Pixdeluxe | E+ | Getty Images
Phobias come in many forms: some people are afraid of spiders, while others are afraid of flying on an airplane.
But the one thing they all have in common is that they are irrational, according to a phobia specialist.
“A phobia is an irrational response to a benign substance,” Christopher Paul Jones, a London-based phobia specialist with a clinic on Harley Street in London, told CNBC Make It in an interview.
“As human beings, we're primitive that when we sense danger, our amygdala fires, and then we do one of two things. Usually fight, flight or freeze. So we get angry and hit the thing, or we run from the thing, or we hide from the thing,” he said. The amygdala is a part of the brain that processes emotions such as fear or motivation.
This trigger comes in handy when we're fighting saber-tooth tigers or when we're in real danger, Jones said. However, a phobia is when that reaction is to something that is not dangerous.
Jones' clinic has treated a variety of phobias, from fear of water, heights, germs, needles and even the fear of failure.
He explained that phobias develop through a conditioned response like that of Pavlov's dog experiment. That famous experiment was conducted by Russian neurologist Ivan Pavlov, who rang a bell every time he fed his dogs. The dogs eventually started salivating when they heard the bell ringing because they associated it with food.
“People do the same thing,” Jones explained. “Usually with a phobia, your brain has at some point in the past associated danger with something that happened … and when you think about that thing again in the future, it fires off that old response.”
Jones' recently published book, Face Your Fears, walks readers through exercises to help them overcome their fears. He shared his top three tips for overcoming any fear with CNBC Make It.
Challenge your perception of the object
A very simple technique to challenge your phobia is to think differently about the object of your fear, says Jones.
He calls it the “Harry Potter” effect, referring to a scene in the film “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” in which students face their fears and use magic to transform them into something comical.
“So when you think about that spider, people often make it very big and up close. If you imagine it small, black and white… or imagine it on roller skates, smoking a cigar, dancing with a hand… “..you will feel very different,” Jones said.
He suggested using the same technique for your inner dialogue.
“If you're thinking, 'Oh my God, I'm going to be scared' or 'This is going to freak me out' or 'What if I make a fool of myself?' If you imagine that inner dialogue as if it were Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, with a squeaky voice, it takes all the power out of it,” he said.
At this point, this will change the way you perceive the fear, because it will seem “more silly and less realistic,” Jones said.
Give yourself a hug
According to Jones, one of the easiest ways to comfort yourself when you encounter the source of your phobia is to give yourself a hug.
“When you cross your arms and move your shoulders up and down, as if you were hugging yourself, it releases the same chemicals as when you hug someone else or when someone else hugs you,” he explains.
“This releases oxytocin and various other chemicals. What happens is that if you do something that is relaxing or calming at the same time that you are trying to imagine what you are afraid of, the brain has a hard time holding two emotions at the same time. So the emotion of fear is reduced.”
Restore your brain
Jones referred to Pavlov's experiment with dogs and said that just as the brain can be conditioned to fear something, it can also be conditioned to undo that fear.
““If you go back to moments when you felt really happy and calm, or couldn't stop laughing, and you visualize those moments in your mind, and while you're visualizing those moments, you do something unique at the height of the emotion, like clench your fist, think of happy moments, clench your fist, think of happy moments, clench your fist, you're creating an artificial Pavlovian response conditioning,” Jones explains.
He said that if you pinch your wrist when you are confronted with a particular fear, you will return to those pleasant memories and take away the emotional intensity of the fear.
“Those are some really quick things you can do to break that old pattern,” he added.
“Think of Reddit or YouTube, where people take a horror movie and turn it into a funny movie by changing the music and tempo. We can do that too with our inner images, inner dialogues and inner feelings,” he added.
