Advice from those who have successfully overcome a phobia

[orchid]

Hi all,

I am new to posting but have been lurking on these boards for a few months. I suffer from anxiety and had had a year without it so mistakenly thought I'd beaten it for good but when a period of stress hit me it all came back and left me with a fear of knives.

I'm not scared of normal knives, just really sharp ones and am now OK being around them and can just about use them in cooking again. But my main fear really circulates around the fear that I'll have to do extreme exposure therapy as the only way to really overcome it once and for all! I've heard about some of the more extreme techniques and they really bother me. I know that I would never normally want to hold a knife to myself so the idea of having to do this is repellent to me. Surely this is just common sense and not holding a knife to yourself is the first stage of your natural defences! I don't think it can be good to start pushing beyond these. This is what is now bothering me more than the actual knives!

So, my question to those who have successfully overcome phobias is this: Can I get over the phobia just by exposing myself in the sense of using them normally or am I really going to have to do something extreme?

I've found lots of really helpful advice and am feeling lots better overall but just need a bit of guidance to help me get over this so I'd be very gratfeul to hear from anyone!

[spiroll]

I used to have a similar phobia. I was so afraid of a sharp knife that I would not touch them when washing the rest of the dishes.

It didn't take exposure therapy to get over this, and I didn't have to do anything drastic ... in time, because I was inadvertantly exposed to knives every day, it sort of just faded away gradually.

When it was at its worst I would think the most horrific things - i can't even say them, and I'd think I was going to go insane because I'd think; who THINKS those things???

But yes, thankfully it went away and I didn't have to do any harsh exposure. It took about 2 months, but yes - it went away, thank God. I'm sorry you're going through this.