(no subject)

This idea was brought up by another LiveJournal discussion, and I wanted to capture it here.

I've gone over this before, but I have a different analogy.

People have irrational fears, and that's well understood. Okay... but there can also be *rational* fears that only *seem* irrational.

Let's pretend that Pavlovian conditioning (physical responses to a stimulus, when the response and the stimulus have been paired together in the past) is strong, and permanant. Let's pretend that Vic (Victor or Victoria... or "victim") has been tormented by a Pavlovian by being given bouts of severe nausea, paired with pictures of spiders. Vic now has horrible nausea whenever Vic sees a spider... on a good day, Vic will double up with dry heaves, and on a bad day, let's hope Vic isn't on expensive carpetting that isn't stain resistant.

Vic can probably be diagnosed with arachnophobia... but that's not an etnirely accurate term. Vic has a perfectly rational fear of nausea, and has good reason to believe that the sight of a spider will cause nausea.

It's possible that Vic will conquer both problems (the fear, and the nausea) at once, possibly with slow, careful exposure to spiders.

But, if there's a way to attack the nausea, and just the nausea, I think that will have a huge effect on the rate of recovery. Vic's fear of spiders will remain perfectly rational until the nausea is under control. The nausea doesn't even have to go away, entirely... if Vic knows the nausea might get "this bad, but no worse", then, as long as "this bad" is bearable, then Vic has much less reason to be afraid.

Now, in my case, my 'nausea' had been bad emotional reactions to certain things, which caused me to have a great deal of fear of those things. And, the key to my recovery was developing some level of control over how much pain those emotional reactions would cause. I haven't eliminated those responses, and I haven't stopped getting hurt from certain things, but I know that I have a relatively large amount of control over the pain that I'll feel. If I'm badly hurt, I can quickly reduce the amount of pain I'm feeling down to bearable levels, and it's getting more rare for me to be hurt.

The biggest thing about this is, I don't think I'd have overcome this unless I'd accepted that, first and foremost, I had to find some level of control over the emotional reactions. Until I knew I could handle them, I had too much rational fear... I couldn't dismiss my fears as irrational, because I knew they weren't.

If all goes well, I'll explore this a bit further tonight (and maybe get caught up on other responses to previous comments people have left).

(no subject)

This idea was brought up by another LiveJournal discussion, and I wanted to capture it here.

I've gone over this before, but I have a different analogy.

People have irrational fears, and that's well understood. Okay... but there can also be *rational* fears that only *seem* irrational.

Let's pretend that Pavlovian conditioning (physical responses to a stimulus, when the response and the stimulus have been paired together in the past) is strong, and permanant. Let's pretend that Vic (Victor or Victoria... or "victim") has been tormented by a Pavlovian by being given bouts of severe nausea, paired with pictures of spiders. Vic now has horrible nausea whenever Vic sees a spider... on a good day, Vic will double up with dry heaves, and on a bad day, let's hope Vic isn't on expensive carpetting that isn't stain resistant.

Vic can probably be diagnosed with arachnophobia... but that's not an etnirely accurate term. Vic has a perfectly rational fear of nausea, and has good reason to believe that the sight of a spider will cause nausea.

It's possible that Vic will conquer both problems (the fear, and the nausea) at once, possibly with slow, careful exposure to spiders.

But, if there's a way to attack the nausea, and just the nausea, I think that will have a huge effect on the rate of recovery. Vic's fear of spiders will remain perfectly rational until the nausea is under control. The nausea doesn't even have to go away, entirely... if Vic knows the nausea might get "this bad, but no worse", then, as long as "this bad" is bearable, then Vic has much less reason to be afraid.

Now, in my case, my 'nausea' had been bad emotional reactions to certain things, which caused me to have a great deal of fear of those things. And, the key to my recovery was developing some level of control over how much pain those emotional reactions would cause. I haven't eliminated those responses, and I haven't stopped getting hurt from certain things, but I know that I have a relatively large amount of control over the pain that I'll feel. If I'm badly hurt, I can quickly reduce the amount of pain I'm feeling down to bearable levels, and it's getting more rare for me to be hurt.

The biggest thing about this is, I don't think I'd have overcome this unless I'd accepted that, first and foremost, I had to find some level of control over the emotional reactions. Until I knew I could handle them, I had too much rational fear... I couldn't dismiss my fears as irrational, because I knew they weren't.

If all goes well, I'll explore this a bit further tonight (and maybe get caught up on other responses to previous comments people have left).