Work your way up the ladder of fear
By definition, this means exposing yourself to the thing you fear is going to be difficult, even if rationally you know you are perfectly safe. To make things easier psychologists often encourage people to embark on a programme of graded exposure. This means rather than throwing yourself in the deep end you break down confronting your fear into a series of more manageable steps.
Start by thinking of the two extremes of the scale: a situation likely to produce the most unbearable level of anxiety you can imagine (say letting a large spider crawl on your hand – fear factor rating 10+) and a situation or activity still related to your anxiety but that you are fairly confident you can manage with only minimal discomfort ...
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