How YOU can overcome your phobias by breathing out of one nostril and journaling, according to top trauma expert… So can he rid our fear-stricken science writer NIKKI MAIN of her irrational phobia?

By Nikki Main 

I’ve always had a fear of skiing, since before I’d ever laid eyes on a slope. 

I was afraid of going off the edge, being hit by a fellow skier, and crashing to my death – but it wasn’t hard for me to identify where my fear began.

My mom was like most moms – she commiserated with me when I was sad or stressed and cheered me on when I participated in the school play, something I was driven to do because I wanted to be like her.

But when I met with Jones to discuss my fear of skiing, we realized that’s where it all started – I wanted to be like my mom.

She has been afraid of skiing for the last 30 years, ever since she nearly died when another skier cut her off as she flew down a slope and crashed, breaking her jaw and falling into a day-long coma.

It’s a story I’ve heard many times and made me petrified of skiing, but as I got older I decided it was time to make the jump and strap on a pair of skis, but I could not have been more scared.

I told Jones that I hyperventilated as I took the lift up to the top of the slope and I cried when I saw how steep the mountain was, but I kept trying before finally cutting my losses and decided skiing wasn’t for me.

Jones said that some people experience anticipatory anxiety – or fear of fear and build up the worst-case scenarios before facing it.

You may have a voice inside your head telling you that you’re scared, or you’re going to cry, or think ‘Everyone’s going to laugh at me,’ if you have a fear of public speaking; but if you flip the script to imagine that voice as the most boring person you’ve heard, it will completely change the meaning you give it, he told me.

This is called scrambling – when you locate the root cause of the fear and change it to make it funny or to change the way you look at it.

Jones told me to rank my fear on a scale of one to 10 – I ranked it as a nine – and visualize the first time I rode up the mountain in that ski lift and tell him what I remember thinking in that moment.

I told him I kept thinking ‘Oh my gosh, what if I fall?’

He had me picture that voice in my favorite animated character, but when I couldn’t think of one, he suggested Goofy. 

I felt silly as I heard Goofy’s voice in my head saying: ‘Oh my gawrsh,’ on repeat, and when Jones asked me to rank my fear, I said it was still high – a seven.

He tried several other tactics including thinking about my happiest memory and relating it to that moment of skiing, giving myself a hug and massaging my temples, cheeks and arms, but at the end, that ranking had only gone down to a five.

We repeatedly tried the methods and before long, I started to feel better about skiing – I wanted to jump on a slope right then and there and see if I could do it – I was miraculously cured.

But by the time I sat back down at my desk an hour later, I wasn’t so sure.

Those feelings were back – the fear was back – and no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop the anxiety from resurfacing every time I thought about booking a ski trip or sitting down on that ski lift. 

I finally came to the realization that I hadn’t been cured at all, it almost felt like I was brainwashed into thinking I had overcome my fear.

Jones said most of his patients overcome their fears at the end of a 90-minute session, but I remain unconvinced.