I mean, great, but... that's not how it works for everyone. Exposure therapy/desensitization isn't about learning a fact, it's about retraining an instinct. Not

I mean, great, but... that's not how it works for everyone. Exposure therapy/desensitization isn't about learning a fact, it's about retraining an instinct. Not sure what I can say to convince you that I don't secretly think that spiders are malicious. That's not to say that a phobia can't be changed; exposure therapy/desensitization/etc are all real things (both formal and informal, and both deliberate and accidental), and my arachnophobia today is not as bad as it used to be growing up. But that improvement didn't come from an intellectual process, it came from a bunch of regular hard work, practice, small exposures, and small victories to try and rewire instinctive responses in my brain, and it was (and continues to be) a very long process. If I could just stop being afraid of spiders by reading a science book or just deciding to think about them differently, then I would have already done that when I was 12 -- but fear response to a phobia isn't a conscious decision, it's an involuntary response to a stimulus, and that involuntary response for some people can be completely disconnected from their conscious thoughts about what is happening. For example, thalassophobia doesn't mean that someone hates the ocean or that they can't think it's beautiful/majestic; it just means they have a fear response when exposed to deep water.