"The memory of that awful company meal is a faultline that will forever run through my experience. Every time I enter a formal social situation, I feel the fear that struck me down that day, but the difference is I can let it go now - I can manage without having to run away and hide."Triumph over Phobia can be contacted by writing to: TOP UK, PO Box 1831, Bath, BA1 3YX, preferably with a sae.. Tomorrow they fly, but tonight they are on the beach at Ashqelon. My next goal was to speak to one mum, any mum, in the playground It was really difficult.

What was I to say? I finally got out a 'good morning' and built up over weeks to a 'how's your daughter doing?' When I reported back, the people were so supportive - I felt like I'd won the jackpot."Three years on, Bev holds down two jobs - one in a playgroup and one counselling the elderly. I felt really stupid, but after a week of trying, it started to come more naturally. There were people there who hadn't been out of their house for 30 years and were now able to catch buses. They had made contracts with themselves and were moving forward one step at a time My first goal was to smile at people.

There were 10 of us - it felt like a massive crowd."We sat in a circle and listened while people reported back what they had managed to achieve that week I was amazed. The next time, I arrived for the meeting 90 minutes early, then paced up and down the street outside debating whether to go in As others began to arrive, I started sweating madly. It's about changing their habits and hardwiring in some new ones."Joan Bond, a director of Top, claims that the success rate with this treatment is high and that most people are coping with their situations within six months "But it is not a magic wand. People have to put a lot of effort into managing their phobias," she cautions.For Bev Elvis, the challenge of going to a Top meeting where her most feared objects - human beings - would be present, was a daunting one. "The first time, I chickened out at the last moment," she recalls, "but my boyfriend bullied me into trying again. "Gradually, the sufferer begins to get some perspective on their thoughts and behaviour and on what other people might be thinking.

"We start with a challenge that can be conquered and build it from there," he said. Simon Darnley, a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist, says the Maudsley treatment, known as exposure therapy, is a graded, step-by-step approach in which the sufferer learns to face their feared situation until their fear subsides to manageable proportions. Bev thought her "depressed condition" was due to the triple trauma of having had an operation on her lung to eradicate a rare cancer, of losing her baby when four months pregnant and the breakdown of her marriage. Her GP prescribed anti-depressants as a short-term remedy, but felt her situation had gone beyond depression and put her in touch with Triumph over Phobia, the nationwide self-help group for phobics set up in 1987.The group's approach is based on the system pioneered at the Maudsley Hospital in south London more than a decade ago. I was convinced that all the other mothers were staring at me.