The inhibitory-learning model (Craske et al. 2008) of exposure says that people don’t really unlearn old, fearful responses. Instead, what happens is that new pathways are created in the brain that compete with the old, fearful response. The more new pathways that are created, the greater the chance that a nonfearful path will be chosen. If you practice it enough, you create many nonfearful responses that inhibit the scary one. A nonfearful response then becomes the default response, and you are no longer afraid.
