The Integrated Change System

Aphobic follows the proven therapeutic process for relieving fears and phobias called the Integrated Change System (ICS).

ICS was designed by our founder and chief therapist, Christopher Paul Jones. Chris discovered early on that traditional therapy often falls short for phobias after tackling his own flight and public speaking phobias. He spent two decades as a therapist helping thousands of clients suffering from all kinds of fears and phobias. Based on his experience and research, he designed the ICS therapeutic process.

ICS is different from other therapeutic approaches, as it uncovers both the conscious and subconscious aspects of how your fear works. Chris has designed this system to use the best techniques from clinical psychology to break down and relieve your fear.

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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

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Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)

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Timeline Therapy

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Mindfulness

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Hypnotherapy

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Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

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Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

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Meditation

Meet Chris

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Meet Chris, our founder who created the ICS therapeutic process after 20 years of clinical experience working with people suffering from all kinds of fears and phobias.

Seven-Step Process to Relieve Fears and Phobias

  1. Know Your Fear

    Explore your phobia and understand how it shows up in your body and mind.

  2. Relax the Conscious Mind

    Use breath, voice, or tapping to shift into a calmer state for deeper work.

  3. Uncover Secondary Gain

    Identify the hidden reason your fear persists, like safety, avoidance, or control.

  4. Discover & Scramble Your Strategy

    Interrupt the subconscious pattern your brain runs when the fear is triggered.

  1. Discover & Scramble Past Memories

    Find the earlier memories linked to your phobia and rewire how they’re stored.

  2. Recondition Your Emotions

    Shift the emotional energy tied to your fear so it no longer dominates your response.

  3. Face Your Fear

    With your nervous system regulated, safely visualize or engage with your fear in real time.

The ICS therapeutic process is a seven-step process to relieve fears and phobias.

Traditional phobia treatments often rely on exposure therapy. This means you are gradually faced with what you're afraid of. But this method has its limitations. Some fears, like flying, aren’t easy to simulate in a safe or gradual way. And without the right support, exposure can backfire by actually strengthening the fear instead of relieving it.

The Phobia Strategy

At the core of ICS is the idea that there’s a strategy behind your phobia; the steps you take in order to become afraid. You may not even be aware that you’re following these steps. The steps are based in feelings, beliefs, thoughts, images and memories.

ICS relaxes the conscious mind to uncover the sequence of steps the client goes through. These steps can then be “scrambled” (broken down so that they no longer play out) using a variety of techniques from traditional psychotherapy.

A phobia may also be based in “anchor memories” (moments in which the fear was created). ICS can again help by uncovering these memories and scrambling them using some incredibly powerful techniques.

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FEELINGS

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THOUGHTS

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BELIEFS

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IMAGES

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MEMORIES

“Fear isn’t something you catch. It’s something you do.”
— Christopher Paul Jones
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Learn More About Chris

Join us as we fire a series of rapid questions at fear expert and Aphobic founder, Christopher Paul Jones. What’s his quickest phobia relief? Are fears actually normal? And, whether ICS can actually work for you?

Let’s hear from the man behind the method, someone who helps people change their lives every single day.

Scaling ICS to Millions

Chris has always wanted to scale his therapy, and often felt frustrated that he could only help “one client at a time”. Far too many people are in need of quality mental health care, and there just aren’t enough therapists. He knew that technology was the only way to fill the gap.

Teaming up with Dr. Robin Donaldson, an AI expert with a track record of scaling human intelligence through AI, they built Aphobic together to scale phobia relief to millions. Now, clients around the world can access tools to support phobia relief, on their own time, at their own pace.

“While helping people with fears and phobias is incredibly rewarding, I’ve long been frustrated with not being able to help everyone. I can only help one client at a time.”
— Chris