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 co-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.
Meet Chris
Meet our founder, Chris, who created the ICS therapeutic process through 20 years of clinical experience working with people suffering from all kinds of fears and phobias.
Seven Step Process to Relieve Fear
The ICS therapeutic process is a 7 stage process to relieve fears and phobias.
Traditional approaches to phobias often involve exposure therapy, in which the client suffering with a phobia is gradually exposed to that which makes them afraid. There are two problems with this approach, however. (1) some phobia subjects, like flying, are hard to gradually expose oneself to, and (2) if you’re not careful, you may end up reinforcing the fear rather than reducing it.
Behind ICS is the idea that fear is a sequence of steps that the client does, albeit subconsciously. The steps are based in feelings, beliefs, thoughts, images and memories.
The process relaxes the conscious mind in order to allow the sequence of steps that the client does to be uncovered. These steps can then be “scrambled” (broken down so that they no longer play out) using a variety of techniques from traditional therapy.
Quote from Chris: “Fear isn’t something you catch. It’s something you do.”
Another idea in ICS is that often there are “anchor memories”, moments in which the fear was created, though again, the client may not be consciously aware of these. ICS helps uncover these memories, and “scramble” them using some incredibly powerful techniques proven to help reduce the emotional charge of such memories.
Scaling ICS to Millions
Chris has always wanted to scale the help he provides, becoming frustrated at times that he could only help “one client at a time”. 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.”