Banishing Boggarts

This is a useful idea for Harry Potter fans.

"Boggarts take the shape of your most feared thing in all the world and change according to who is looking at them.  The spell Harry’s class was taught to help banish Boggarts was “Ridikulus”, and to perform the spell you have to imagine your feared object or person in a ridiculous or funny way.  Children imagined scary teachers dressed in old women’s clothing, giant spiders on roller skates and Egyptian mummies becoming unravelled.

This is quite similar to a technique psychologists sometimes use with people with anxiety called “defusion”.  The idea of defusion is to help people be able to see their feared situations as merely pictures and words in their minds, rather than a real, immediate threat."