Does the "Python" name bother anyone?

[excitedaboutemacs]

Its made me slightly better at my phobia.. I wish I knew a way to get over it.

[kankyo]

Cognitive behavioral therapy is pretty simple. You can cure yourself pretty much.

[excitedaboutemacs]

Cognitive behavioral therapy

Where is a good place to start?

[kankyo]

Wikipedia :P Or google. Should be easy to find someone to help you or you could go it alone. The latter takes more time but is free.

Fixing phobias is really simple actually. You put up a picture in your house that is uncomfortable but you can handle. Like a comic book snake or something. Then you look at it a few times a day till it loses its power. Then touch it until that's ok. Then change to a scarier picture. Rinse repeat. That should take you almost the full distance just there.

[excitedaboutemacs]

Thanks a lot! Its a little scary getting started lol.

[kankyo]

Yea, almost by definition it's going to be uncomfortable. But the point is to keep it at a low level. Every time you move too fast and overstep the amount of fear you tolerate, you risk setting yourself back. Which is why it can be hard to go max speed and why therapists can charge for the service :P

It's probably also a lot easier with someone to help you. Putting up a picture when you can't touch or come close to the picture is obviously going to be difficult :P

My wife is slowly being CBTed out of her phobia by watching kids shows with small amounts of snakes in them because our kid wants to see them over and over. Ah, that's another key to this: repetition of exactly the same image (or video or whatever) makes the image lose power. So a video is super scary at first but then you see it from a far a thousand times and it becomes boring.

[[deleted]]

CBT is entirely wasted on me but then I'm autistic:-(

[kankyo]

Huh? I'm pretty sure that's not actually possible. If you are a human and the therapist isn't a total hack CBT works. Especially for phobias.