Breaking the panic cycle
My Extreme Animal Phobia helps participants overcome their biggest fears by putting them face-to-face with a myriad of hairy, slimy and four-footed terrors.
MANY of us freak out at the sight of a cockroach or a rat, oor know someone who does. But when a fear reaches an intensity that causes severe stress and interferes with everyday life, such as one sealing up his entire bedroom to keep out creepy crawlies, it becomes a phobia.
Now there is My Extreme Animal Phobia that helps participants break the panic cycle by putting them face-to-face with a myriad of hairy, slimy and four-footed terrors.
The show’s host, Dr Robin Zasio, a Sacramento-based licensed clinical psychologist, uses exposure therapy, the established form of treatment for phobias, to help people overcome their fears. Through counselling, she also tries to get to the root of their phobias. “This show is the first of its kind to actually engage everyday people who are terrified of animals, insects, mammals and so much so that it’s ruining their lives,” Dr Zasio says in an e-mail interview.
She also explains the difference between fear and phobia. “Most people have fears oof some kind. For instance, if somebody offered me a ticket to skydive right now, I’d say that’s not going to happen and I don’t foresee that to ever happen because I have a huge fear of jumping out of planes.
“But that (jumping out of planes) is not a part of my life, so it doesn’t control me in any way.”
Dr Zasio makes clear that there is nothing wrong with having fear. “It actually keeps us alive. Fear is what keeps you driving in your lane on the highway and causes you to react if your child runs into the street.”
What sets fear apart from phobia is the latter actually entails a level of anxiety that is so powerful that it can be debilitating. And we’re not just talking about screaming like a little girl when you see a stray roach.
A full-blown phobia, Dr Zasio says, “controls where you go and what you do, and then it affects the people you love too because they become limited as well”.
With exposure therapy, patients are gradually exposed to the object of their fear through photos or videos, eventually working up to coming in contact with the animal so they become desensitised and realise they won’t be harmed.
As Dr Zasio puts it: “Exposure therapy is a behavioural treatment that is designed to systematically and in a controlled manner that have people confront their fears.
She calls the five-day-long therapy on the show “a kind of boot camp exposure”, but adds: “I would never ask someone to do something I wouldn’t do, and I never trick or force someone to do something.”
“What we do is that we develop what we call a ‘hierarchy’. Take someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) for instance. They have an irrational fear of germs of bodily fluids they can’t stop, so they develop what we call compulsions or behaviors to avoid them.
“In this case, the list of triggers associated with their fears will include stuff like chairs, door knobs, public restrooms or toilet seats; we rate their fear levels of each trigger on a scale of zero to 10. Zero would mean that one has no anxiety at all if they come in contact with a trigger and 10 would be complete panic.”
For some people, their fears are so acute that even looking at a picture of an animal is too much for them. “They can be looking at a picture of a dog or be in a pet store and even though they know the dog can’t physically hurt them, their nervous system is signalling danger.
“When that happens, we have to back it up with words associated with that animal. So if it’s a dog, it might be, ‘puppy’, ‘tail’, ‘bark’, ‘growl’ or ‘attack’.”
In the pilot, Marvin, a big macho guy with facial tattoo scrambles and sobs at the sight of a pit bull puppy. “He was never afraid of them until he was 10 years old when a pit bull came into his backyard and attacked his friend. So he became very afraid afterwards as that was a very traumatic thing for him,” Dr Zasio points out. By the end of the show, Marvin was able to hug a pit bull.
But as with all medical treatments, success isn’t always a guarantee. Dr Zasio recalls her experience with a woman with a lethal fear of cats. “She’s had a lifelong fear of cats and just walking through a cat rescue shelter was terrifying for her. Even walking into an area that looked similar to a cat shelter was very difficult. She ran out several times and I had to coax her back in.”
Despite her efforts, Dr Zasio reveals: “At the end of the show she was not able to actually hold a cat. She could barely even touch a cat.”
The scenario begs the question – what is the success rate of exposure therapy like? “It’s very individualised and it boils down to a number of factors like do they have a highly demanding job that doesn’t allow them to invest time in the therapy or are they willing to do what is required to come in contact with the triggers so they can become desensitised?”
Motivation certainly plays a huge role. “If you’re really motivated about overcoming a phobia, then as long as you have an expert therapist who is familiar with the treatment, you can be cured. But then again, there are individual differences that we always have to take into consideration.”
More importantly, are they any risks involved in exposure therapy? “If it is done properly, it shouldn’t put anybody in danger because we are experts. We know how to do it in a controlled environment,” explains Dr Zasio.
She hopes we tune in: “The process has not only changed the lives of the participants on the show, but also the viewers. It is estimated that up to 28% of the (American) population have these types of phobias and I think a lot of people are living in silence because they are embarrassed.
“They’re ashamed to be afraid of a cat, a dog or a fish because it sounds so silly, especially when you hardly come in contact with fishes unless you’re in the water.
“So what’s been really great about the show is really busting the doors open in terms of saying that this is real and it affects a lot of people’s lives and also let them know that there’s treatment available at the same time.”
My Extreme Animal Phobia airs on Animal Planet (Ch 556) every Tuesday at 11pm. Repeats are on Saturdays at 4pm.