And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

Podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be.

I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols and this is episode 173. It's titled Fears and Fobias.

And if you're ready, we'll start the show.

All right, folks. How was your summer? I've been literally on the other side of the world to you,

probably. Most of you are in the UK, aren't you?

Yeah.

Although a few wuzzy listeners did email me whilst I was over there in Australia welcoming me to their world, which was nice.

They followed me on social media, so saw what I was up to.

Although I did mention my holiday on my patron-only episodes, so they might have found out there.

Either way, I was

very welcomed and had a wonderful time, but missed what was going on here in the UK. Not them which

did. Right then, over the last couple of months, I've had quite a few questions about tackling

fears and phobias, so I thought I'd go through some of the tricks and tips today. First off, though,

the difference. What's the difference between fears and phobias? Well, in short, a fear of something

is fairly rational. Even if we might think that there's no need for it, a fear still makes sense.

If someone has a fear of public

speaking, that makes sense. Although, what they're probably fearing is rejection from their peers

when you play around with it, but it still makes sense. After all, rejection is painful,

genuinely painful. The brain activates in the same way as it does for physical pain when we think about being rejected.

That's why there's a lot more to child abuse than physical pain.

Emotional pain is just as damaging to the brain whilst it's developing.

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