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It Took One Moment to Learn Your Fear. Can It Take One Moment to Lose It?

By Harsh Singhal · · 8 min read

You know the fear makes no sense. You have told yourself so a hundred times. The dog is on a leash. The balcony has a railing. The lift will open in a few seconds. The room is only dark.

And still, the moment it appears, your body reacts before you do. Your heart races, your breath goes shallow, and you are already stepping back.

If that sounds familiar, there is nothing weak about you. Your mind is doing something it is remarkably good at. In this article I want to show you what that is, why it happens so fast, and why the very same ability is what allows a fear to change.

A phobia is learned in a single moment

Most things we learn take repetition. A language, a sport, driving a car: we practise for months before they become automatic. A phobia is often different. It is usually learned once, and then repeated in exactly the same way for years.

In 1979, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the co-creators of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), published Frogs into Princes, a book built from transcripts of their early workshops. In it, they describe a phobia as the clearest example of how people get stuck.

Their explanation is simple. At some point, often under stress and often early in life, a person faced something overwhelming. In that instant, without any conscious thought, the mind settled on how to respond. And it got there in one go. In their words:

“They succeeded in one-trial learning.”

Richard Bandler & John Grinder, Frogs into Princes (Real People Press, 1979), p. 110

They go on to call this “a remarkable achievement”. The person changes over the years, their life changes around them, and yet the same trigger produces the same reaction, every single time.

The same passage makes a second point. A person who panics at a snake has usually been calm and brave in many other moments of their life. The courage is already there. It simply cannot be reached in that one situation:

“in the context of a snake, they can't get to that resource.”

Frogs into Princes, p. 110

Why willpower often does not help

The book also describes a woman who had been afraid of heights for many years. The authors' office was on the third floor. When they asked her to walk to the window and describe what happened, she simply choked.

By asking careful questions, they found what was going on inside. In a split second, she was picturing herself falling out of the window, feeling the fall, and then feeling sick. None of it was a choice. It happened before she could even notice it:

“She did that very quickly, and the picture was outside of consciousness.”

Frogs into Princes, p. 67

This is why telling yourself to “just be brave” so often fails. The reaction runs faster than conscious thought. By the time you try to reason with it, your body has already reacted.

The authors report that after a short piece of work aimed at that automatic sequence, she walked to the same window without the fear response. They describe the moment like this:

“None whatsoever. She'd had the phobia for years and years and years.”

Frogs into Princes, p. 67

Psychology research points in a similar direction

The idea that a fear can be learned in one experience is not unique to NLP. A 1992 laboratory study published in the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy proposed that a single frightening experience may be one path to human phobias. It also noted that human phobias carry over easily from one setting to another. (Read the study summary)

Why a phobia can change

If a fear was learned in one moment, the natural question is whether it has to stay forever. The original NLP writing answers that question directly.

A learning that was never updated

Later in Frogs into Princes, Bandler and Grinder work live with a workshop participant who was terrified of driving across bridges. When asked what had first caused the fear, she had no idea.

They point out that this is normal. Most people with a phobia cannot remember the original event, and they add that “it is not even necessary to know that.”

Then they describe the phobia itself in one line:

“nothing more than a one-trial learning that was never updated.”

Richard Bandler & John Grinder, Frogs into Princes (Real People Press, 1979), p. 113

Seen this way, a fear is not a flaw in your character. It is an old lesson, learned once, at a time when it may well have protected you. “And it worked, by the way,” they say. Life moved on, and the lesson did not.

Their aim was not to rip the fear away, but to update it, so that a calmer response becomes available too. And the ability they chose to work with was the very one that created the fear in the first place:

“that same capacity to do one-trial learning”

Frogs into Princes, p. 113

That is the answer to the question in the title. The mind that learned a fear in one moment is the same mind that can learn something new just as quickly.

John Grinder's own case: no need to relive the story

In 2001, John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair published Whispering in the Wind, a book that revisits how NLP was built. In it, they describe one of Grinder's own clients.

A woman in her thirties was brought to Grinder by a psychiatrist. She had an unusual phobia: the sound of people chewing gum. The traditional methods her psychiatrist had tried had not helped.

Two weeks after her first session, she returned for a follow-up. Grinder met her at the door chewing gum, and she laughed. She also spoke about other changes she had noticed that fortnight. She had taken a spontaneous motorcycle ride, something she had also feared but never mentioned. And she felt a growing confidence around aggressive older men.

What stands out in this case is what did not happen. She was never asked to describe the frightening event behind her fear, and she never had to go back through it. The authors put the principle plainly:

“What is key here is the absence of content.”

John Grinder & Carmen Bostic St Clair, Whispering in the Wind (2001), Part III, Chapter 2

They add that the change took place “without it ever being verbalized”. Even afterwards, she was never told where her fear had come from, because she did not need to know. As they write, “she simply achieved the choices she came seeking”. Notice that she did not set out to test her fear. She discovered the change by living her life.

One principle, many fears

The two cases above are about heights and the sound of chewing gum. In the same chapter of Frogs into Princes, Bandler and Grinder explain that you do not need to understand the history of every single phobia, because once the structure of a phobia is understood, that understanding carries across:

“all phobias are going to work in the same way.”

Frogs into Princes, p. 110

The trigger is different from person to person. The pattern underneath it, a fast and automatic response learned once and never updated, is the same. I have resolved this pattern for many people, across each of the fears below.

Fear of heights (acrophobia)

A balcony, a glass lift, a hill road, a high-floor office window. The legs go weak, the stomach drops, and the body pulls back from the edge, even when the railing is solid and there is no real danger. It is the very fear in the case Bandler and Grinder described above.

Fear of dogs (cynophobia)

Crossing the road when a dog appears. Avoiding friends' homes because they have a pet. Freezing even when the dog is small, friendly and on a leash. For many people the fear began with a single bite, a chase or a loud bark at a young age, and it has felt the same ever since.

Fear of closed spaces and the dark (claustrophobia and nyctophobia)

These two fears often travel together, and one of my clients carried both. Rashida could not stay in the dark at all. She could not get an MRI scan done because she could not bear the enclosed machine. Then she was stuck in her car for almost two and a half hours in a traffic jam, and it ended in one of the worst panic attacks of her life.

After a couple of sessions with me, there came a day when the power failed at her office while she was in the lift. She was alone, and it was dark. In her own words:

“But, that day I travelled 6 floors in that dark elevator. My breathing was normal. I wasn't out of breath. And when the door opened for me to get out, then did I realize what had just happened.”

Rashida K., AVP, Corporate Social Responsibility, Bank of America

Just like Grinder's client, she did not go looking for a test. Life handed her one, and she only noticed the change once she was already through it.

Read Rashida's full testimonial

The fear of darkness can shape a whole household. I once worked with a young wife who, once her husband left for the office, could not bring herself to step into the other rooms of her own home. For her, the house shrank to the one room she was in. That fear of the dark is behind her now.

School-time fears: exams and a teacher's scolding

Some fears are learned in a classroom. One schoolboy I worked with had become so afraid of being scolded by a teacher that he was failing, with 35% in most subjects. When his Grade 10 final exam results first came out, he had a 72% average, more than double. His father's reply to my message was simply: “A little better.” Sometimes the people closest to a change are the last to believe it.

The boy himself was confident there had been an error in the marking, and applied for re-evaluation. He later told me on a call that two subjects had gone up to 85% and 82%, and the rest to 78–79%.

Is your fear not listed?

The same principle applies to other fears.

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This article shares my own experiences and general educational information about how fears are learned. The process I used is an Advanced NLP Coaching intervention, not medical or psychological treatment. Individual experiences vary, and no specific result is promised. If you have a diagnosed condition or are under treatment, please consult your doctor.

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