I think my fear stems from a couple of angles. Firstly it took me a while to settle into flying and not be fearful of every time the aircraft moved in a way I hadn't asked it to, turbulence etc, took me a long time to figure if the instructor wasn't worried why should I be. Stalling came quite early in my training and started with a briefing which was more focused/serious than I'd seen before and a bit frightening about the consequences and link to accidents. It was then about 3 days of me turning up to the airfield but not being able to fly due to weather before we had conditions to do stalling. Being told to take out loose objects from the aircraft added to my fear which had built over those 3 days of not flying and waiting.
Also I have worked in a safety sensitive industry for many years and I think knowing that the aircraft is being put into an "unsafe" position triggers all the reactions that have been taught in me about safety processes etc. and not getting there in the first place. I fully got the fact that for overall safety these exercises had to be done but I still couldn't stop myself reacting badly, shaking legs and arms.
I think we did the exercises on 5 occasions over my training to get me to the point of being comfortable for the test but I'd really like to get to a point where I don't fear it every time it is mentioned as I do think it is creating the wrong reaction in me.
My take on the conversations is that some advance training in general would be useful, whether that is actual spinning or just more stalling, low speed flight etc to be decided. I'm very sure I'm best doing all of this away from my home airfield with a different instructor and will now look to set that up.
Thanks for everyone's help/views, always interesting reading the different opinions/thoughts.