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“A phobia is an irrational reaction to a harmless substance,” Christopher Paul Jones, a London-based phobia specialist with a clinic on London’s Harley Street, told CNBC Make It in an interview.
“When we encounter danger, our amygdala fires and we’re primitively wired to take one of several actions. The most common are fight, flight, or freeze — that is, we either get angry and hit the target, run away from the target, or hide from the target,” he said. The amygdala is the part of the brain that processes emotions such as fear and motivation.
“That trigger is useful if you’re fighting a sabre-toothed tiger or you’re in actual danger, but a phobia is when you have that reaction to something that’s not dangerous,” Jones said.
Jones’ clinic has treated a variety of phobias, including fear of water, heights, germs, needles and even fear of failure.
He explained that phobias develop through conditioned responses, such as in the famous experiment with Pavlov’s dog, in which Russian neurologist Ivan Pavlov rang a bell every time his dog was given food. When the dog heard the bell, it began to associate it with food and salivate.
“Humans do the same thing,” Jones explains. “With a phobia, what happens most often is that your brain associates the danger with an event that happened at some point in the past. Then, whenever you revisit that event in the future, your brain triggers that old response.”
Jones’ recent book, “Face Your Fears,” offers exercises to help readers overcome fear, and he shared his three tips on conquering any fear on CNBC Make It:
Jones said a very simple way to combat a phobia is to think about the object of your fear from a different perspective.
He calls this the “Harry Potter” effect, a reference to the scene in the film “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” in which students face their fears and use magic to turn them into comedy.
“So when people think of spiders, they often think of them in a very large, close-up way. If you imagine them as small and black and white, or they’re on roller skates and they’re smoking little cigars and they’re dancing with their little hands, it gives you a very different experience,” Jones said.
He suggested using the same technique with your own inner dialogue.
“If you’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to be scared,’ or ‘I’m going to freak out,’ or ‘What if I’m going to embarrass myself,’ if you imagine that inner dialogue in a high-pitched voice like Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, it loses all its power,” he said.
Jones said that in that moment, the way we perceive fear will change because it will seem “more ridiculous and unrealistic.”
Jones said one of the easiest ways to comfort yourself when encountering the source of your phobia is to hug yourself.
“Basically when you cross your arms and move your shoulders up and down as if you’re hugging yourself, it releases the same chemicals as when you hug someone or when someone hugs you,” he explained.
“This releases oxytocin and a variety of other chemicals, so when you relax or calm yourself down while thinking about something scary, your brain has a harder time holding two emotions at the same time, which reduces the feeling of fear.”
Jones cited the example of Pavlov’s dogs and said that just as the brain can be conditioned to fear something, it can also be reconditioned to undo that fear.
““If you remember a time when you were really happy or calm or you couldn’t stop laughing, and you picture that in your mind, and you’re picturing that moment, and then when your emotions are at their peak, you do something unique – clench your fist, think about a happy time, clench your fist, think about a happy time, clench your fist – and you’re creating an artificial Pavlovian response conditioning,” Jones explained.
He said that holding your wrist when faced with a particular fear would bring back pleasant memories and remove the emotional intensity of the fear.
“These are things that can be done immediately to break old patterns,” he added.
“Just as people on Reddit and YouTube take horror movies and turn them into entertaining films by changing the music and tempo, we can do the same with our own mental images, dialogue and emotions,” he added.
