Lindsay Chalmers, 30, has suffered from ichthyophobia, a fear of fish, since she was three, after nearly choking on a fish bone. This fear has severely impacted her life, preventing her from enjoying the beach, visiting aquariums, and even entering seafood sections in supermarkets, leaving her panicked and sick. She struggles with activities as simple as eating fish and couldn’t watch ‘Finding Nemo’ with her son, Leo. However, after undergoing a radical treatment in Amsterdam, Lindsay hopes to overcome her phobia, which has long been her “worst nightmare.”
For most of her life, Lindsay Chalmers, 30, couldn’t stand being at the beach. Like the pond, the aquarium was also off-limits. Eating a fishbowl will make you break into a cold sweat.
Just walking through the seafood section of the supermarket would leave her shaking and out of breath, and she would sometimes forget her fish and chips dinner.
Because, as strange as it may sound, Lindsey suffers from ichthyophobia, a fear of fish.
She believes it all started around age 3, when she almost choked on a fish bone.
“I think it’s funny to people, but for me fish is my worst nightmare,” she told the Mail on Sunday. “I’m scared of any animal, dead or alive, in a tank, on a plate, as a toy, in any form.
“When I see a fish, I immediately feel a panic that makes me sick. I can’t eat or drink for hours afterwards.”
“It may seem strange, but my daily life has changed a lot. I couldn’t even watch ‘Finding Nemo’ with my son.”
Before Lindsay Chalmers, 30, received a radical new treatment in Amsterdam, she used to scream and run at the sight of fish on the beach with her two-year-old son Leo.
“I even got to sit and watch ‘Finding Nemo’ with my son! I never could have imagined how far we’ve come,” Lindsey says.
In the documentary, viewers see Lindsay being offered a plate of raw seafood and she breaks down in tears. But with her hands shaking, she was finally guided to touch the dish, and then faced the aquarium.
Lindsay is one of more than 10 million people in the UK who have an extreme phobia that interferes with their daily lives. But the mother-of-one’s life changed after pioneering treatment in the Netherlands.
Now an administrative assistant based in Paisley, she can be found swimming in the ocean, taking her two-year-old son Leo to the aquarium, or even cooking fish fingers herself. You can’t eat it.
“I’ve tried many things over the years to try to get rid of my phobia on my own, like looking at fish in an aquarium or sitting in a restaurant while my family eats seafood, but… “This was the first time that it worked,” she says.
“My progress has been incredible.” Lindsay’s story will feature in Channel 4’s new six-part series Fear Clinic, which starts on Tuesday. The film depicts how Dutch neuroscientist Professor Merel Kindt, who has been researching the psychology of fear for over 20 years, provides patients with debilitating phobias with a radical phobia treatment developed by him.
Since 2018, Professor Kindt’s team has treated more than 2,000 patients suffering from extreme phobias, from phobias of spiders, rats and enclosed spaces to toilets, eye contact and even sausage dogs.
Their brutal treatment, called memlech, involves three steps. First, the patient must be exposed to the phobia in some way. It temporarily elicits an anxiety response and activates all the brain connections associated with it.
Then a drug called a beta blocker is given. Commonly used to treat high blood pressure and anxiety, this drug blocks the effects of the stress hormone adrenaline, causing the heart to beat slower and with less force.
Finally, the patient returns for testing the next day and faces his fears once again to see if the treatment was successful.
Professor Kindt says that in 85% of cases, just one treatment is enough to permanently alleviate even the most severe fears.
Traditional treatments for phobias, on the other hand, expose patients to their fear repeatedly until the anxiety subsides, with a recurrence rate of about 60%.
“This high relapse rate is what led us to develop treatments that target the fear memory itself, rather than the formation of new memories,” Professor Kindt said.
“If you give a patient a drug that triggers a fearful memory and prevents it from being stored, the feeling of fear diminishes.”
In the documentary, viewers see Lindsay being offered a plate of raw seafood and she breaks down in tears. But with shaking hands, she was eventually guided to touch the plate. “I knew I had to do it for my son,” she says. “I don’t want to share my phobias with him, and I think as he gets older it will be good for him to know that his mother conquered his worst fears.”
The next day, after taking beta-blockers and sleeping well, Lindsay says she was ready for another traumatic session. But to her surprise, she was able to enter the room with little difficulty and was even able to dip her hand into the aquarium full of fish.
“I couldn’t believe that 24 hours could make such a difference,” she says. “It was almost easy to face fear again.”
More than a year later, Lindsay said her parents and husband Scott are delighted with her progress.
“I was able to stand in the ocean with fish swimming around my feet. I was able to sit with my son and watch ‘Finding Nemo.’ I couldn’t have imagined how far I would have come.” did.”
Other amazing stories featured in ‘Fear Clinic’ include Ollie’s fear of balloons; This phobia developed in childhood after Olly was locked in a room filled with inflatable party decorations.
Another patient featured in the show, Nina, suffers from hyperphobia, a fear of being a passenger in a car.
There’s also Deveraux, who was born in Jamaica. He discovered he had a phobia of sausage dogs when he moved to England. Meanwhile, Gary faces a phobia of frogs, which causes him to struggle to keep his job as a gardener.
Fear clinic will be broadcast Tuesdays at 8pm on Channel 4.
