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the procedure involves manipulating addicts' memories of past drug use, and could lead to non-pharmacological therapy for addiction, as well as psychiatric conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and phobia.

the procedure involves manipulating addicts' memories of past drug use, and could lead to non-pharmacological therapy for addiction, as well as psychiatric conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and phobia.

addicts quickly associate paraphernalia and other drug-associated cues with the pleasurable effects of the drug, so that seeing these cues triggers cravings and drug-seeking behaviour.

Spiders? Clowns? Really tall buildings? There are lots of things that might make you scream — but why is it that we get so scared and what can we do to control these fears?

"It's evolutionary, it's biological and essentially it's about survival," says Dr Warren Mansell, a psychologist at the University of Manchester and author of a book about coping with fear."Our bodies need a way of getting ourselves prepared to either escape or defend ourselves against some kind of threat.""Being able to recognise and respond to a threat quickly and to get away is essential," adds sociologist Dr Margee Kerr, who specialises in the study of fear. "It's definitely kept us humans alive."

The most common way we deal with fear is the "fight-or-flight" response, when your heart rate increases and your pupils dilate.

Social scientists have long known that we perceive risks that are acute, such as an impending tsunami, differently than chronic, ever-present threats like car accidents

Part of what’s happening is that covid-19 — which we initially saw as a terrifying acute threat — is morphing into more of a chronic one in our minds. That shift likely dulls our perception of the danger,

Now, when they think about covid-19, “most people have a reduced emotional reaction. They see it as less salient.”

Our reluctance to talk about death is often taken as evidence that we are afraid, and therefore suppress thoughts about it. However, there is little direct evidence to support that we are. So what is a “normal” amount of death anxiety? And how does it manifest itself?

Judging by studies using questionnaires, we seem more bothered by the prospect of losing our loved ones than we do about dying ourselves.

Reminders of death also affect our political and religious beliefs in interesting ways. On the one hand, they polarise us: political liberals become more liberal while conservatives become more conservative. Similarly, religious people tend to assert their beliefs more fervently while nonreligious people disavow more.

But experts who study nightmares say this is a pretty typical bad-dream scenario. “There’s often some threat of death or injury or annihilation, and you’re trying to escape,”

In some instances, a bad dream’s setting or events may be innocent, but the emotions the dreamer feels are ones of terror, disgust or distress, he explains.

“For people who have significant nightmare problems, it’s also common is for these individuals to actively try to avoid sleep in order to avoid having nightmares,” he says. “When they do have [a nightmare], they often don’t sleep for the rest of the night.”

Resilience is a popular term in modern psychology that, put simply, refers to the ability to recover and move on from adverse events, failure or change.

“We don’t call it ‘character’ anymore,” said Jelena Kecmanovic, director of Arlington/DC Behavior Therapy Institute. “We call it the ability to tolerate distress, the ability to tolerate uncertainty.”

Studies suggest that resilience in kids is associated with things like empathy, coping skills and problem-solving, though this research is often done on children in extreme circumstances and may not apply to everybody