I was tired of my lifelong fear of dogs. Could I get over it?

The first time I walked alone to the bus stop, a sheepdog broke its chain and upended me, its paws on my chest and my little world turned upside down. I was seven years old and my father had granted me freedom, but not so much that he hadn’t secretly tailed me, arriving moments after the dog was on top of me to wrestle it off.

The experience wasn’t horrific – I wasn’t physically hurt – and I still made it to the school bus that morning. But something lasting did happen on the sidewalk that day: I became afraid of dogs, a feeling that would last for the next 45 years.

Being scared of dogs – or elevators or death or swimming or commitment or anything else under the sun – can actually have a purpose: Fear keeps us safe. It starts with an alert deep inside the centre of the brain in the middle of the cerebral cortex.

“When you see something as a threat, brain cells in the ‘fear network’ – the amygdala, hippocampus and thalamus – become oxygenated,” says Dr. Atena Akbari, postdoctoral associate at Western University’s Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping. “This can create a physical and emotional response.”

By the time I was in my 50s, I had grown tired of my response to, supposedly, man’s best friend. My clear discomfort seemed just to make them jumpier. Plus, my kids got a dog with their mother. I also run nearly every day and it’s hard to change directions every time I see a dog along the streets of Toronto. It was becoming downright embarrassing, and it was time to change.

As I would learn in conversations with others fighting a fear, getting over one has to start with a desire for transformation. I had my desire – it was time to come up with a plan. So I sought the advice of a psychologist, who set me up with the right therapy. And to gain nuanced insight about my progress, I underwent before-and-after brain scans.

Akbari, with help from Dr. Ravi Menon, scientific director of Western’s Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping, helped me with this by performing the brain scans for this story. (I also happen to be writing a book about the brain. The scanner is generally not open to the public and is used for neurological research studies.)

In February, I lay in their 3-Tesla MRI scanner and watched a series of dog and cat videos while they monitored my brain activity. Completely submerged in their cold metal machine, I held on for dear life as I was confronted with images of canines with pointy incisors interspersed with kittens gently pawing yarn, while barking blasted through earbuds.

Could I ever get over my fear? Psychologist Houyuan Luo, director and founder of MindPeace Psychology in Toronto, says most of our fears stem from childhood and confronting them, which can be life-changing, is possible, though it is a multipronged effort.

“Any type of phobia treatment starts with cognitive behaviour therapy and we teach people to relax around something that scares them with breathing exercises and mindfulness before we begin cognitive restructuring,” says Luo, who practises “exposure therapy” as part of CBT to help confront trauma. “Getting rid of fear creates possibilities for a richer, more fulfilling life.”

To begin exposure therapy, Luo puts patients through a series of exercises on a scale of zero (not scary) to 100 (horrific). With my fear of dogs, he says, five could be talking about animals; 30, standing outside a dog park; 70, not touching but idling beside a canine; and 100, interacting with an actual leashless dog for 20 minutes. “The idea is to confront your fear and gradually decrease the trauma responses,” explains Luo.

Bev Crandell, chief executive officer of Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides, agreed to help me change my brain. Crandell invited me to her workplace, where dogs roamed like school kids at recess and took light umbrage at my calling the fur ball beneath her desk “it.”

Her $80-million facility in Oakville, Ont., houses and trains more than 120 service dogs each year. “Our dogs provide independence, confidence, hope and peace. Relationships between our dogs and clients are almost too big for words.”

I knew that I had to start gently, and so went to see the puppies that would eventually be sent to her school. Over the course of six months, I cleaned up the poo of a dog on a walk, read Dog Songs by Mary Oliver, got on the floor with little golden retrievers bounding around me and attended a dog guide graduation ceremony. I watched golden retrievers, labradors and poodles match with families who were so appreciative it was hard not getting choked up.

Exposure therapy was actually beginning to help me to understand why people don’t hate these things. I soon came to understand how it could help others, too.

Sue Kettela, a former social worker in New Brunswick, also benefited from exposure therapy, of a sort. Her fear of elevators nearly cost her a much-needed hospital job. Kettela was raising three children and found work as a shift co-ordinator at Fredericton’s Dr. Edward Chalmers Regional Hospital, which required her to ride an elevator all night.

“I’d get in the elevator and have all the symptoms of an anxiety attack, my breath would speed up, my mouth would go dry and I’d be hyper-aware of every ding,” says Kettela, who learned later in therapy the source of her fear. She’d been on an elevator when she received heartbreaking news. “I’d been unconscious after having a cesarean section,” she says, “and woke up groggy and remember riding up the elevator with the anesthesiologist who told me my baby was deceased.”

For six months, Kettela pushed herself to ride elevators up and down the hospital’s eight storeys, unknowingly undergoing radical exposure therapy until her phobia gradually ceased. “I’d never advise anyone to conquer their fears like I did, but getting over it was the biggest ego boost of my life,” says Kettela, who worked at the hospital for 35 years and recently rode the elevator up to the top of the CN Tower for dinner. “I felt powerful and superior.”

Necessity drove away Kettela’s fear, but it was a desire for a richer life that led Arman Hamidian to get over his fear of swimming.

Hamidian was five years old when he saw Jaws. Soon after, he witnessed his father nearly drown. “Seeing anyone you love become vulnerable at that age reinforces the idea that water’s unpredictable and in the water even adults aren’t safe,” he says, adding that his immigrant family didn’t grow up around cottage culture and swimming wasn’t part of his childhood. In his 20s and part of an expanding social network, Hamidian decided to change.

He took adult swimming classes, standing in the shallow end and learning to float, before attempting the crawl stroke beside an instructor and eventually getting comfortable in the ocean. “Part of how I’d understood myself was as someone afraid of the water, but now I appreciate that fear isn’t a fixed part of my identity,” says Hamidian, a two-time triathlon finisher. “Courage doesn’t mean being completely unafraid, it means being willing to do something despite the fear and trusting yourself. We can evolve.”

Steve LeBoutillier, 65, is a former tech executive from Toronto who was scared of public speaking, but had to give presentations for work. He got over his fear because his phobia was no match for his ambition – even if his phobia never quite went away. He recalls making his first big presentation to clients.

“I felt my mouth go dry and was convinced that everyone could see how nervous I was,” says LeBoutillier, adding that he always hated making school speeches and still doesn’t like getting up in front of people. LeBoutillier’s secret? Practice, which instilled confidence.

“I was terrified, but I practised my 45-minute presentation in front of a video camera every evening for weeks,” he says, adding that speaking informally to conference guests before his talk helped him break the ice. “I don’t necessarily have to eliminate fear to overcome it,” he says. “Sometimes, I just need to find a way to work with it.”

Last month I went back to Western University and, beneath their cold MRI scanner, watched dog and cat videos again.

This time, no matter the image, my brain chemistry didn’t change.

Dogs versus cats

in hearing and seeing areas,

before and after therapy

Stronger response to dogs than to cats

Stronger response to cats than to dogs

OUTSIDE VIEW

Before therapy

CROSS-SECTION VIEW

Before therapy

SOURCE: ATENA AKBARI / CENTRE FOR FUNCTIONAL

AND METABOLIC MAPPING AT WESTERN UNIVERSITY

Dogs versus cats in hearing

and seeing areas, before and after therapy

Stronger response to dogs than to cats

Stronger response to cats than to dogs

OUTSIDE VIEW

Before therapy

CROSS-SECTION VIEW

Before therapy

SOURCE: ATENA AKBARI / CENTRE FOR FUNCTIONAL

AND METABOLIC MAPPING AT WESTERN UNIVERSITY

Dogs versus cats in hearing and seeing areas, before and after therapy

Stronger response to dogs than to cats

Stronger response to cats than to dogs

SOURCE: ATENA AKBARI / CENTRE FOR FUNCTIONAL AND METABOLIC MAPPING AT WESTERN UNIVERSITY

As Akbari explained: My response to dogs compared with cats in my amygdala, which helps detect danger, went from 0.18 during my first visit to 0.06 during my second, “meaning dogs and cats were treated about the same.” What’s more, my hippocampus, involved in memory, “showed a cluster of spots with a stronger bold response to dogs at the first visit, and this cluster was gone at the second.”

Phobias serve a purpose, until they stop protecting us and instead hold us back. Fear of dogs, heights, small spaces or just about anything else can be seen as a temporary condition, a psychological state that, like tastes, can change.

As for me, I was cured! Well, sort of. Dogs and I, we’re still not cuddling on the couch over the weekend watching movies. But I am relieved to say I’m no longer afraid.

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