Phobias

Page added 30th August 2010

It becomes quite clear after performing a simple Google search on ‘phobias’ the first link guides you to a never-ending list of phobias. There appears to be a phobia for absolutely everything, besides a phobia of phobias! All through the alphabet from A to Z, including numerals, emphasizes how fearful some people can be over the sight or contact with everyday objects, situations and behaviors.

Phobias can be explained as an inappropriate and irrational sense of fear or anxiety triggered by exposure to a specific object or situation. Phobia stricken people have the tendency to go out of their way to avoid whatever is causing their fear. This fear often causes them distress and an intense dread of the certain object or situation. Phobias also fit into the family of anxiety disorders.

Although having fears is all part of being human, it is when the fear takes over and interferes with everyday functioning and causes distress to the individual and/or the people around them that it should be reviewed. Tackling a phobia on your own can prove to be problematic; seeking the assistance of a professional can be highly beneficial in overcoming a phobia and ideally extinguishing it.

Out of hundreds of phobias they are generally categorized into 3 main types; specific phobia, social phobia and agoraphobia.

Starting with specific phobias, they can be described as a fear of an individual object or a situation. This phobia is restricted to very specific things or situations. These phobias are most common in children which are thought of as normal and usually tend to disappear as the child gets older. But some phobias tend to carry out into adulthood. These phobias can then be broken up into fears such as:

Animals (e.g. Spiders, snakes, mice, birds and insects),
The natural world (e.g. Storms, heights, weather),
Blood, injections and Injury,
And lastly certain situations (e.g. enclosed spaces, lifts, planes). 

Alternatively some people can become fearful of catching illnesses or anything which may cause them to be at risk of vomiting or choking. An interesting thing to note is that specific phobias tend to be more common in women than in men. People who tend to suffer from these phobias rarely have any other psychiatric or psychological problems. 

A fear of being away from home or fear of open spaces could be categorized as symptoms of agoraphobia. This phobia includes but is not limited to the fear of being alone, being in a situation where one cannot suddenly escape or obtain help, and the fear of having a panic attack. Sometimes the fear of enclosed spaces (claustrophobia) can also be associated with this phobia. The onset of agoraphobia tends to be in late adolescence or early adulthood, and once again more common in women than in men.

Social phobia tends to be described as an excessive fear of social situations and the fear of being scrutinized. People with social phobia tend to have low confidence with people they don’t know and a heightened fear of what strangers may be thinking of them. There is also a fear of acting in an embarrassing way such as blushing. Some statistics reveal in every 100 people, 5 of those will have some degree of social phobia.

If you are suffering from a phobia there are various methods to combat the problem. Self help tends to work for some people where they use initiative and expose themselves to their phobia and tolerate their anxiety until it starts to decrease. Some people do this on their own and sometimes with the support of a self help book or support groups or friends and family.

Behavioural therapies can help if you feel the need for support of a professional. This method involves a one to one session with a therapist which involves exposure and gradual desensitization. During therapy you will be taught to tolerate your   anxieties with relaxation techniques. During the course of your sessions the exposure will increase as you learn to tackle your anxieties. This can also be practiced away from your sessions at home with friends or family (depending on your phobia, e.g. fear of snakes: pictures of snakes, toy snakes).

Another therapy called flooding also uses the technique of exposure therapy. This method involves immediate exposure to your phobia under the principle that you cannot stay anxious indefinitely (Usually 40 minutes is the maximum time your body is likely to stay in a state of anxiety). After having endured the time you will come to find you are able to survive unharmed. This therapy should only be conducted by a trained therapist.
People with social phobias tend to find cognitive behavioural therapy to be beneficial. This method involves exercises to change inappropriate patterns of thinking developed by an individual and the behaviour which then stems from those thoughts.

Alternative therapy sometime used in the treatment of phobias is hypnotherapy which uses hypnosis to relieve the symptoms of anxiety associated with your phobia. There are various different treatments available for phobias and it’s a matter of trial and error to see which works best for you and fits your personal boundaries. A good thing to note is phobias are a learned  behaviour and with learned behaviors they can be unlearned as well.

References
http://www.mappandhession.com/Phobias.htm
http://hcd2.bupa.co.uk/fact_sheets/html/phobias.html
http://phobialist.com/