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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance. Do you or does anyone in your family struggle with something called holiday phobia? Or have you even heard of the term before? Well, here to explain and help us deal with it is Dr. Harry Barry. Good morning, Harry.
Good morning, Clare. How are you doing?
Well, I think everyone's looking forward to their holidays. Some people really, though, are not.
Chapter 2: What is holiday phobia and how does it affect individuals?
Is that what this is?
Yes, a holiday phobia is really where a person becomes very, very apprehensive at the thought of, say, one of two things, either getting on a plane, traveling to warmer climates, or leaving this sanctity or safety of their own home and traveling even down the country in Ireland or abroad.
Both of these leads to, believe it or not, many, many people will spend days, weeks, even months worrying away about both of these things. And very often, sometimes their families will know and sometimes they'll be hiding it from their families. But I think it's really important that we break them up into plane phobias and away from home phobias. And let's see how we deal with them.
OK, talk to us about the plane phobia then, firstly.
The plane phobia is a huge problem and many, many people listening to will really relate to this. And that's where we spend a lot of time worrying coming up to the time. And then what we're really worried about is when we get on the plane and the plane doors shut and we finally feel trapped. That's the key word, magic word in phobias is trapped.
And when they start to feel trapped, they begin to get all these low-grade physical symptoms like shaking, sweating, stomach knots, heart going fast. And the real danger is that it's not that they're worried the plane will crash, but they're actually They're worried that they're going to feel trapped and they're going to develop these particular symptoms. And the real problem is what will happen?
They visualize in their own mind, and this is unfortunately what they do. They visualize that they're going to lose control and go screaming up and down the plane, that they're going to collapse, that the plane will have to be reversed or have to go back. And it will ruin their holiday and the holidays of everybody on the plane. And the second group then are very, very similar in many ways.
And this is where the person is not just worried about being on a plane, but they're worried about leaving home, being away from the safety of home, when they go a certain distance away from home.
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Chapter 3: What are the symptoms of holiday phobia?
And believe it or not, there will be people who will be listening to this, who actually will be worried about leaving their home and going even down to say Cork or Kerry or Galway or whatever. And what they're worried about is exactly the same kind of situation that they too will feel completely trapped when they're in this new situation.
And when that happens, once again, they'll get the same low-grade physical symptoms, shaking and sweating and stomach and nuts and heart pounding. And again, they're worried that what will happen is that they will collapse, that they'll have to be brought in the hospital, that they'll lose control. They make a fool of themselves, or maybe if they're away from home, even
the worst case scenario of all, is they'll start to feel so panicky that they'll actually start demanding to everybody that they need to go home again. So this can be very, very frightening.
What I'm learning from you, Harry, is that the symptoms of both really are the same. And are those symptoms common across all phobias? And if that's the case, is the treatment the same?
Exactly. The real secret that Anybody who has a phobia, the magic word is the word trapped, that they feel that they're trapped in whatever situation they find themselves in. And once you feel trapped, your amygdala or your emotional brain unfortunately triggers your acute stress system into action and we get bursts of adrenaline.
And adrenaline is this, our natural fear hormone, which gives you the shaking, sweating and stomach and pounding and fast breathing and a sense of impending doom. And the real problem is that the person thinks that it's the plane or that it's the distance from home is the problem, but it's not. It's actually these physical symptoms because they assign a danger to these physical symptoms.
And there are four common dangers. And I really would appeal to people to listen to these because they're so, so common. The first one is that I'm going to die. I'm going to collapse and die. The second one is I'm going to lose control and run amok. The third one that people will see me losing control and the fourth one that I'm going mad.
So the classic example, and I can recall so many people with this visualization, say on the plane, that they visualize that they're going to lose control, run up and down the the aisle of the plane have to be restrained, have to turn the plane around and all the rest of it. Of course, none of this ever happens, but it's what's going on in their heads.
So, Harry, can you explain to us then how we deal with this? Because there is a treatment, isn't there, called flooding. Yes. How does that work?
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Chapter 4: How do plane phobias differ from away-from-home phobias?
So that we notice that the more often we use this technique, the more we lose our fear of all these particular situations, like the plane or being away from home. So it's teaching people to expose themselves to these situations, accept that they will get these adrenaline rushes and these uncomfortable feelings and learn to use flooding as a way of combating it.
I'm imagining now, Harry, that I have to look at a rodent because that would be my big fear. I have to look at him in the eye and accept how I feel when I look at him.
Is that what you're saying to me? Exactly that. It's not the rodent. It's not the spider. For example, they've shown that if you put a spider into a glass cage, the person will still have the same physical reaction, even though there's no risk whatsoever, you know, because the spider is in there.
in the last case so it doesn't make the slightest difference what you're actually afraid of it's not the the the rodent or the spider or the plane or the bus or the train or whatever it is it's that you will develop these physical symptoms as a response and that's what everybody is afraid of they're afraid of the discomfort of those symptoms so they they learn to try to avoid them
And of course, the more they avoid them, the more the amygdala remembers and the more the amygdala remembers, the worse it gets. So they get more and more and more physical symptoms. So the wonderful thing about all this is that if you can phobias, the problem is that phobias grow legs.
I can recall one beautiful girl coming to me all the way from Paris, believe it or not, and she had six different phobias. Her phobias began to grow legs. So if you if you if you become afraid of one thing, you suddenly become afraid of something else and something else. And suddenly they can pile up and people's lives can be in absolute misery. So it's an amazing thing.
It is. And it's fascinating to hear how to deal with it as well. That is Dr. Harry Barry.
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