Overcome Your Deepest and Darkest Fear

How I learned to stop worrying and love the cat.

Overcoming my fear of cats was a magical moment. Understanding how this happened might help get rid of other irrational fears too.

I had been afraid of cats as long as I can remember. I don’t know why. When I was four years old, a tabby cat stole one of the newly hatched chicks from our neighbour’s coop. I heard people talk about it, maybe I saw it too. I can’t remember. We had, and still have, too many street cats in Turkey.

When I sat at the dinner table on my grandmother’s veranda I would pull my knees to my chin because I would scream and get sick when I felt cat tails touching my legs underneath.

On spring nights, I would hear cat couples meowing loudly in front of my window. I would feel terrified and throw sugar cubes at them.

I knew it was irrational. I knew cats wouldn’t attack me. But what if they did? They had sharp claws and some of them did look scary. I didn’t find them cute either.

This continued for so many years. After university, I moved to Istanbul.

I had an old friend whom I visited every now and then. He had adopted a six-month-old orange tabby kitten from the street.

The cat probably had been abused by kids in the street. He was a bit troubled. He would run like a wild tiger and attack whoever visited the house. His name was “Junkie”.

My friend knew about my fear and locked Junkie in his bedroom when I visited. I felt a little bad. Junkie lost his freedom every time I came over. I just couldn’t relax when he was around.

That famous night, we were sitting around, smoking weed and talking about my cat fear. He said, “what is the worst thing that could happen?”

I said he could scratch my arms. Well, he could also scratch my eye of course but I didn’t think of it at that moment. My friend said, “Why don’t you allow him to scratch you and see if it is the end of the world?”

It was a safe space. I had my friend who could interfere if things got out of hand.

Maybe thanks to the weed, I said “Fine! I will try it! Bring him!”

As soon as the bedroom door opened, the cat darted inside. My friend grabbed him and put him right on my lap. This was supposed to be the most terrifying moment of my life! This was it! The very experience I resisted my whole life. But now, it wasn’t some idea, it was the reality. The cat was in my lap. I took a deep breath and completely calmed down.

As expected, the cat began attacking me with all four paws. I could feel his back feet kicking me like crazy. I could feel the scratches burning on my arms but I was surprisingly fine, delighted even. It was truly magical. I did nothing. My friend did nothing. We waited until Junkie got bored with his non-reacting enemy and jumped down to go find something more interesting.

I was left with a smile as my fear had switched off like a button. It never came back.

The next day, another street cat came to my lap at a cafe. And soon after that, my parents adopted a cat. She got pregnant and I got one of the kittens to my own home. After that, I always had at least one or two cats until I moved out of the country. (We had to separate with our last cat, Twinkleberry, leaving her with her dad’s family.)

What happened at that moment? How did my 25-year-old fear got switched off?

I had a breakthrough. That was the moment I realized everything truly was in my brain.

I always knew my irrational fear was produced by my thoughts in my brain, but until that moment I believed I didn’t have the power to change them. I thought the thoughts just happened on their own and I had to endure it.

I had been holding onto my fear as if it was going to save my life in the case of an actual cat attack.

The actual cat attack did happen and I realized, being afraid or not didn’t make any difference. The cat was not going to kill me. I was going to have a few scratches, that’s all. So I took a deep and wide breath in my belly and saw the fear melt away and evaporate like a piece of ice on a hot pan.

I have another friend who is afraid of cats. I tried to tell her about my experience and persuade her to try it but she wasn’t interested. I know everyone is not the same. For her, it might not be as simple as it was for me.

There are many different techniques to get rid of irrational fears. You can get professional help, use medication or other methods the professionals will recommend you.

But if you want to get rid of your fears on your own, I think everything boils down to two approaches: You will either expose yourself to your fear gradually, or you will do it fully at once as I did with the cat.

You just have to be careful: create a safe place, don’t traumatize yourself. In my case, it worked like magic!