By Meghan Kimberling ’17

Are there any fears that you wish you could overcome? Fear of public speaking? Fear of heights? Roller coasters? Circus clowns? Good news: there is a way “out.”

Just like in other aspects of life, admitting you have a problem is the first step to overcoming your fear and enjoying a fuller life. If you aren’t ready to face your fears, odds are that you won’t. At the same time, clinging to a fear, instead of trying to conquer it, makes the fear define who you are, sidelining you from living your life to the fullest.

“If you change your behavior, your thoughts and feelings will change. You can’t wait for your thoughts and feeling to change, you need to change your behavior first,” counsels Alice Boyes, Ph.D. and psychology author. Avoidance does not make the change for you.

Psychologists and doctors around the world have taken overcoming fears one step further: exposure therapy. The therapy is not a new concept but overcoming fears allows one to live their life to the fullest, making it a very popular treatment. The idea is that the patient is exposed to their fear without any real danger in order to “train” their minds to ignore the fear stimuli messages.

“Overcoming fear is about learning to predict and, when possible, control the feared object or situation. During exposure therapy one learns how to approach the feared object or situation, so that it is no longer unpredictable and uncontrollable which makes it far less threatening,” stated Katherina K. Hauner, a post-doctoral fellow in neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in the Huffington Post.

Exposure therapy originated in the 1900s, rooting from Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning. Over the past 30 years, exposure therapy has exponentially grown in popularity. In fact prolonged exposure therapy has shown greater success than supportive counseling in adolescent teens with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to Penn Medicine.

Of course, it helps to have coping mechanisms along the way as you incrementally expose yourself to more fearful situations. For instance, being mindful of your fear and recognizing when it starts (i.e. sweaty palms, tightening muscles) is a starting point to developing a coping mechanism. Once you are more aware of your fears and its symptoms, you start to let them come and go without being too judgmental of yourself or your symptoms.