Express Yourself: Mastering Fears and Emotions
Scared of spiders? Researchers from the University of Los Angeles recently showed that it is possible to master fears and emotions by speaking them out. The team worked with subjects suffering from arachnophobia, i.e. fear of spiders. At the start, they were only supposed to slowly approach the spider. In a second stage they were shown spider images. The subjects were then divided into three groups who either had to express their negative feelings towards the spiders, use neutral words to describe them, or choose a completely different topic to talk about. By the end of the study, the phobia in the first group had been greatly reduced.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201208081223161917.htm