About phobias

Firstly, what is a phobia? It isn't just a simple fear as you may think. A phobia is an excessive and persistent fear of : a situation or an object. The fear is considered excessive because it is out of proportion to the actual level of danger associated with the situation. When an individual with a phobia is exposed to the feared situation, an immediate anxiety response is triggered that can sometimes grow into a great panic attack. So people with phobias avoid the feared situations or objects. Otherwise, they endure a lot of distress.

Phobias vary a lot, but it is distinguished 10 most common phobias.
The first place in this list is taken by arachnophobia, which is a fear of spiders- half of women and 10% of men suffer from it. Though this phobia may look quite funny, the symptoms of it are not funny at all. They are breathlessness, dizziness, excessive sweating, nausea, dry mouth, feeling sick, shaking heart palpitations, inability to speak, to think clearly, a fear of dying, loosing psychological control, an enormous detachment from reality, frequent panic attacks.
Social phobia ( a fear of being evaluated negatively in social situations) is frequent as well. Victims of this phobia are afraid to open criticisms, humiliation and they are tend to be unable to speak , sweat and blush in front of others. One more phobia, which is called agoraphobia, has similarities with social phobia. Those who suffer from agoraphobia are generally afraid of being in the centre of attention and usually avoid going to public places and social gatherings. It may sound as a joke, but a famous American actress Kim Basinger, who won an Oscar, suffers from both - social phobia and agoraphobia. When she accepted her Oscar , the words from her didn't come, though she had been practising a response for days.
Aerophobia, a fear that tortures Whoopi Goldberg, is a fear of flying. Acrophobia- a fear of height. Those who suffer from panic attacks in elevators, trains or other confined spaces ( Adolf Hitler was one of them ) are called claustrophobics.
Some strange phobias, such as emetophobia ( a fear of vomit ) or carcinophobia ( a fear of cancer ) also are in the list of 10 most common phobias.
And the last two that go into this list are brontophobia- a fear of lightning and thunder ( logically- these people hate summer ) and necrophobia- a fear of dead and death.

The last point I would like to mention is a way of treating phobias. A superior way is considered to be cognitive behavior therapy ( CBT ) which focusses on slowly and safely exposing a person to a feared situation or stimulus. It involves repeated approaching of fear- provoking situation or object until it no longer produces a strong fear reaction. As for medications, they should be used just in phobic situations in order to allow the person to function in that situation, but not for treating phobias.

This is just a liitle information to get to know deeper what phobias are. As it is seen, phobias are widespread and they have serious effect on our mental health and for this reason they have to be eliminated.


References: http://www.visioncoachingservices.com/pictures/phobia%20woman.jpg