I just watched The Panic Room on BBC 3, it’s a documentary about a ‘radical’ way of treating extreme phobias. It’s radical television alright! It looked like a cross between systematic desensitisation and The Weakest Link. Put some very scared people in a locked room (101 perhaps), show them fancy graphics and videos of the objects their fears and watch them squirm to portentous music. It’s an excellent example of suffering as entertainment, but is it the best way to deal with phobias?
I don’t think it is, in fact I think it perpetuates some very unhelpful ideas about phobias and how to overcome them:
- Phobias are difficult to resolve and require courage in facing down your fears. I don’t think so, these people aren’t suffering from a lack of courage, they have an excess of fear! Phobic reactions can be quickly reduced in a variety of ways using EFT, NLP and other techniques. If you reduce the level of irrational fear you don’t need to face it down.
- Touching a snake followed by some hyperventilation and swearing counts doesn’t look like a complete resolution of the phobia to me. It’s one thing not to run screaming from the room if there phobic stimulus is presented. I would take a person being completely comfortable in the presence of the trigger as being proof of a successful resolution of the phobia.
- The Panic Room setup is very elaborate, I can’t imagine these services at a NHS centre near you. Is this form treatment only available if you want to appear on television?
If you are curious about how you might easily reduce a phobia without going through all that palaver watch this short video of an EFT treatment of a rat & mouse phobia. (EFT in Action Fears & Phobias). You don’t have to suffer unnecessarily to resolve these problems.
Here are some examples of phobia and anxiety work that I’ve written about before: Fear of heights Fear of heights (video) & Fear of flying.
If you live in the North East want to sort out a phobia without all the lights, music and terror, give me a call. Or visit the AAMET website to find your local EFT therapist.
