Latest / Never Post / Georgia Is Terrified of the Titanic - Proxy With Yowei Shaw [CROSSPOST]

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Georgia Is Terrified of the Titanic - Proxy With Yowei Shaw [CROSSPOST] · Never Post

0:11
Georgia Hampton: Hello, everyone. Producer Georgia here
0:14
with a little Halloweeny treat for all you ghouls, goblins, and
0:20
ghosts out there in Never Post Land. Last week, I was on a very
0:24
special, very spooky, very sub mechanical episode of another
0:31
amazing Radiotopia show, Proxy. Proxy is all about dealing with
0:36
emotional conundrums. And the one that I brought Yowei, let's
0:41
just say it's very appropriate for the season we are currently
0:45
in.
0:45
So it seemed only fitting that we drop it in our feed too. Now,
0:52
it is the week before Halloween as I record this. So before you
0:56
jump in, you will have to indulge me in setting the scene.
1:01
It's a dark cold night, nearly 400 nautical miles away from the
1:07
shore. Salty winds whipping against your face.
1:12
The only thing you can see around you is the dark black
1:17
marble surface of the sea. It's completely opaque, giving away
1:23
nothing. But you know that something is down there. Nearly
1:29
three miles down from the exact spot where you're floating, so
1:35
deep that sunlight never reaches it. It's down there right now.
1:41
It'll be down there when you go to bed and when you wake up in
1:44
the morning. It is always there sitting on the ocean floor
1:51
silence, in complete darkness, waiting.
2:28
Yowei Shaw: Hello, discerning listeners. Fun fact about me.
2:32
Sometimes I'm too scared to go into my own basement, which is a
2:37
problem because that's where we keep the food. It started a few
2:42
years ago. My husband, Kyle, is a great cook.
2:46
He does most of the cooking in our house. And one day, he
2:49
called me while he was at work to get some fish out of the
2:53
freezer to thaw for dinner. So I go downstairs to the unfinished
2:58
part of our basement where the freezer is. It's got cold
3:01
concrete floors, random boxes everywhere, power tools. And the
3:07
annoying thing about this room is that to turn on the light,
3:10
you have to walk into the middle of the darkness and reach up for
3:13
this little string hanging from the ceiling, something I've done
3:17
a thousand times.
3:19
But this time, as I'm reaching around in the dark, I start
3:23
thinking about a horror movie I'd watched the night before,
3:26
Suspiria. Specifically, the scene where a bunch of people's
3:31
heads explode in an underground chamber. And suddenly, my body
3:36
goes cold. My heart starts seizing up. It's like I'm
3:40
getting the jump scare all over again, and I have to get the
3:43
fuck out of there.
3:45
So I run upstairs, no fish. And I remember thinking, this is so
3:52
dumb. I know scary movies scare me. I know I shouldn't watch
3:57
them alone, but I love scary movies, so I watch Suspiria
4:01
anyway. And now, I can't even get fish out of my own basement.
4:06
And years later, I'm still afraid of that room. Sometimes
4:10
when Kyle calls me to get something out of the freezer, I
4:14
can make myself do it. I'll hold my breath, run-in, and grab
4:18
whatever he needs. Other times, I'll conveniently forget. Why am
4:24
I such a baby?
4:26
Why can't I talk myself out of this irrational fear? And why
4:31
are so many of us like this? Afraid of things we know
4:34
intellectually shouldn't scare us. I've always thought, I get
4:40
how irrational fears work, where they come from, how to treat
4:43
them. I listen to NPR.
4:46
I'm up to date. But in reporting this episode, I discovered
4:50
there's a lot I didn't know. Like, how the very things we do
4:54
to make ourselves feel less afraid can actually make our
4:57
fears worse. That's what today's case is about. After the break,
5:03
Georgia is terrified of the Titanic.
5:17
Back in June, I was having lunch in New York with some podcast
5:20
people. And afterwards, a colleague approached me eyes
5:24
wide open. She said she had a conundrum for me, a very
5:28
specific conundrum.
5:30
Georgia Hampton: I'm terrified of the Titanic wreck. I can't
5:37
look at it. It feels to me like I am looking at a dead body.
5:45
Woah. And I can't do it.
5:47
Yowei Shaw: Can I just say, I respect you as a journalist, as
5:51
a podcast maker, but, like, are you for real?
5:55
Georgia Hampton: I'm for real. I'm too for real.
5:59
Yowei Shaw: This is Georgia Hampton, the colleague. Now I
6:03
try not to litigate people's feelings on Proxy because I
6:06
don't think it's productive. But I admit, when Georgia first told
6:10
me about her problem, I was like, what's the problem? A
6:14
shipwreck at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean seems easy
6:17
enough to avoid. But Georgia said, actually, she can't escape
6:22
the Titanic shipwreck.
6:24
It follows her around, especially with the work she
6:27
does as a producer and reporter for the Never Post podcast.
6:30
Georgia Hampton: I am a culture journalist whose beat is the
6:34
Internet. And the Titanic is just one of those things that is
6:38
so embedded in our culture and in our Internet culture and our
6:43
culture of memes and our culture of references, and something
6:47
that has been undeniable to me in my work is that inevitably,
6:54
at some point, I never know when it is, I am going to see an
7:00
image of the Titanic wreck.
7:02
Yowei Shaw: A new scan of the Titanic just
7:04
Georgia Hampton: Usually, TikTok is where this happens. It's
7:07
always the same kind of video. So this is the first ever full
7:09
view of It's always like a lot of people. Have an even more
7:13
accurate rendering of the entire Titanic wreck. And when I tell
7:18
you, I will be like, and, like, throw my phone across the room.
7:24
It is so alarming to me. I hate looking at it. It makes me
7:28
wanna, like, rip my skin off.
7:34
Yowei Shaw: Georgia can tell me exactly where it started. In
7:37
high school, she was on a trip in The Caribbean with some
7:40
friends. Excursion. And at some point, the boat guide stopped in
7:46
a shallow section of the ocean and said, hey. There's a
7:50
shipwreck over there.
7:52
If anyone wants to swim out and use your snorkel to look at it.
7:55
Georgia was the only one interested in going.
7:58
Georgia Hampton: So I swim out there, and I'm floating on the
8:02
water looking down at it. And something just sort of happened
8:08
to me.
8:09
Yowei Shaw: What did you see exactly?
8:12
Georgia Hampton: I saw a pretty run of the mill shipwreck. Like,
8:18
it was a relatively small boat that had been there for quite
8:23
some time. There was algae and seaweed and stuff, like, growing
8:28
on the ship from within the ship, and it was just sort of,
8:33
like, spatchcocked on the ocean floor. And little fish were sort
8:37
of swimming around. It was no more terrifying than, like, the
8:45
shipwreck in The Little Mermaid that she, like, swims in and out
8:49
of or whatever.
8:50
But something about it just profoundly unsettled me in a
8:55
very existential way. I was looking at it, and it was like a
9:00
little voice in my head kept being like, that's not supposed
9:03
to be there. This is not supposed to be there. This is
9:07
wrong. That's not supposed to be there.
9:09
I don't like that that's there. That's not supposed to be there.
9:11
And it just got louder and louder and louder, and I
9:14
immediately swam back. Wow. I was like, Okay.
9:22
And then promptly sort of shelved that away in my mind and
9:25
didn't think about it for many years.
9:28
Yowei Shaw: Flash forward to 2019. Georgia is hanging with
9:31
friends at someone's apartment in Chicago, and they decide to
9:34
watch the Titanic, something fun that they'd all already seen.
9:39
Georgia settles into the couch with popcorn.
9:41
Georgia Hampton: The energy is very fun. We're already joking.
9:45
And the movie starts, and I had forgotten. For the first, maybe
9:53
Martin Antony: 13 meters. You should see it.
9:55
Georgia Hampton: Ten minutes of the movie, a good chunk of it is
9:58
real footage of a little submarine pod remotely operated
10:03
going down into the ocean, searching through the dark and
10:08
coming across the bow of the Titanic that sort of emerges out
10:14
of the darkness like this, like, cold dead hand. And I was
10:22
watching it with my friends, and I had that exact feeling again,
10:27
but it was so much worse.
10:29
Yowei Shaw: What was going on in your body?
10:32
Georgia Hampton: I just froze. I wanted to, like, scream as loud
10:37
as I could until I couldn't scream anymore. And I remember
10:40
kind of snapping out of my stupor and being like, guys,
10:44
something something's happening to me about this. I don't like
10:48
this at all.
10:50
Yowei Shaw: Ever since then, Georgia freaks out every time
10:54
she encounters the Titanic wreck on TikTok or Instagram, which
10:58
she invariably does.
10:59
Georgia Hampton: We're just about to head down the stairwell
11:00
now.
11:01
Yowei Shaw: Because there's always another anniversary of
11:03
the sinking or discovery to contend with.
11:05
Georgia Hampton: Capturing every angle of a steel corpse.
11:08
Yowei Shaw: Plus, it's just such a singular monocultural event.
11:13
So many memes. I'll never let go.
11:15
Georgia Hampton: I won't let go. Dad. It's like... Imagine in
11:20
your home, there is always going to be a Lego on the ground
11:24
somewhere. Most of your time, you're never gonna step on it.
11:27
But once in a while, you do. And you'll go like, ah, fuck. Like,
11:33
I hated that. But then it sort of skitters away and you're
11:38
like, whatever. I have to go to work or, like, I have to call my
11:42
friend or I have to go to the store or something.
11:44
So you're like, oh, it's fine. Whatever. But then it happens
11:47
again three months later and you're like, god damn it. Like,
11:50
I need to do something about this. But where is it?
11:53
And I don't know. And I don't know when I'm gonna see it
11:55
again.
11:59
Yowei Shaw: Georgia wants to know what exactly is happening,
12:03
and can she make it stop? That's after the break.
12:13
Georgia Hampton: What's up? What's up? I have to tell you,
12:15
literally, just now, the sky has darkened, and it's like
12:20
thunderstorming here.
12:22
Yowei Shaw: Oh, shit. The foreshadowing is a little
12:25
literal.
12:26
Georgia Hampton: I know. It's a little on the nose. Wouldn't be
12:28
my choice.
12:29
Yowei Shaw: The day of the Proxy conversation, Georgia tells me
12:32
she hasn't had any recent Titanic encounters. But last
12:36
night, scrolling on her phone, she did see another shipwreck.
12:40
Georgia Hampton: I saw some video that was about a lake in
12:43
Michigan where I'm from, and it was showing what looked like
12:48
maybe a big dock that you could, like, walk out to that was sort
12:53
of in the middle of the lake that had a glass bottom.
12:56
Yowei Shaw: And
12:58
Georgia Hampton: through the glass bottom, you could see a
13:00
shipwreck. And I watched it and had, like, a baby version of
13:08
what happens with the Titanic where I was like,
13:11
Yowei Shaw: This time, though, Georgia thought, why don't I try
13:14
a little exposure therapy?
13:15
Georgia Hampton: I had this sort of knee jerk, like, and, like,
13:19
scrolled half away. And then I was like, wait a second. Run it
13:22
back. Let's go back up there. Watch it again.
13:26
I watched it a couple times.
13:28
Yowei Shaw: But after five minutes, she couldn't take it
13:30
and had to scroll away. Okay. So the Proxy's here. Okay. Should I
13:36
let them in?
13:37
Yes. Let's do it.
13:39
Georgia Hampton: I feel like a a blushing bride.
13:41
Yowei Shaw: So the Proxy. Georgia's conundrum was about as
13:48
niche as you can get. There aren't support groups dedicated
13:51
to conquering the fear of a shipwreck from one hundred and
13:54
twelve years ago, at least that I could find. But as I read more
13:58
about phobias and fears, I started to wonder why did
14:02
Georgia have such an intense reaction to the shipwreck in the
14:05
first place? Why did it take years for the fear to get
14:08
ignited with the Titanic?
14:10
And is there a way for her to get over it without, you know,
14:14
actually visiting? Now sometimes the most helpful proxy is
14:18
someone who's been through the same thing. But other times, I
14:22
think an expert can actually be better. Someone who studied the
14:26
problem, who's seen hundreds of different versions of it, and
14:29
who's learned what actually helps. And that's exactly who I
14:33
found.
14:36
Georgia Hampton: Hello. Hello.
14:38
Martin Antony: Good to meet you.
14:39
Georgia Hampton: Good to meet you.
14:41
Yowei Shaw: This is Martin Anthony. He's a psychology
14:44
professor at Toronto Metropolitan University who
14:47
spent his career studying anxiety related problems,
14:50
including phobias, and how to treat them. And he's had to
14:53
conquer some of his own fears too. Martin used to be afraid of
14:57
public speaking, which is funny because he's now been
15:01
interviewed, featured, or quoted in the media more than 500
15:05
times. He even wrote a book about how to get over the fear
15:08
of public speaking.
15:10
He also used to be afraid of snakes, so he worked on that
15:13
fear too, and wrote another book. Then a book on needles, a
15:17
thing that comes up all the time in his work, which he also used
15:21
to be afraid of.
15:22
Martin Antony: I remember as a as a... In high school, staying
15:25
home the day that we all had to test our own blood, because I I
15:28
was afraid to prick my own fingers. But I had to be able to
15:31
work with people with needles. I had to be able to prick my
15:33
fingers, do these different things with people.
15:36
Yowei Shaw: What did you do to get comfortable with the
15:38
needles?
15:39
Martin Antony: I just started pricking my finger.
15:42
Yowei Shaw: Martin has helped people take on all kinds of
15:44
fears, even the really strange ones. Though, of course, this is
15:49
just a proxy conversation with Georgia, not therapy.
15:52
Georgia Hampton: Oh my god, Marty. We have a lot to talk
15:54
about. Do you know what's happening to me?
15:58
Yowei Shaw: Georgia tells Martin about her fear, why it comes up
16:01
more often for her than you might expect. Like, when she's
16:05
scrolling on TikTok and suddenly, boom. There it is. A
16:08
new scan Another new three d rendering of the Titanic wreck.
16:12
Georgia Hampton: Thought we knew about the night it sank. It's
16:13
like my wrist has been grabbed by a cold wet hand. I feel,
16:18
like, disgusted. I feel a little sick. I don't care what anyone's
16:22
saying where they're like, oh, ah, you can see the...
16:25
Where it cracked, whatever. I instantly have this reaction
16:29
where I feel like I wanna throw my phone across the room. I
16:32
wanna get as far away from it as possible. I want to, at the very
16:37
least, scroll away from it instantly so that it disappears.
16:42
So Martin, any initial reactions?
16:46
Martin Antony: Yeah. Mostly, I have a whole bunch of questions.
16:49
First, the the boundaries of the problem. So for example, is it
16:53
just the Titanic, or is it other shipwrecks? So for example, if
16:56
you hear Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,
16:59
is that a trigger for you?
17:01
Yowei Shaw: This song. I didn't know it, but it's a 1976 folk
17:09
song about a shipwreck.
17:13
Georgia Hampton: Well, that is the perfect thing to mention. So
17:18
I love that song. I grew up in Michigan. I have almost like a
17:22
emotional nostalgic relationship with that story because I grew
17:26
up, as all my friends did, learning about it. It was part
17:29
of our state's history.
17:30
It's part of the history of the Great Lakes. And the Great Lakes
17:33
are treated in this very reverent way in Michigan. And if
17:38
I hear a song or people talk about it, even pretty graphic
17:42
descriptions of what happened on the Edmund Fitzgerald, which in
17:47
some ways is far worse because it killed everybody. Nobody
17:50
survived. And because of the way that Lake Superior is, it is so
17:55
cold, it's freshwater, it's so deep that the bodies in there do
17:59
not decompose in the way you'd expect them to.
18:01
Oh my god. And instead, there's something that happens to them
18:04
called saponification where their skin becomes almost like
18:07
soap, and it's white, like pure white. And when people used to
18:12
scuba dive down there, they would see bodies floating around
18:15
in there. And, like, that's Jeez. That's so fucked up.
18:18
But I feel fine talking about that.
18:21
Yowei Shaw: Georgia explains she's never actually seen images
18:24
of this wreck or these bodies. Thank god. So it's just not
18:28
present for her, not the way images of the Titanic wreck are.
18:33
Georgia Hampton: I think the danger and the way it's
18:35
affecting my life and the reason why I want to just be like, can
18:39
we just get over this
18:41
Martin Antony: Yeah.
18:41
Georgia Hampton: Is the the sort of constant possibility of it
18:45
coming up.
18:46
Martin Antony: So it's unpredictable. Yeah. Yeah. And
18:48
that uncertainty is often a source of anxiety for people. We
18:52
like to know what's going to happen, especially if it's
18:53
around something we don't like.
18:55
Georgia Hampton: Big time.
18:55
Martin Antony: And when did this... How long has this been
18:58
an issue? Do you remember how it began or when it began?
19:00
Georgia Hampton: What's odd is I remember watching Titanic the
19:03
film in middle school and being like, okay. It didn't bother me.
19:08
Yowei Shaw: Georgia tells Martin about that Caribbean boat trip
19:10
in high school, about seeing the wreck, and then that weird
19:13
moment years later, freaking out when she saw the opening scene
19:17
in the Titanic.
19:18
Martin Antony: 13 meters. You should see it.
19:20
Yowei Shaw: That pod on the ocean floor
19:21
Georgia Hampton: coming across the bow of the ship. And the
19:24
feeling happens again, but it's so much worse.
19:27
Martin Antony: Yeah.
19:29
Georgia Hampton: And that's just been kind of what happens now
19:31
ever since.
19:33
Martin Antony: Do you have a sense of what aspect of the
19:37
situation bothers you, whether it's the external stimulus that
19:40
is somehow threatening, whether it's the thought, whether it's
19:43
the physical reaction that feels dangerous in some way.
19:46
Georgia Hampton: I'm not afraid of swimming. I'm not afraid of
19:48
deep water. But it being there at the bottom of the ocean, it's
19:55
like I almost imagine being there. That's why I think it
20:00
feels like a cold wet hand grabbing me. It really feels
20:04
like I'm looking at a dead body, and I I need to get away from
20:07
it.
20:07
Martin Antony: Do other stimuli involving dead bodies bother
20:10
you? So if you were in a cemetery walking around?
20:14
Georgia Hampton: No. Not at all. Okay. It feels like if the ship
20:18
is a body that it has been mutilated in a way that is
20:22
violent and in a way that resulted in the case of the
20:25
Titanic in just unspeakable, unimaginable ways of dying,
20:32
which I think is also very upsetting. Frankly, when I've
20:34
watched the Titanic that other time, I forgot that the sort of
20:38
back half is a, you know, minute by minute recreation of that
20:41
experience, which is just so horrifying to me.
20:44
Not in a phobia way, really, but in a, like, oh my god. Jesus,
20:49
James. This is your special interest? Maybe there's just
20:53
some very deep fear of death here.
20:56
Yowei Shaw: Georgia wonders if there's a deeper meaning here
20:58
she needs to examine. Is it about fear of death or the
21:02
ambivalence of nature? But Martin says, he doesn't think
21:06
that's a useful path of inquiry. They can't measure or know why
21:10
Georgia sees the Titanic in this way or that way. And anyway,
21:15
that's not the work he does.
21:16
He tries to focus on what actually helps get over the
21:20
fear. Martin, have you seen clients with fears that are
21:25
unusual like this before?
21:27
Martin Antony: Yes. You are the only person I've seen who has
21:29
this specific fear.
21:31
Georgia Hampton: So I'm special. You're you're special. Thank
21:34
you.
21:34
Martin Antony: But the way I often answer that question is,
21:37
yes, this is an unusual fear, but it's not unusual to have an
21:40
unusual fear.
21:41
Yowei Shaw: What are your favorite unusual fears that
21:43
you've seen?
21:44
Martin Antony: We've seen a couple of people with fears of
21:46
flowers. One of them was specifically afraid of
21:49
hollyhocks and had a memory of her brother, I think it was,
21:55
chasing her with hollyhocks when she was a little kid. She might
21:58
be the only person in the world who has that specific fear.
22:00
Other one was a fear of sunflowers, and she was in a big
22:03
field filled with sunflowers when she was very young, and the
22:06
sunflowers were taller than her. And she got separated from her
22:10
parents, and she developed a fear of sunflowers after that.
22:13
And if she saw one, she would panic.
22:15
Yowei Shaw: Do you have any nonflower examples?
22:18
Martin Antony: Yeah. Someone who had a fear of airplanes flying
22:22
overhead. So, again, very specific. She was okay being in
22:25
an airplane, but if the airplane was flying overhead, she would
22:28
panic. And and if she was wearing a hat or holding an
22:31
umbrella, it felt safer.
22:33
She didn't know why. The first thought I had if an umbrella is
22:35
gonna protect her that maybe she's afraid, like, someone
22:37
flush a toilet on the plane and it just, you know, run on her or
22:41
something. But, no, it wasn't that. She had no idea what it
22:44
was she was afraid of, but yet she had that fear. I've seen
22:49
lots of people...
22:50
And in these cases, I mean, it's still a fear based problem, but
22:53
these other ones were diagnosed as OCD where people had very
22:57
specific triggers for their their contamination related
23:00
fears. And when we think about OCD, we might think about people
23:03
who are afraid of touching something that's... Will make
23:06
them sick, and then they have to wash their hands over and over
23:08
again. But contamination can be from anything. One person that I
23:11
treated who was afraid of death related stimuli.
23:14
So she lived in a small town, and she would avoid the funeral
23:19
director in that town. And if she was sitting on a bus and she
23:22
was sitting beside somebody who was wearing all black, she'd
23:25
think, oh, maybe this person came from a funeral, and she'd
23:27
have to go home. And she might throw out the clothes she was
23:29
wearing and wash her hands excessively. I've also seen
23:34
people who are afraid of certain colors. So touching or coming
23:37
into contact with anything that's green, for example,
23:39
they'd have to go and wash their hands because it felt
23:41
contaminated.
23:43
And they had no idea why. Like, they wouldn't be able to say
23:45
that this is why I think green is dangerous. It was just this
23:49
feeling that they would get without any... Anything that
23:53
they were able to articulate. Sometimes we don't know what the
23:55
trigger is.
23:56
I I remember somebody we interviewed years ago who was
24:00
afraid of cats. She didn't know why she was afraid of cats, but
24:03
she was able to trace it back to a time that she was sexually
24:07
assaulted. And there was a cat in the room, and she never made
24:10
the connection. It wasn't until we talked about the assault, and
24:14
she remembered there was a cat there, and she remembered that I
24:16
wasn't afraid of cats before that day that she realized why
24:20
she was afraid of cats. The other thing I'll just mention
24:22
about your situation, it's not unusual either for people to
24:26
have an experience, deal with it okay, and then later have
24:30
another experience that...
24:32
I'll just share with you an example. After 09:11, which I
24:35
know for me feels like yesterday, but probably doesn't
24:37
for the two of you. So I remember after nine eleven
24:41
seeing some people who were in in other wars previously, maybe
24:47
maybe Vietnam or something like that, and dealt with those
24:50
traumas well. They had experienced some trauma in
24:52
Vietnam. But then after nine eleven, started to develop post
24:57
traumatic stress in relation to the Vietnam War.
25:00
This is a little different than what you experienced, but those
25:03
triggers from Vietnam would all of a sudden be really anxiety
25:06
provoking even though they weren't before nine eleven. So
25:09
Right. Again, our minds are complicated. We do interesting
25:12
things with the information we're presented with, and it's
25:15
hard to know for any one individual exactly what
25:18
happened. We can only speculate and and guess.
25:21
Georgia Hampton: I have a question for you, but I also
25:23
have a comment. I realized there's a part of the original
25:27
shipwreck story I completely forgot to tell you. Oh. When I
25:31
swam back from seeing the shipwreck and was very unsettled
25:36
and confused about that feeling, I was the only person in the
25:41
water. And the captain of our boat saw me coming back and was
25:46
like, hey.
25:47
Woah. Woah. Woah. Stop. Stop.
25:48
Stop. And I was like, what? He's like, I just need you to know
25:52
there is a barracuda under the ship, And it should be fine, but
25:59
it's there, and you need to go very slowly to the ladder, and
26:05
everything will be fine. The barracuda was maybe three feet
26:09
away from me. I saw it under the ship.
26:11
It was huge. Classic fish story, but, like, it was huge. I
26:16
promise you. Look up what barracudas look like. They...
26:19
They're they're big. And what was so odd was it kind of
26:24
knocked me out of that feeling for, I'd say, pretty obvious
26:27
reasons. A more immediate threat was present. But I remember
26:30
dealing with that in a very calm way where I was like, well, what
26:35
am I supposed to do? Like, I have to get out of the ocean.
26:41
I have to use this ladder to get out. But I do... I I only
26:45
mention this because I do wonder if there's some connection there
26:50
of, like, danger and fear.
26:52
Martin Antony: Well well, this... The stress level of
26:54
being around the barracuda may have heightened your reaction to
26:58
the other situations. I'll just share with you an example of
27:01
that happening. So I was working with somebody who had a fear of
27:03
escalators. So we were doing exposure therapy, just
27:06
practicing going up and down escalators, and she was doing
27:08
great.
27:08
Her fear had come down a lot. And then one day, she came in,
27:11
and she was experiencing a lot of stress at work that had
27:14
nothing to do with her fear of escalators or heights. She was
27:17
just having a stressful week related to some deal that was
27:21
gonna fall through or something. And that week, her fear of
27:23
escalators was through the roof. And this happens all the time.
27:27
I I see people with... Who develop panic disorder and panic
27:31
attacks after having an experience that has nothing to
27:34
do with panic attacks. So they have a bad reaction to a drug or
27:36
something. They have these intense symptoms, and then later
27:39
when they experience those symptoms that remind them of
27:42
that experience with the drug, they have a panic attack. I'm
27:44
familiar with this.
27:45
If we have an intense physical reaction, we we associate it
27:49
with the context where it happened.
27:52
Georgia Hampton: I... It's so funny because truly up until I
27:55
think literally this conversation, the barracuda was
27:57
just this, like, weird little other part. I was like, isn't
28:00
that also so silly?
28:02
Martin Antony: The other thing I find interesting is that you
28:05
weren't afraid of the movie Titanic the first time you saw
28:08
it. It
28:08
Georgia Hampton: affected you wasn't.
28:09
Martin Antony: Yeah. Affected you differently the second time.
28:11
And that might be be... Again, because of that earlier
28:15
shipwreck. Maybe because because of the added stress of the
28:18
barracuda three feet away from you.
28:19
That sounds horrifying to me. Yeah. In the moment, we we deal
28:23
with stress pretty well often. Like, we have no choice. Right?
28:25
Georgia Hampton: Of course.
28:26
Martin Antony: You have to do what you need to do, but it's
28:29
often afterwards where it sometimes hits us after we've
28:32
dealt with it. Yeah. So that barracuda, even though in the
28:35
moment may not have felt scary, it could have had an impact on
28:39
you and and and colored that whole experience in a way that
28:43
that stuck with you so that when you watch the movie again years
28:47
later, it affected you very differently than when you
28:49
watched it before that experience. I'm speculating
28:51
again. I hate to do that.
28:52
And I I also wanna mention there's a whole bunch of people
28:54
who don't know why their fear began. And, again, the nice
28:58
thing is if somebody wants to get over the problem, you don't
29:01
need to know what the trigger is to do that.
29:07
Yowei Shaw: After the break, what you're getting wrong about
29:10
exposure therapy, and how to actually do it without making
29:14
the problem worse. So how do you face your fear when the thing
29:24
you're afraid of is at the bottom of the ocean? According
29:28
to Martin, when it comes to specific phobias, there's one
29:31
treatment with more evidence behind it than any other,
29:35
exposure therapy. Which... Okay.
29:38
I've heard of exposure therapy. We all have. You know, someone
29:42
who's afraid of spiders starts by looking at a spider in a
29:45
cage, then works their way up to holding a spider in their hand.
29:49
But Georgia has a problem with that.
29:51
Georgia Hampton: There is never a world where I'm going to join
29:53
James Cameron on, like, his forty seventh trip down to the
29:56
Titanic. Frankly, thank god. I don't know if I could ever get
29:59
there.
30:01
But walk me through a little
30:02
bit of what that process is like because I'm curious how that
30:07
could apply here. Yeah.
30:10
Yowei Shaw: Fortunately, Martin explains there are different
30:13
kinds of exposure therapy. There's in person live exposure,
30:18
like going to see another shipwreck. Then there's
30:20
something called interoceptive exposure. This is for people who
30:24
are afraid of the physical sensations that come with fear,
30:28
like a racing heart or cold clammy hands. And the treatment
30:32
is to bring on those sensations on purpose.
30:35
Martin Antony: We use this a lot with people with panic attacks.
30:37
If they're afraid of being dizzy, we teach them to spin
30:39
around. If they're afraid of feeling their heart racing, we
30:42
teach them to run on the spot to get their heart racing.
30:44
Yowei Shaw: The third kind of exposure involves exposing
30:47
yourself to the thoughts and images you're afraid of. And
30:51
this one obviously seems relevant for Georgia.
30:54
Martin Antony: So I worked with somebody with OCD who was afraid
30:57
of anything to do with Satan and hell. So her exposure, you know,
31:02
we can't expose her to actual Satan. We don't know how to do
31:05
that. But we could expose her to the words. So I had her write
31:09
out the word Satan and put up these signs in her bedroom.
31:11
And in a couple of weeks, she wasn't afraid of them anymore.
31:14
Yowei Shaw: So Georgia doesn't need a submarine. She can do all
31:17
of this from her laptop. But there's a catch.
31:20
Martin Antony: Exposure almost always works. When it doesn't
31:22
work, it's because people aren't doing it. Yeah. Or they're not
31:24
doing it often enough or they're not staying in the situation
31:27
long enough. So if you just do exposure for a couple of minutes
31:29
and then you escape from a situation, what you learn is
31:32
that when I'm in the situation, I feel terrible.
31:34
And when I escape, I feel this enormous sense of relief. It
31:37
feels much better. If you stay in the situation, what you learn
31:41
is that I can cope with this. Mhmm. The situation is not as
31:44
dangerous as it feels, and you start to feel a little bit
31:47
better.
31:48
And before you know it, it's getting boring. It's not scary
31:51
anymore. So we'd want you to take an hour, an hour and a
31:55
half, two hours. Do that four or five times a week. Do that for
32:00
six weeks or something, and you'd notice a huge change.
32:03
Georgia Hampton: Honestly, it sounds daunting because I hate
32:06
this goddamn ship in the ocean. I'm laughing because the thing I
32:13
had a conversation about with myself privately was like, oh,
32:17
well, I'm kind of doing a baby version of that when I watch
32:21
these videos by mistake. And sometimes, will sort of knee
32:24
jerk scroll away and then be like, okay, hold on. Let's go
32:28
back there. Let's look at that again.
32:30
But I do that in the exact way you just described, which is I
32:34
go back and I look at it maybe one more time, and then I'm
32:38
like, ah, and then I leave. And I'm like, I was so brave.
32:42
Martin Antony: Well, people will sometimes say to me, I already
32:44
get exposure. I see spiders. If anything, my fear gets worse
32:47
when I see spiders. It doesn't get better. And...
32:50
But there's important differences between the exposure
32:52
you're getting in everyday life and the exposure that you get in
32:55
therapy. So in everyday life, your exposure is brief. Mhmm.
32:58
Might be a few seconds. And even if you force yourself, it might
33:01
be a minute.
33:02
Mhmm. Maybe forty five seconds if you force yourself. It's
33:06
infrequent. So we know there's been studies with agoraphobia
33:10
showing that once a week exposure for an hour is less...
33:14
For ten weeks is less effective than once a day exposure for ten
33:18
days for an hour.
33:19
Georgia Hampton: This is so much more work than I want it to be.
33:23
Yowei Shaw: And, apparently, you can't just take three weeks off
33:26
when you feel like it. You have to keep practicing. Martin says,
33:30
ideally going as quickly as you can without getting overwhelmed,
33:34
and ideally making things scarier and scarier for
33:38
yourself. So for Georgia, if seeing a Titanic video makes her
33:42
feel like a cold wet hand is grabbing her by the wrist
33:45
Martin Antony: I was imagining tying a cold washcloth around
33:49
your your wrist or something or even having a person with a cold
33:53
wet hand holding your arm or something, you might just laugh.
33:56
Like, it might not feel like it it really does anything. But
33:58
sometimes doing little things like that to bring it to life a
34:01
little bit are actually things that can help in the long term
34:05
because it really tests out this belief that this is dangerous.
34:09
Yowei Shaw: It was around this point that I realized that
34:11
Martin has a surprisingly creative job because he's
34:15
basically designing these mini haunted houses customized to
34:19
each person's worst fears, except the goal is to make them
34:23
less scared. And some of the exposure exercises he told us
34:27
about are pretty wild, like this colleague who had a patient who
34:31
was afraid of residues, things like stickers and oils.
34:35
Martin Antony: So his therapist had him walk around his house in
34:37
his underwear covered in olive oil. Woah. Just to just just to
34:42
get kinda get used to that.
34:44
Yowei Shaw: Or there are the patients Martin's worked with
34:46
who have OCD related contamination fears, like germ
34:50
fears, where Martin takes things to the next level of nasty.
34:53
Martin Antony: I've had people touch food to the floor and then
34:56
eat it.
34:57
Georgia Hampton: Oh,
34:57
Martin Antony: sure. Touching touching toilet seats in a
35:00
public bathroom. Or even people with OCD, sometimes they will
35:04
get intrusive thoughts about harming a loved one. So they
35:07
might become afraid of being around knives or pencils or
35:10
scissors, anything that they could stab somebody with so they
35:13
avoid all these things at all costs. And what we'll do is
35:15
we'll have them...
35:16
First of all, I've had people hold a knife to my chest for an
35:20
hour.
35:20
Georgia Hampton: Woah. And and For an hour?
35:22
Martin Antony: And I use... Until their fear comes down,
35:24
till they learn that they're not gonna act on it. And I might
35:26
Yowei Shaw: Is have the blade sharp?
35:28
Martin Antony: Well, I usually use, like, a butter knife or
35:30
something, not because I'm afraid that they're gonna act on
35:33
the thought, but more of what if I sneeze or they sneeze.
35:36
Yowei Shaw: Martin, has there ever been a case where you're
35:40
doing exposure therapy with a patient and it feels cruel
35:45
because they're in so much anxiety, pain, panic, then
35:50
they're like begging you to stop. Does that ever happen
35:53
where people can't take those feelings?
35:59
Martin Antony: I never feel like I'm being cruel because I know
36:02
that it's helping. And if something's too difficult, we
36:04
just make it easier. I mean, people do need to suffer a
36:07
little bit, like they do need to get anxious, but they don't need
36:09
to be overwhelmed with fear.
36:10
Georgia Hampton: Mhmm.
36:11
Martin Antony: The client is always in charge. I never force
36:13
people to do anything. I never trick them into doing anything.
36:16
And there's no danger in doing... Like, it's not like
36:19
people will have a heart attack or whatever.
36:21
The worst thing that'll happen is people will feel
36:23
uncomfortable. Mhmm. People say, well, what if I have a panic
36:25
attack? I always answer that with the question. What if you
36:28
have a panic attack?
36:29
Mhmm. What should I do if I have a panic attack? Well, why why
36:32
would you have to do anything?
36:34
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Just have it. Just have it.
36:36
Yowei Shaw: Martin told us a story about a patient of his who
36:39
learned this lesson in a situation that to me sounded
36:43
like a safety hazard.
36:44
Martin Antony: This was somebody who has had panic disorder and
36:48
panic attacks, and they were worse in certain situations.
36:51
Driving on the highway was a a bad situation for this
36:53
particular person, and her homework was to practice driving
36:57
from work to home on the highway, which she had been
36:59
avoiding. And she was doing that, and she got to her exit.
37:04
And as she was approaching her exit on the highway, she had
37:06
this full blown panic attack. And her first thought was, well,
37:10
I'm almost home.
37:11
Thank goodness I just get to get off the highway and I'm home.
37:14
And I guess if I had to have a panic attack, that was good
37:16
timing. Her second thought was, oh, wait a second. My therapist
37:21
probably wants me to keep going and stay in this situation until
37:25
my fear goes away, until I learn that I can actually cope with
37:29
these feelings while driving. So she decided to go past her exit.
37:34
So she went past her exit for another five minutes or
37:37
something. Her panic attack went away. And I'd say she got more
37:41
out of that five minutes than anything we'd... Else we did in
37:43
therapy.
37:44
Yowei Shaw: Wow. Alright. So getting rid of a fear is just a
37:50
bit of work, which made me wonder if there's a way to avoid
37:54
developing a fear in the first place. Say you get into a car
37:58
accident, and you feel nervous about getting into the car
38:01
again.
38:01
Martin Antony: Well, the best thing you can do is get into the
38:04
car again. Don't let it percolate. It'll just get
38:06
harder. And I'm just gonna share with you a bit of data, some
38:09
research supporting this. This was a study that my research
38:12
supervisor did in a hospital emergency room.
38:15
What he did is he took people who had had a panic attack and
38:19
came to the emergency room in the hospital thinking they were
38:21
having a heart attack. And half of the people got just sort of
38:25
treatment as usual, which usually is some reassurance.
38:28
Don't worry. It's just a panic attack. You're okay.
38:30
Go home. Relax. Or they were told every day to go back to the
38:34
place where the attack happened and go there for... I can't
38:37
remember if it was a half hour or an hour, but go back there
38:39
for a week. And then he brought them back a week later, and the
38:42
people who went back to the place where the attack happened
38:45
were much less likely to have their panic attacks get worse.
38:49
So if you are if you are wondering that, that's that's
38:51
kind of what I would encourage people to do. Force themselves
38:54
to do a little bit of exposure right away rather than waiting.
38:59
Georgia Hampton: It's funny. I just realized I've done a
39:02
version of this with something else. Totally unrelated to the
39:06
Titanic though. I used to be extremely afraid of the girl
39:10
from the ring, a movie I had never seen. Me
39:13
Yowei Shaw: too. Yes. Yep. Terrified. I had to sleep in my
39:16
parents' bedroom on the floor for, like, a week after watching
39:19
it in the movie theater.
39:21
Georgia Hampton: Well, here's the thing. I never watched it as
39:23
a kid. You never watched it? But I just saw images of her and I
39:26
was like, who the hell is that? I don't like that.
39:29
I don't like the way she looks.
39:30
Yowei Shaw: Why is her hair over her eyes?
39:32
Georgia Hampton: Why is girl with long hair? So, basically,
39:36
since that movie came out, if I couldn't sleep, sometimes the
39:38
image of her would come into my mind. I'd be like, I couldn't
39:42
look at pictures of her, even into adulthood. So I avoided it,
39:46
but that kind of made it worse because I could make her this
39:49
terrifying creature that could do all sorts of terrible things.
39:52
Right.
39:53
And then for some reason, I like had mentioned this to some
39:56
friends, and they were like, you've never seen The Ring?
40:02
Really? And then last year, my friends and I made an event of
40:07
it. And we had a ring watch party. They'd had it on VHS,
40:11
which is important in the movie, and bought a bunch of ring
40:16
shaped foods, like peach rings and Funyuns and stuff.
40:22
And we watched it. And I could not tell you how shocked I was
40:25
at how uninteresting she was. I've never thought about her
40:31
ever since.
40:32
Yowei Shaw: It's crazy. So it seems like maybe you need to get
40:36
your crew of friends to do a Titanic rewatch at some point.
40:40
Georgia Hampton: I think I need to make an event of this. Mhmm.
40:43
Martin Antony: Was gonna say it can be helpful at least at the
40:45
start if you feel like it would be helpful to do it with
40:47
somebody else and have a party or whatever. That's fine. But at
40:51
some point, you're gonna wanna work up to being at home alone
40:55
on the Internet By myself. The kind of thing that will actually
40:58
come up in your everyday life.
41:00
Georgia Hampton: I really wanna I wanna do this. I I really do.
41:04
I I I think this would be very interesting, and I'm curious. My
41:09
thought is to Google image search an image of the wreck and
41:13
just look at it. And I'm curious how that sounds to you and how
41:18
long I should look at it.
41:19
Sounds like a half hour to an hour is sort of the sweet spot
41:22
for a lot of your patients.
41:24
Martin Antony: If it gets boring after ten minutes, I'd say step
41:27
it up. Find one that's a little bit more difficult.
41:30
Georgia Hampton: Maybe a video.
41:31
Martin Antony: I I wouldn't say just look at that picture for an
41:33
hour. Just keep it moving.
41:35
Georgia Hampton: Okay. I feel excited.
41:43
Yowei Shaw: By the way, I asked Martin if you need a therapist
41:46
to do exposure therapy. He said a lot of people can do it on
41:50
their own with the right resources. But if you're
41:53
struggling to get started or aren't making progress or your
41:57
fear is really getting in the way of your life, a therapist
42:01
can help. Sometimes, even just a few sessions can make a
42:04
difference. Thank you to Georgia Hampton for being our guest
42:08
today.
42:09
You can listen to Georgia's reporting on Never Post, a
42:12
really great podcast about the Internet and what being online
42:15
is doing to all of us. And you can find more of her work at
42:19
georgia-hampton.com. And thank you to Martin Antony for being
42:24
today's proxy. You can learn more about his work at
42:27
martinantony.com, where he has a bunch of books you can download
42:31
for free about overcoming fear of everything from public
42:34
speaking to dentists to dogs. We'll have those links plus
42:38
Georgia's recommendations for what to read, watch, and listen
42:41
to as a culture reporter in our file under feelings newsletter.
42:45
You can sign up for free in the show notes. Okay. You guys, I am
42:50
feeling inspired by today's episode, and I want to finally
42:53
confront my fear of the basement. Our next live proxy
42:57
hang just for Proxy HQ members is happening on Thursday,
43:01
November 5 at 8PM eastern. It's gonna be a special Halloween
43:05
themed hang where I'm gonna be in my basement, in my dark grimy
43:10
basement, and I want your help scaring me.
43:14
So start thinking about the scariest movie clips you've
43:16
seen. It's for a good cause, all in the hopes that one day, I
43:21
will be able to get the fish out of the basement freezer when
43:23
Kyle calls.
43:24
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. This will greatly improve the quality of
43:27
my life.
43:28
Yowei Shaw: Join us at proxyhq.org. This episode was
43:32
edited by Tim Howard, mixed by Kyle Pooley, and produced and
43:35
scored by me. Music in this episode by Tim Howard and theme
43:38
music by Breakmaster Cylinder. Proxy and Never Post are proud
43:42
members of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent creator
43:46
owned, listener supported podcasts. Audrey Martovich is
43:49
Radiotopia's executive producer, and Yowei Lazordo is director of
43:52
operations.
43:54
Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm. We'll be back
43:58
next Tuesday with our final episode of the season. Thanks
44:01
for listening, everyone.
44:05
Georgia Hampton: Oh god. I don't know. I'm gonna have you look it
44:07
up so I don't have
44:07
Yowei Shaw: to look. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No.
44:08
No. No. No. Right. That would be bad.
44:12
04/15/1912 Okay. Is the anniversary of the sinking.
44:18
September 1, which is coming up, is the anniversary of the Rex
44:23
discovery.
44:24
Georgia Hampton: Oh, god. And that's its own thing. I can't...
44:26
That is like. So you have two anniversaries to contend with.
44:30
I'm surrounded. I'm surrounded. Spring and fall.