In many cases, a specific phobia won’t have a significantly adverse effect on daily life, so people often choose to just live with these fears. However, if a specific phobia does impact what you’re able to achieve or you just want to find ways to get past your fears, there are many ways to do so. In this blog, we’ll talk about the reasons people choose to overcome specific phobias and how therapy can help you get there.
Common Reasons to Overcome Specific Phobia
The main reason why anyone would choose to overcome a fear is simple – to stop being fearful and reclaim the lost sense of power and control that phobia can take away. Some other reasons to confront phobias include:
- Self-Reflection – everyday, our brains accept numerous beliefs without challenging them. Some of these beliefs are based in fact. Others, like many phobias, are based in emotional response or irrational thought processes. By working to overcome a fear, people can learn to challenge and rethink many of the automatic assumptions we make during the day and change the way we think.
- Decreased Anxiety – many fears are linked closely to specific things that we worry about that are beyond our control. Facing fears often gives us the ability to let go of a need to control every aspect of our day. This in turn decreases feelings of anxiety surrounding the specific phobia and in general.
- Self-Acceptance – people can go years without confronting their fears because they’re embarrassed for others to see them as vulnerable. Working to overcome specific phobia, no matter who might see you’re afraid, is a profound form of self-acceptance. Being brave enough to be vulnerable helps us to grow and change.
How to Overcome Specific Phobia
Some specific phobias can be overcome independently by exposing yourself to the thing you’re afraid of in small doses and safe spaces. Overtime, many people are able to move beyond their fears in this way. For more severe phobias or fears rooted in trauma and other difficulties, working with a therapist may be beneficial. At the Center for CBT in New York City, our therapists will likely recommend a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure therapy. CBT helps people to uncover and change their beliefs about the things they fear. By changing beliefs about phobias through CBT, people can change the emotional and behavioral responses to these fears.
Exposure therapy, as the name suggests, is a type of therapy where a therapist will gradually expose clients to their phobias in safe ways. This type of therapy begins with visualizing and talking about the feared object. Then, the client will begin to interact with the object they fear in an environment where they are in control and feel safe. Over time, people gain increased control over their fear responses.
Work with a Therapist to Overcome Specific Phobia
If you’re ready to overcome a phobia with the help of one of the skilled therapists at the Center for CBT in New York City, we hope you’ll get in touch with us soon. Our knowledgeable therapists have advanced training and experience to offer effective strategies to confront and overcome your fears.
