Over coming a phobia?

[arlonicholson]

I am terrified of spiders, I go in a total freak out when I see one, and start crying and I normally have a panic attack, and start to ''feel one on me.''

How do I over come this?

[secretscribe]

I'm a psychology major. In class they talk a lot about exposure therapy, which basically means gradually becoming accustomed to something. So maybe first, a therapist asks you to think about what it would be like to be around a spider. Then maybe they give you a little plastic spider to touch and look at. Later you look at a real spider through glass. You go through all these stages so that eventually you can touch a real spider and find that you're used to spiders and not afraid anymore.

I've never actually walked anybody through that, but that's the theory basically.

I don't know if you've read the novel "Divergent", but they use that idea a lot: the characters face their fears in a simulation so that they can try to gradually erridicate those fears, or at least improve how they react to it. Now I'm probably going a tangent, though.