Unlike some areas of therapy where you might primarily see a particular group of clients—such as women seeking fertility treatment or parents looking for help with their children—phobias don’t discriminate. Anyone, regardless of gender, age, background, or life experience, can develop a phobia. There is no single ‘type’ of person who will come to you for help, because phobias can affect absolutely anyone.

However, what is consistent across almost all phobia clients is this: they only seek help when their phobia has become debilitating.

I know this from personal experience. I’ve had several phobias in my life—driving phobia, swimming phobia, thunder phobia, and snake phobia. But the only one I ever sought professional help for was the driving phobia because it was actively preventing me from moving forward in my life. The thunder phobia disappeared on its own, and the others don’t affect me enough to matter. This is key to understanding your clients: they are not just people who don’t like something. They are people whose lives are being seriously impacted by their fear.

A Fear is Not a Phobia

This is an important distinction that many people—even students learning about phobia treatment—struggle to understand. A fear is not a phobia.

People live with fears all the time, and many of them are entirely manageable. Someone might say, “I don’t really like dogs,” or “I might have a phobia of heights.” But unless their fear actively stops them from doing things they want or need to do, it’s not a phobia.

A true phobia is debilitating. It doesn’t just make someone nervous—it creates a deep, often overwhelming reaction that can feel completely out of their control. This is why phobia clients are some of the most highly motivated clients you’ll ever work with. They are not coming to you out of curiosity or general self-improvement. They are coming to you because they feel trapped by their phobia and are desperate for change.

Phobias Can Be About Anything

One of the most fascinating (and sometimes surprising) things about phobias is that they can be about absolutely anything. We often think of common phobias—heights, spiders, flying—but for some people, a completely ordinary object or situation can trigger extreme fear.

It’s important to understand that no phobia is “too small” or “too strange” to take seriously.

For example, on the programme The Fear Clinic, there was a client who had a phobia of Sausage Dogs—but not other types of dogs. At first glance, this might seem unusual, even slightly amusing. But his phobia was serious enough that it affected his choices, his daily movements, and had even put an end to a blossoming relationship.

This is why it’s so important not to judge a phobia by how “rational” it seems. To an outsider, a fear of a bowl of soup or a kite might seem strange, but to the person experiencing it, it is absolutely real and life-limiting.

The Key to Successful Phobia Work: Motivation

One of the best things about working with phobia clients is that they want change.

Unlike some areas of therapy where motivation can be a challenge, people seeking help for a phobia are usually deeply committed to the process. Their phobia is affecting their life in a way they can no longer tolerate, and they are looking for a real, lasting solution. This motivation gives you a strong foundation to work with because they are ready to engage and make the change happen.

Your role as the therapist is to guide them through that process, using the Phobia Fix Protocol to help them break free from their fear—no matter how unusual, specific, or seemingly irrational it may be.