The case study “Fear of Moths” illustrates how the stressful feelings which are associated with a particular situation can be dissociated from the situation and replaced with feelings which are associated with a more pleasant situation. The story can be used for spiders and any other phobia triggers as well as for moths.

Yesterday I visited some friends of mine. “Our daughter is afraid of moths,” they told me. “Every time she sees a moth in the apartment she has a meltdown and makes a huge fuss. Is there anything you can do?” “I don’t know,” I said, and turned to the daughter, who was sitting at the table with us and drinking a mug of hot chocolate. “The next time you see a moth, make sure that you don’t think about hot chocolate and that you don’t think about not thinking about hot chocolate, and that you don’t think about how the hot chocolate tastes right now and the way you feel when you drink hot chocolate, because if you think about hot chocolate and how you feel right now because you’re drinking hot chocolate you might have hot chocolate feelings whenever you see a moth, accidentally and without meaning to. And what would happen if you felt as though you could almost taste and smell hot chocolate and as though you had hot chocolate feelings whenever you saw a moth? How would you cope?” “I wouldn’t care.” “Watch out!” I said. “Even if you think you wouldn’t care about having hot chocolate feelings whenever you saw a moth, you need to be careful that you don’t end up not caring about the moths themselves, because it would be a shame if you didn’t care about the moths so much that you got hot chocolate feelings whenever you saw them……” The young girl saw a moth quarter of an hour later, and stayed calm and relaxed