What are doctor-recommended strategies for overcoming a severe phobia?

CBT: The gold standard treatment for overcoming a phobia is cognitive behavioral therapy, which involves working with a psychologist on cognitive restructuring (thought changing) and "graduated exposure" exercises. Graduated exposure involves gradually approaching feared objects or situations on a "fear hierarchy (0 to100) and not conquering the next fear until you have "graduated" from previous step.

Graded Exposure: Most effective therapy = systematic desensitization. Involves facing/exposing yourself to the feared object/situation but gradually, in progressive steps (e.g., from looking at photo of spider, to holding toy spider, right up to holding live one). At each step, u experience fear but "stay w/ it" until ur level of fear drops/you feel relaxed. See: http://bit.Ly/xwlhyf anxiety/cbt expert can help!

CBT: Seek a cognitive-behavioral therapist who specializes in phobias. One method they use is systematic desensitization which slowly and incrementally brings the person closer and closer to the thing they are afraid of in slow, graduated steps that help make the anxiety more tolerable.