Phobias and How to Cure Them

Are you afraid to speak in public? Does the thought of getting on a plane make your throat close? Are you tormented by fears of throwing up at the next dinner party some hapless individual invites you to? There is good news and bad. The bad news is that you may have a phobia. The good news is they can be cured. Well, some of them, and not always forever.

Take STAGE FRIGHT, for example. Of course you don't want to get up before a bunch of people and start talking. About what? You don't know anything, You've never done anything. You've raised six children, but that doesn't count for anything. Who wants to hear about that?

Fear is a natural emotion in human beings, animals, birds, even worms. It's purpose is to put us on alert, turn our attention away from the trash we were messing around with before, and concentrate on this new thing until we figure out the extent of the danger and decide on an appropriate response. If a lion comes bounding into the kitchen, maybe you'd better run. If there's no safe way out, grab that cleaver and start swinging.

These necessary and valuable responses to fear have somehow become all inflated until they have oozed over into such relatively harmless activities as going out to the mailbox after dark, welcoming strangers into your home and certainly, talking in front of other human beings. How does this happen? It may have arisen when you were five and made what you thought was a profound statement, only to have older children and grown-ups laugh hysterically at you. They embarrassed you, and perhaps made you resolve to keep your mouth shut from now on. The profound statement will not be remembered beyond your next birthday, but the awful feeling when you realized they were laughing AT you instead of WITH you will never leave.