, you may not be able to do it without feeling frightened but try to talk through it as much as you can. Every time you start to feel that fear, try to talk yourself through it again. As you repeat the process, eventually, you should start to feel less frightened as you learn to recognize the symptoms. It will also be a way of helping your brain to remember that you have had these feelings before and nothing happened.
Learn Some Relaxation Techniques
Before you start to tackle any of your phobias, you need to learn some relaxation techniques. These will help you to relax when you encounter the trigger for your phobia. Everyone has different ways to relax, but you need to find one that works for you before you start. Test your relaxation technique when you are not afraid, so you can see how it makes you feel. You can then start to use it when you encounter fearful situations.
Try Hypnosis
One technique that has helped a lot of people with phobias is hypnosis. There are many people who are specially trained to use hypnosis in this way, and they can often help you to feel relaxed and cope better with your phobia. Techniques such as the raikov effect have been used to treat addictions and other problems; this is a deep hypnosis that can start to help people after the first session.
Write a List of Your Fears
Another way that you can learn to desensitize yourself from your phobias is to write down all the situations that you find it in. For example, if you have a phobia of spiders, then write down all the scenarios in which you might find a spider. Of course, there may be many, but your fear might not be the same in all the encounters. You might be extremely scared to find one in the bath, but not so scared if you see one outside. Beside each scenario, write a level of fear with 1being the least to 10 being the most. You can then look back through the list and see if there are ways that you can work on each scenario.
Visualizing Your Phobia
Once you have written your list of scenarios, try to visualize them in your mind. Think about how it makes you feel and explore the feelings. Keep trying to visualize the scenario until you feel more relaxed.You should then take a break and start again, when you feel completely relaxed, try the next scenario. After a while of doing this, you should start to feel more relaxed in your mind about all of the scenarios. After you have relaxed enough, you can then start to go out and confront your fears in real life. Take things slowly and don’t get overly stressed, but hopefully, the visualization you did earlier will help you to deal with the phobia when you encounter it the next time.
People might think that your phobia is irrational, but to you, it is a real fear that you need to deal with in the right way. By trying these techniques, you should be able to make good progress on your way to conquering your phobia.
