habits and fears become us

I've noticed that our fears tend to get more pronounced as we get older. Take my mother for example. She's always been claustrophobic, but now it is to the point that she freaks out, her starts racing and she can't breathe as soon as she feels even a little confined. She can't even have anything close to a neck (she can't wear chokers and has to have v-neck or open neck shirts). Same with driving. She is ok driving in a very small area, but hates highway driving, and again, it is to the point that if she has to drive further than she normally does, her blood pressure goes up, she gets horribly stressed.

For a while, I just sort of assumed that these things just get worse as you get older. But how much of that is due to decades of repeating things like, "I'm claustrophobic," or "I can't go in there," or "I can't drive that far," etc.

Words have a lot of power, I know that much. What would happen if every time your instinct was to say I can't do this, I'm afraid, I'm afraid of heights, I'm claustrophobic, I hate being in crowds, instead you said something positive. I like heights. I love crowds. I will be fine in small spaces? If it became a habit to say something positive whenever you were going to not do something because of fear, would the fear lose some or much of its power eventually?

Same with habits. We are creatures of habit. We like routine. We like things we know. So that means you have the power to always choose good habits. And the more often you choose it, the more ingrained it will become, to the point where doing the good thing is the normal response, not the one you have to talk yourself into, or you try to find a way out of. It just becomes you.