The harder phobics work to avoid the things they fear, the more the brain grows convinced that the threat is real. We have to strip those things away. And that's what doctors do. A patient visiting Barlow's Boston clinic is first assessed for the presence of a specific phobia and then guided through an intensive day or two of graduated exposure. People who are afraid of syringes and blood, for example, may first be shown a magazine photo with a trace of blood depicted in it.
Innocuous photos give way to graphic ones, and graphic ones to a display of a real, empty syringe.
Over time, the syringe is brought closer, and the patient learns to hold it and even tolerate having blood drawn. None of this is remotely easy for the phobic person, and the body's anxiety Klaxons may go off the instant the therapy begins. With that habituation comes profound recovery. And when symptoms disappear, they usually stay gone. Patients, he says, rarely experience a significant phobic relapse, and almost never replace the thing they no longer fear with a fresher phobia object.