Erasing Fears
A few weeks ago, I read about a Dutch doctor who is using therapy and medication to erase people’s fears. It sounds a little too-good-to-be true, but even the New York Times has written about her work. She shows the person the thing they fear and gives them the beta blocker propranolol immediately after. Their brain rewrites the fear with a new, neutral memory.
I am deeply interested in trying this.
I think it would work both because it works and because I want it to work. It would be so much nicer to live my life without fears. I have a bunch, most of them irrational. My life would be better if I didn’t have them, though I’m not sure how to get rid of some of them because they’re not objects or animals. They’re possibilities. How do you undo a fear of a possible future event?
Something in one of the articles gave me pause: “Some people feel a sadness after they’re cured,” Kindt warns me. “A part of you is gone — even though the phobia was unpleasant, it was part of who you were.”
I don’t think I would be sad to lose my fears, though I guess I wouldn’t know until I was sad. Though the New York Times article points out that you’re still you and you still have your memories: “The subjects knew perfectly well after the study that they previously feared spiders and that they now — strangely — felt little to no anxiety around them.”
I’m not seeing the drawbacks as long as your memory is intact and you’re not erasing a helpful fear. But maybe I just haven’t thought deeply enough about the consequences of this because I’m so enamoured with the possibilities.
If you were given the chance to do this and permanently get rid of an on-going fear, would you take it?
11 comments
I thought the same thing as you…the fears of possibilities…something that is not concrete, how does that work…or does it even??
This study has me intrigued. The one caveat I can see would be that sometimes fear is what keeps us safe…so if you were afraid of heights previously but now aren’t, would you be more likely to walk to close to the edge of a cliff? Or a fear of snakes…would you now feel like they are harmless and want to handle them? Definitely interesting and I am curious to learn more.
Yes, I’d do it! My fear of heights has meant I’ve missed out on experiences. Sure, I’ve been in a balloon, but I haven’t walked up open staircases, or hiked up paths that were too steep on one side. Would it work, though, on a fear of what people think of me? In everyday life, that might be more useful!
What fears specifically would you want to get rid of? I can’t think of a fear that I would want to block out.
Nah, I wouldn’t do it. But I don’t have many fears. I am disgusted by crickets and other jumping bugs, mildly afraid of bees and also fear dying before my sons are adults. The only one of these “fears” that would be worth “treating” is the last one, and I doubt the efficacy of this type of treatment for that type of fear.
Not so much a fear, but yes, for anxieties. Things that cause me tremendous anxiety to even partially consider—I’d love to replace that with a neutral feeling. I would jump in line.
I think this could be helpful for people with debilitating fears of flying or claustrophobia. My poor FIL had a terrible experience as a firefighter and is very claustrophobic to the point that he can’t do MRI’s without sedation. He had a liver transplant and needs MRI’s since they are less invasive way to check his liver.
I most definitely would. I’d love to be free of a fear of needles, procedures, hospitals. It sometimes feels crippling.
If I’m going to keep going to protests, then my fear of crowds would be a good one to get rid of. It had been so avoidable after I no longer had to go to high school dances.
I’d gladly be rid of my fear of flying – and my fear of long Interstate car trips. A professional told me years ago I was risk averse. He was absolutely correct.
I don’t think I would do it. My biggest fears are realistic things – losing another baby, utterly messing up at work. Having the fear allows me to make better informed decisions, and to understand the risks associated. It also gives me the cue I need to prepare myself for the outcome if that fear comes true, and the motivation to take actions that might prevent the fear. Now, if I could eliminate the possibility of those fears happening. . . . that I’d sign up for!
Hmmm, it wouldn’t be bad to get rid of the fear of flying, which is horrible. Or the constant fear that someone is going to die. When does it go from fearing one thing, to straight-out anxiety where the things you fear are so numerous that it would take so much erasing to eradicate them, and then are you erasing something central to you? Or are you freeing yourself? Interesting that they make the distinction between fear and memory, that you aren’t erasing the memory of having had the fear. It reminded me a bit of a book I read last year, All Is Not Forgotten, that centered on the ability to erase memories for people who’d gone through something traumatic, but in the case of a brutal rape, it also inhibited the investigation AND had interesting impacts where you knew something horrible had happened and you were suffering fallout from that but couldn’t remember the event itself. It was super interesting, but heavy on the rape so difficult to read for that aspect. Whoops, bit of a ramble, but comes back to I think I would erase my most debilitating fears, if it definitely didn’t have some sort of long-term consequence.