I recently conquered a lifelong phobia of lizards -- the severely-crippled-me and impacted-my-daily-life kind of phobia.

After a single session of cognitive behavioral therapy, I was able to hold a lizard in my hands and let it crawl all the way up my shoulder! (For context, I used to be nearly incapable of saying the WORD "lizard" or looking at photographs/cartoons of lizards, much less getting within a voluntary yard of one.)

I'm still fighting some residual discomfort, largely because I'm now scared of potentially relapsing should I have a negative encounter with a lizard (rather than fearing the encounter itself), but this is the first time in my life I've been able to interact with nature or The Outside! And that's pretty damned cool.