Phobia (rodents) therapy/therapist recommendations in London or surrounding areas?

[SarahR71]

I’m wondering if anyone can recommend a therapy/therapist for rodent phobia.
We had rats in the walls and loft a few months ago and I’m still getting freaked out by the slightest noise in the house. I’ve just been diagnosed with a condition that puts me at risk of stroke so I need to find a way to calm down. There seems to be a lot of different types of therapies out there for phobias - has anyone had success with any?

Do you need to see someone in person or is via Zoom OK?

I’m not sure but I’m open to all suggestions/recommendations. I think some therapies might have to be in person, some would work on zoom. The main thing is that it’s effective

Any qualified CBT therapist will be able to help, phobias are bread and butter stuff. Make sure they are BACP or BABCP accredited.

The way to approach any phobia is to find the root cause; when and why you developed this fear. Once you have this it's easy to reverse it.

Thanks for getting back to me - I’ll look out for accreditation. I’ve had CBT in the past for other issues and it wasn’t helpful. But maybe the therapist and me weren’t a good fit? I’ve come across other therapies on the internet. It would be good to get a recommendation from someone who has had help with a phobia

The thing is it’s quite rational to be scared of rats and probably necessary from an evolutionary point of view. It’s just that my fear is off the scale and really affecting my quality of life

You need a good hypnotherapist. Way quicker than CBT without hypnosis. I had it for a dog phobia I’d had since I was really little. Two sessions and it was gone, whereas six sessions of CBT beforehand didn’t get rid of it.

Lots of people keep rats as pets! Yes, back in the Middle Ages they posed a tangible threat to humans but that evolutionary fear is no longer appropriate.

Best way is exposure ime. My spider phobia is way better since moving out on my own because I HAVE to deal with them. Before, I would be screaming and crying if trapped in a room with one but although I'm still scared, now I do just hit them, hoover them or in the case of small cellar spiders, evict them.

Rats, working at B&Q cured me of that. Major rat problem. As in kick the racking before you start a job in case there's one in the box and never pick anything up that you can't see the back of, kind of problem. Took weeks for pest control to get rid of them. They would roam the aisles like customers during the night.

During the day you didn't much see them but if you worked the night replenishment shift all you could hear were people shouting FFS MOVE! at them. They got quite tame actually, we'd nudge them with a foot to get them to shift when we needed to get by and they would sit and watch you working. They're more nervous or curious of you than anything, most rats aren't aggressive unless cornered.

Thanks 👍 Was your hypnotherapist anywhere near the London area? I’ve tried self hypnosis in the past for bruxism and found it helpful (it also helps me fall asleep). But I listened to a hypnosis recording for rat phobias that I found on Spotify two nights ago and I woke up shaking, trembling and feeling really scared.

The thing is one was behind the kitchen plinth to start off with (we had a camera behind the plinth) and after that they were in the cavity walls. We were first alerted to the problem when our electrics started behaving weirdly and one of our kitchen appliances stopped working. When we pulled it out we could see a small fire had been caused by a rat… so they can cause a lot of damage to pipes and wires. One started scraping so loudly behind my bedroom wall it sounded like industrial machinery! But I think you’re maybe right about the root cause aspect… I have issues with my boundaries being trespassed and rats definitely do not respect boundaries. They are extremely clever (this freaks me out) and difficult to get rid of if they’re in the walls and you live in structurally interconnected houses. There’s a rational part to the fear but also a definitely out of proportion irrational fear. I just recently discovered I have a condition that puts me at a high risk of stroke so I have to get my anxiety levels under control somehow

Thanks for this - it makes me feel a bit better 👍 Funnily enough I’m not scared of spiders at all and I’ll happily leave them alone (apart from the other night when I found one under my pillow).