Offering hope

Fears.

Spiders or snakes. Water or fire. High places or tight spaces.

We all have them. Some, worse than others.

When your response to fear gets out of whack—when you’re reduced to a quivering sack by the sight of a cockroach; when crossing paths with a snake sends you screaming into the distance; when the thought of being packed into an elevator leaves you paralyzed—you have a phobia.

That’s where professionals like Tom Davis come in.

A professor in LSU’s Department of Psychology and co-director of child services at the Psychological Services Center, Davis studies and treats fears and phobias. He recently completed a study of treatment for phobias in adults and children.

Fear is normal; it can protect us from harm. Our bodies, Davis explains, create a physical response to a perceived danger with heightened awareness, and maybe a shot of adrenaline to prepare us to flee.

Some people are sensation-seekers. They actively seek the rush and thrill of danger by jumping out of airplanes, riding roller coasters or even running with bulls at Pamplona in Spain.

But some who are afflicted by phobias avoid the sensations altogether. “Their fear response gets out of check. Their body’s response is abnormal,” Davis says.

For someone with a cockroach phobia, the sight of one in their home may trigger a panic attack, complete with sweating, heart pounding and an overwhelming sense of doom. “Somebody (else) will have to go kill it and get rid of it,” Davis says. “On the extreme side, they may not go back (home) for two weeks.”

Someone with a dog phobia may refuse to go to a house with a dog, or demand the dog be locked up when they visit, he says. An extreme form of that fear might keep a person secluded in their home during months when they might see a dog while outside.

Many fears—snakes, spiders, storms, strangers, heights, war—are universal, Davis says. But top fears and phobias vary by regions of the country. In Virginia, where Davis grew up and studied, for example, dogs are a common fear. Roaches and lizards are more likely to give folks in Louisiana the willies. Not as many lizards or roaches in Virginia to spark those fears and phobias, he says.

For obvious reasons, phobias about storms and hurricanes are quite common in Louisiana, Davis says.

Regardless of region, phobias are learned.

Someone with a dog phobia may have started with one bad experience with a dog then spent much of their live avoiding all dogs, Davis says. That avoidance kept them from having any positive experiences with dogs and denied them the opportunity to get over that initial fear.

For all the wide array of fears and ways they’re learned, there is hope with treatment.

The key to successfully treating phobias is “gradually confronting the fear and getting positive response at each step,” Davis says.

Treating phobias through exposing a patient to their fear has made great advancements in the last 40 to 50 years, Davis says. In the bad old days, a kid afraid of dog might be pushed into a room with three or four dogs and be told, “When you stop crying, you can come out.”

Research, like the study of treating phobias in children that Davis just completed at LSU—you may have seen the steady stream of newspaper ads for the study—shows that what works is a carefully paced, gradual exposure to the fear.

In fact, Davis says that his program has an 80% success rate with just one session.

Psychologists perform a detailed assessment of each phobia to understand exactly where the fears lie. Someone may fear snakes because they think a snake is slimy, or they fear dogs because they think being licked by a dog is gross.

A session might start out with talking about a fear of dogs, then progress to looking at pictures of dogs, watching video, then looking at dogs through a window or maybe even being in a room with a leashed (and friendly) dog, Davis says. It’s that “graduated hierarchy” that offers hope for overcoming a phobia.

“By gradually confronting the fear and getting a positive response at each step, you realize that bad things don’t happen, or those aspects aren’t as bad you thought they would be,” Davis says. The person being treated finds out a snake isn’t slimy, that a dog lick isn’t so bad, he says. “The fear comes down at each stop.”

Davis and his colleagues continue to offer low-cost treatment of phobias and other disorders at LSU’s Psychological Services Center. Contact them at 578-1494.