76 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
reality. Initially when the fear is present, children attempt to
outright avoid the dark by demanding the use of nightlights
or will tolerate the dark only if a parent is present while they
fall asleep. Over time, children’s fear of the dark typically
wanes, partly thanks to normal development and matura-
tion but also because they learn that the shadows in their
bedroom don’t actually harbor monsters. This learning
takes place as they gradually and purposefully confront their
anxiety (by sleeping in the dark, despite their fears). They
essentially have to change their relationship with the dark
through experience. However, if they don’t learn to change
their relationship, they will miss opportunities to appropri-
ately confront their anxiety.
Conditioning
If you have ever taken a psychology course or read an
introductory psychology text, you likely came across the
work of Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist who trained dogs
to salivate at the sound of a tuning fork. Pavlov achieved this
result through stimulus pairing— in this case, pairing the
sound of a tuning fork with the presentation of food. Pavlov’s
dogs, like most dogs, naturally salivated at the sight of food;
over time, they came to associate the sight of food with the
sound of the tuning fork, so that eventually the sound of the
tuning fork alone was enough to cause them to salivate in
anticipation of being fed.
Dogs automatically salivate in the presence of food—
they don’t choose to salivate or even think about whether to
salivate. It just happens. Because this behavior is involun-
tary, Pavlov was able to change what triggered it by changing
the dogs’ experience. All he had to do was give them a reason