A five session cognitive behavioural treatment of an injection phobia is described, in which the patient’s dysfunctional attitudes about not being able to control events played a central role. The extreme negative meaning of the phobic situation was explored, and then the patient was asked to say when in her life she could first remember having those types of thoughts and emotions. This helped her to understand some of the origins of her fear, and then to transform the negative meaning into a more realistic positive one. The “Stress-In-Dynamic-Context” model of acquisition of phobias was used to understand factors other than simple pairing of stimuli that might have been involved in the triggering of her phobia.
