A lot of people suffer from a fear of flying, but what about a fear of things that fly? LISA COOK talks about her fear of all things fluttery - and how she is fighting her phobia

YOU may have seen me walking through York. I'm the mad woman who ducks (no pun intended) and takes detours to avoid our feathered friends. If I'm with my mum, it's an even funnier sight - two of us ducking together and running away. The problem, you see, is that we both suffer from a phobia of birds.

Most people probably don't even notice pigeons; I have an in-built pigeon radar. I look for them and panic. What will they do? Where they will go? Will they fly at me? Along with this panic comes nausea and palpitations.

This is something I have always lived with and have dealt with in my own way, by avoiding birds. But after a holiday to Sydney, Australia, I realised I had to do something about this phobia. There were a lot of birds in Sydney - pigeons, parrots, you name them. And not only did they hang around outside McDonald's - they went inside.

For the first time, my phobia upset me because it was stopping me doing what I wanted. Most days we spent ages finding somewhere to eat with no birds, and in a harbour city that proved difficult.

When I got home, I went to see my doctor. He was understanding and didn't laugh at me, as most people do, and referred me to a behavioural therapist. To begin with I was sceptical. How was talking about my problem going to make it go away? And, more importantly, was she going to have a budgie in a cage in the room?

The first couple of sessions were spent trying to establish the roots of my phobia. For me this was easy. Having a mum who suffered too, I grew up thinking it was normal to avoid birds. The therapist came up with a way of dealing with my phobia - graded exposure, the deliberate confrontation of feared objects, thoughts or places.

This was daunting at first. Why on earth would I want to go near the things which filled me with so much fear? Working with my therapist we came up with a plan. She never told me what I should be doing, but left me to decide with her guidance.

At first I couldn't even look at pictures of birds or watch them on TV. But after two weeks of cutting bird pictures out on my computer and watching a bird documentary every day, it didn't bother me any more. I even watched Alfred Hitchcock's classic movie The Birds without flinching.

But instead of a sense of achievement, I felt a fraud. How could I do all this so easily when birds used to send me into a blind panic? Did I really have a problem or was I just pathetic?

The only way to sort it out was to deal with the real thing. My next exercise was to walk through the middle of King's Square in York - pigeon central - each day. I'm still working on this now. I have good days and bad days. Sometimes it's not a problem, sometimes I find myself loitering outside Barnitts and just can't bring myself to go any further.

But it is getting easier. Six months ago I would not have gone anywhere near King's Square. I still don't like it, but the nausea and palpitations seem to have subsided.

Next on my list is sitting on a bench with pigeons nearby, followed by a visit to Tropical World in Leeds, where birds and butterflies (no, I don't like them either) fly free, and, finally, a whole day at Harewood bird garden.

This is going to take time, a lot longer than I thought. But at least I now know it's not going to be impossible.

Updated: 08:49 Tuesday, March 04, 2003