What Is a Phobia? How Do You Remove a Phobia?

So what exactly is a phobia anyway?

A phobia can be defined as an irrational fear that causes us to experience a physiological revulsion to something that does not actually threaten us with serious harm.

Phobias occur when the brain links only pain and no pleasure to any object or experience.

In order to have a phobia, the brain must represent the object of the phobia in a disproportionate, exaggerated, or irrational manner.

These definitions may seem complicated at first, but they hold the key to curing your phobia; so let’s examine the crucial elements one more time.

A phobia is characterized by being:
- an irrational fear of something that does not actually threaten us with serious harm and

- is accompanied by a physical revulsion (the body physically reacts when we think of or actually encounter the object of our phobia)

- in which the brain links only pain and no pleasure to the object or experience in question and

- in which the brain makes exaggerated or irrational representations.

Phobias are usually engendered by some traumatic childhood experience in which a tremendous amount of pain is linked to the object of the phobia and to which the child’s brain reacts by creating an exaggerated representation of the threat posed by the object or experience in question.

Phobias are brought on by traumatic experiences that cause us create exaggerated images in our mind.

Removing the Phobia
Now the good news is you do not have to know, understand, or psychoanalyze the cause of the phobia to remove it.

Phobias can be simply and naturally overcome by changing the way in which we represent, imagine, or think of the object of our phobia internally or by altering the brain’s connections, associations, and linkages of pain to connections, associations, and linkages of pleasure.

The two ways to remove a phobia are
1. Change the way we internally represent the object of our phobia or
2. Change our connections of pain to connections of pleasure (or to a mixed connection with both pleasure and pain).