As someone who overcame a fear of dogs, I must say there are many benefits in daring to take the step of overcoming a phobia. Whether you’ve had a traumatic episode with a dog, have been taught to fear them since childhood, or witnessed an unusual display of dog aggressiveness against a human, you’ll find very useful this list of 5 easy steps to overcome fear of dogs:
1. Analyze the situation: When you come into contact or in presence of a dog, how do you feel? Does it cause you fear to hear it barking? Can you tolerate his presence until he barks? Just seeing a photo of a dog triggers your anxiety? Do you cross the Street after seeing a dog approaching? Do you avoid certain meetings or friendships because it could mean you have to be near a dog? If your anxiety level is too high you may require the support of a therapist to overcome the phobia.
2. Be patient: Overcoming a fear you’ve developed and accumulated over years is not a process that happens overnight. With effort, you will begin to see progressive changes that will help you to relax in the presence of pets and, even, led you to consider having one.
3. Return to the origins: Track the root of the problem, the origin of your phobia. You’ll be able to understand and work on what happened in a productive way, that helps you put into dimension what happened, the moment in which it happened, and its motives : You were just a kid? Was the dog properly trained? Were you taught to fear dogs? All that is important to be analyzed to achieve a better understanding of your phobia.
4. Baby Steps: Learning relaxation techniques and meditation could be useful too keep you calm and in control of your anxiety, in parallel, if you dare to experiment, ask a doglover of your confidence to help you hold short approximations to a dog, even better a Puppy, so you can learn to trust them and test your anxiety management.
5. Be objective: Study, inquire, watch videos, you could even interview veterinarians, dog rescuers and other professionals who are in constant contact with animals. They handle more information resources about pet behavior that could be a great help in cases like this.
Sometimes we divide reality into 2 fractions “Black and White”Thinking, so “if a dog was aggressive all dogs will be the same”, but in reality there is as much more diversity in the behavior of dogs as there is in humans, after all, they are the reflection of what we teach them and what not.
