Staying with Fears

  It's interesting for me to reflect: I have often heard the idea that one should 'stay with their fears' in order to overcome them. I saw a program some time ago where a lady overcame her fear of dogs by walking through a dog kennel, with her psychologist by her side to help her when the fear became too overwhelming. The principle behind this kind of therapy (called "exposure" therapy) is that the more I can be with something and not give into my habitual reaction of wanting to control the experience a certain way, the more I realize two things: one is that the object of my fear is not going to harm me in any way, and two is that there is no need to be 'in control' by trying to avoid or get rid of the feared object. From a behaviorist point of view, it is simply about forming new associations between a stimulus and a newly learned response.
  While I understand and agree with the premise of exposure therapy, I would have to add the caveat that a person needs a certain amount of faith and trust for this kind of thing to work. Why? Well, consider that a person being exposed to something fearful is most likely going to bring up the same old memories over again. How can this be stopped? I think it's only when a person has the faith that their mind can form new impressions given the same phenomena. This is not an easy faith to have, because a lot of times, memories of previous experiences can get the better of a person. However, the idea is that without this kind of faith, fear just perpetuates itself like a kind of habit. I develop a new kind of respect for the things I fear, when I can go through the process of forming altogether new connections with it that are often surprising or unexpected. And the discovery of the surprising connections we can form with others is what can change how we view the mind itself: not as something chained to the past, but rather as something that is quite flexible to newness in every moment.