The Denise Billen-Mejia Commentaries

Fear gets a bad press, and it doesn’t deserve it. Fear is one of the most useful things your brain does. It’s what stops you stepping off the curb in front of a bus and what makes you check the smoke alarm battery.

Here’s how I think about it. I live in Delaware, where the land is flat and every serious storm brings a real threat of flooding. So I take flooding seriously — I watch the forecast, I know which roads go out first, I plan accordingly. That is fear doing exactly the job it’s for. Sharks don’t trouble me at all. They’re in the sea, and once in a while so am I, but attacks are vanishingly rare, there are guards on the beach, and the risk isn’t worth the worry. So I don’t carry it.

Notice what’s doing the work in both cases: probability. Healthy fear rises and falls as real risk ebbs and flows in front of you.

A phobia doesn’t work like that. Someone with a genuine shark phobia may never go in the sea, guards or no guards. May not go in a swimming pool. May feel their heart go out of control looking at a photograph, or seeing one flash up on the news.

You’ll hear phobias called irrational fears. I’ve never liked the phrase, because it implies the person is being silly, and they aren’t. Think of it instead as an alarm that’s been set too sensitively. At some point the brain decided a particular thing meant danger, and it has gone on faithfully sounding the alarm ever since. Knowing the alarm is wrong doesn’t switch it off. That’s what makes phobias so exhausting.

If you’re not sure which you’re dealing with, look at three things. First, your body joins in uninvited — racing heart, tight chest, an overwhelming urge to get away. Second, reason doesn’t touch it; you can know the odds perfectly well and feel not one jot better. Third, it costs you something. Journeys not taken, appointments not kept. A phobia doesn’t sit quietly. It rearranges your life around itself.

If you don’t enjoy the dentist but you go anyway, that’s an aversion, and you have my sympathy. If you haven’t been in eleven years because the thought of the waiting room sets your heart hammering, that’s a phobia — and it’s worth taking seriously, because dental health is serious.

I make the distinction carefully, because the word gets thrown about freely. People say they’re phobic about Mondays, or their inbox, or the sound of chewing. Usually they mean they dislike it intensely, which is fair enough, but it isn’t the same thing. The loose talk does a little harm: it makes real phobias sound like strong preferences, and leaves the person who genuinely can’t get past theirs wondering why everyone else managed it.

Where do phobias come from? Sometimes the origin is obvious — a dog bite at six, a rough flight through a storm. Very often there’s no such story at all. People absorb fear by watching the adults around them, or simply by hearing about something frightening, or reading it. The brain files it under danger without much caring whether the evidence was firsthand. Mine came from a soundtrack and two facial expressions on a television when I was small — and it left me with a lasting horror of deli counters.

And phobias don’t wear off with time, because every avoidance brings relief, and that relief acts as its own reward. The alarm never gets a chance to be proved wrong. It just gets fed.
Which brings us to the good news: what’s learned can be unlearned. Not by willpower, and not by being told to pull yourself together — but under the right conditions, an alarm can be reset.

Dr. Denise Billen-Mejia is a former emergency medicine physician turned clinical hypnotist, dedicated to helping people find relief that conventional medicine alone hasn’t been able to provide.

To explore further, find articles and resources, or get in touch with Denise directl email office@aahypnosis.com or visit her website: healandberadiant.com