A fear of flying caused by the birth of a second child? A terror of elevators triggered by the antics of a troublesome ex-wife? Seemingly no logical connection. But according to an American expert on fear, the seeds of phobias usually are an unconscious event, thought, or belief. Recovery lies in revealing what the phobia masks.

Dr. Luann is a California-based author, psychologist, and expert in Delete Stress, a rapid response process that rids the mental storehouse of negative ideas and feelings, leaving space to input positive thoughts and goals. Her clients, drawn from around the world, phone with phobias as diverse as fear of flying, fear of elevators, fear of driving, and fear of crossing bridges to entering cinemas, video shops, and fear of crowds.

Often by the time she counsels clients, they have reached a degenerative stage of phobia whereby jobs and marriages are threatened by the all-consuming fear. The man who avoided flying after the arrival of a second child and the woman who refused to enter elevators had hidden the fear like a dark secret for years, never imagining the cause lay in events literally so close to home. Both had recognized problems in their respective relationships but never connected the fears with their family situation. It didn’t make sense to them but then phobias by definition are irrational.

Because the cause of phobias generally are issues too painful or difficult to examine closely, it is hard for rational, normally clear thinkers to connect the phobia to their cause, says Dr. Luann, a guest expert on such shows as Oprah, Hard Copy, Fox News, and on America’s CNN network. A good advertisement for her techniques-she once suffered a crippling fear of public speaking.

“Phobias protect people in some way,” she says. “Women often have a big problem expressing anger. So how clever! They develop a phobia that provides an outlet for their feelings without having to confront what is really going on.”

Though overly confident, such women can have difficulty asserting their needs, saying yes when they mean no. Without firm personal limits, false boundaries in the form of phobias are put in place.

Guilt and shame also play a part. One man developed an inability to get on a plane or drive in traffic or across bridges after engaging in an extramarital affair. The fear of bridges signified his dread of breaking the connection with his wife, the traffic represented too many women in his life and fear of flying spoke of feeling grounded by guilt and shame.

“Once people realize what is happening, the relief at untangling their mental dread, where there is no beginning or end—a Gordian Knot, is immense,” says Dr. Linquist. One woman whose fear of flying related to terminating a third pregnancy was able to complete the grieving process and resolve a tension that had kept her emotionally distant from her husband for five years. “Not accepting the termination had raised fears about her own death and that of her boy and girl,” says Dr. Luann. “She was not free to fly because she couldn’t trust herself to do the right things. She began holding herself back, and the knot of thought and feeling got tighter and tighter.”

About one in 10 people have a phobia and about 80 percent of sufferers inherit the tendency from a worrywart parent or grandparent. Many families believe love is expressed by both worrying and fretting about someone. “But all that does is take away someone’s power,” says Dr. Luann. “It teaches a child there is something wrong with them and there is nothing they can do about it. The seeds of phobias are planted very early on in life.”

Often phobias are not even recognized as such. The mother who refuses to drive or the father who fears commitment are simply accepted for their peculiar ways. But fear remains a silent force within the make-up of family members. And when an anxious individual is stressed, that fear can take on a life of its own.

“The reason phobias generally need treating is that they grow,” says Dr. Linquist. “A phobia might begin with avoiding elevators. But then people get into mental bargaining. They’ll only go in elevators if someone else is in it. Soon that is not enough. There have to be six people in it. And so the problem escalates until it extends into other phobias like fear of driving, traffic, tunnels, or flying.”

A phobia can give a person sense of control, a belief that they have power over at least one aspect of their lives. However, the more control they try to have over the fear the worse it gets. The experience is so intense that people are not aware how much they are ruled by that fear. The anticipatory anxiety of facing the obstacle is huge----people lose sleep, suffer diarrhea, tension headaches, anticipatory anxiety, and acute stress at just the thought of doing what they fear most.

“The focus is like looking through a magnifying glass,” says Dr. Luann. “The person’s thoughts go round and round on the merry-go-round of their mind and they don’t know how or when to stop it. They spend so much time trying to understand why they have the phobia that it compounds the problems. They enter a phobic swirl of thought, with layer upon layer of anxiety masking the real issues.”

Removing the mask involves first recognizing that a phobia exists, then deciding to seek help. “Once you have a phobia, it’s very rare that you can get rid of it by yourself,” says Dr. Luann.

Various techniques exist for dealing with phobias, ranging from simple breathing and relaxation techniques to desensitization therapy in which the fear is confronted repeatedly. While that works for some individuals, when it doesn’t work, it can result in adding to their unmitigated terror.

A rapid response technique such as Delete STRESS techniques works by allowing the mind to travel its idiosyncratic pathways, with the therapist gently guiding a person through the unmasking process until their true Self is revealed. Along the way, irrational thoughts and beliefs are identified and systematically deleted, “like pressing your own private delete key on a computer,” says Dr. Linquist.

Anger often lies at the core of problematic issues. Women have a tendency to mask anger with sadness or fear while men mask sadness or depression and fear with anger, Dr. Luann explains. This goes back to a general societal belief that it is not acceptable for women to express anger, only sadness and fear. For men, the opposite is true.

The worst fear, for anyone with a phobia, is that of getting help. People think they have to cope alone or they will be considered crazy. But phobias, says Dr. Luann, “ are simply a wake-up call, a message from the psyche that something in life needs attending. “We can thank them for being there because the only fear is fear itself and the only way to get over it is to face it.”

FACING UP TO IT

Bev Aisbett is a Melbourne-based counselor and author of several self-help books on anxiety and depression. She believes anxious people wear another kind of mask through life—that of being strong and self-sufficient. “The big thing for an anxious person is to be seen as coping,” she says. “Anxiety is really about true emotion being revealed—someone seeing how hurt and vulnerable you feel. Anxiety is not the main issue, it is what the anxiety covers.”

Often, that can be old hurts and beliefs that go back to childhood. “You have to be prepared to be a bit of detective and find out where these beliefs came from and how true they are,” says Bev. “Anxious people,” she says “also need to practice at caring less what other people think. “ An essential part of recovery is saying no instead of being so accommodating,” she says. “The bottom line is to get over the need to be universally loved by everyone.”

COMMON FEARS