Airplanes. Insects. Rabid bears. Needles. There are millions of things to be scared of in everyday life but, for some, fears and phobias dominate the mind. Suma Chand, a clinical psychologist and associate professor in psychiatry with Saint Louis University, helps patients with phobias and fears overcome them.
“Fear can be adaptive,” Chand told “St. Louis on the Air” host Don Marsh. “It is useful to have these emotional fears because it acts like a normal alarm system that tells you something to keep yourself safe. But when it is maladaptive and manifests like an anxiety or phobic disorder, it is an alarm system that’s not working very well. It is like a wrong kind of an alarm, a false positive alarm, telling you that you are in danger when you’re not.”
Chand said that maladaptive phobias manifest themselves behaviorally, cognitively and physically. She also said that they occur for both genetic and learned reasons. For example, you can learn a phobia by seeing someone else have a phobic reaction. You can also be told information that makes you recognize fears.
The typical treatment for phobias, such as fear of spiders or flying, is exposure therapy. Chand uses a graded approach.
“If you’re telling someone who is phobic that they’ll have to face their fears, that’s not something they want to hear,” said Chand. “So you work with the patient building up a hierarchy from the least anxiety-provoking to the most anxiety-provoking situation.”
In the case of the spiders, a person may first look at a picture of a spider for a while and notice how anxiety disappears over exposure. Then, the patient would work his or her way up to touching a spider. Chand said that when a patient is cooperative, resolving a person’s phobia should not take longer the six or seven sessions.
For people who have recurring bad dreams or far-fetched fears, such as being buried alive, Chand recommend something called “dream rescripting,” where patients write out the full dream and then rewrite it to become less terrifying.
Chand answered questions from listeners during the segment about specific phobias. Listen here:
When should you seek help for fears and phobias in your life?
“If you recognize that you’re holding back from doing the things you really want to do, that’s the time to seek help,” Chand said.
St. Louis on the Air brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. St. Louis on the Air host Don Marsh and producers Mary Edwards,Alex Heuer and Kelly Moffitt give you the information you need to make informed decisions and stay in touch with our diverse and vibrant St. Louis region.
