What is Phobia? Causes,Symptoms,Types and Treatment for Phobias.

What is Phobia?

A phobia is an excessive and irrational fear reaction. If you have a phobia, you may experience a deep sense of dread or panic when you encounter the source of your fear. The fear can be of a certain place, situation, or object. Unlike general anxiety disorders, a phobia is usually connected to something specific.

The impact of a phobia can range from annoying to severely disabling. People with phobias often realize their fear is irrational, but they’re unable to do anything about it. Such fears can interfere with your work, school, and personal relationships.

Phobias that are specific to a particular stimulus can have a variety of different causes, which fall into 3 main categories—namely, learned fear, psychological influences, and biological influences. The following article will detail the specifics of these 3 types of causes, and offer tips as to how to prevent phobias from developing.

Potential Causes of Phobias

Genetic and environmental factors can cause phobias. Children who have a close relative with an anxiety disorder are at risk for developing a phobia. Distressing events such as nearly drowning can bring on a phobia. Exposure to confined spaces, extreme heights, and animal or insect bites can all be sources of phobias.

People with ongoing medical conditions or health concerns often have phobias. There is a high incidence of people developing phobias after traumatic brain injuries. Substance abuse and depression are also connected to phobias.

Not all phobias are going to have a clear cause. While they may be due to some type of trauma, they may also be more of a personality issue for those that already have anxiety. Phobia causes could be as follows:

Learned Fear

Phobias might be a "learned fear," which means that it is something that you picked up on over time. Learned fears have three main subtypes. The subtypes of learned fear include:

Directly Learned Fear Directly learned fear occurs when someone experiences a personal encounter with a particular stimulus that results in pain or intense fear, often early on in life. For example, if someone accidentally knocks down a bees’ nest as a child and gets stung, they may develop a phobia of bees.

Observationally Learned Fear Observationally learned fear involves learning to fear a particular stimulus based on the behavior or attitude of others towards the stimulus. For example, if a child’s parent is intensely afraid of spiders, the child is more likely to develop a fear of spiders themselves.

Indirectly/Informational Learned Fear indirectly learned fear, or informational learned fear, is the result of becoming informed of the potentially dangerous nature of certain stimuli through media or hearsay. For example, a person might learn to fear driving due to constantly hearing about car crashes on the radio, or seeing pictures of them on television.

It is important to note that some people have frightening or negative experiences, live with phobic people and/or learn about dangerous aspects of the world without developing phobias. The likelihood of a phobia developing after these “learning” experiences occur often depends on how frequently they are exposed to the stimulus, and whether or not they immediately begin avoiding the stimulus. If exposure is prolonged, or if the person is able to revisit the stimulus soon after their first fear-inducing exposure without incident, they become less likely to develop a phobia relating to it later in life.

Psychological Influences

How a person thinks about the object of their fear can have the effect of causing it to transform into a phobia, or intensify the severity of an already existing phobia. The types of psychological perception that can lead to and worsen phobias are outlined below.

Heightened Awareness A phobic person will often be more keenly aware of the presence or potential for the presence of the object of their fear than other people. The constant awareness of potentially threatening stimuli causes a person to build up feelings of dread and fear related to the object of their fear, making it even more frightening when they actually see or experience it.

Perception Distortion The object of a phobic person’s fear may seem to the person to be disproportionately threatening, having exaggerated frightening features not apparent to other people. For example, someone afraid of dogs might see dogs as monstrous, fanged creatures, or remember the dog they were once bitten by as such, even if in reality it was fairly small and harmless-looking. The exaggerations that fear creates in the mind begin to seem real over time, increasing the individual’s drive to avoid the object of their fear and their negative feelings towards it.

Negative Core Beliefs The beliefs a phobic person cultivates regarding the object of their fear usually serve to make the object or situation more frightening than it would otherwise be. For example, someone afraid of planes might cultivate the belief that planes should not actually be able to fly, being too heavy in reality to remain airborne, or that the air on a plane may become less breathable when a plane ascends high up into the sky.

Obsessive Avoidance Phobic persons are likely to obsessively avoid the object of their fears by whatever means necessary. Carefully avoiding contact with the fear object usually has the effect of increasing the strength of the above psychological influences. It's a phenomenon known as negative reinforcement. Refusing to re-expose oneself to the object results in a failure to learn that the object is not always a cause for alarm. It is said that people fear most what they don’t understand, and spending time with the object of fear is a crucial step towards understanding and accepting it as safe.

Constant awareness of perceived threat, a belief that the object of their fear is “scarier” or more threatening than it is in reality, and a refusal to go near the fear object all contribute to maintaining learned fears and keeping a person from re-learning.

Biological Influences

The primary biological factor thought to be related to a predisposition towards phobic attitudes and behavior is a hormonal imbalance in the brain involving insufficient levels of the hormone serotonin.

Serotonin deficiency is a common feature of many anxiety disorders, and people with naturally low serotonin levels have been shown to be more susceptible to anxiety. Women, for example, generally have lower levels of serotonin in their bodies than men, and are up to 40% more likely than men to develop mental illnesses such as anxiety disorders.

Evolutionary psychologists theorize that, because phobias most often develop during childhood, people are genetically predisposed to develop phobic behaviors as children as a survival mechanism, helping them to avoid potentially dangerous stimuli and increase the likelihood of their reaching adulthood.

How to Prevent Phobias

No matter what caused your phobia, it's possible to learn to control that fear. Ideally, you do this by exposing yourself to the fearful stimulus, until your mind realizes that the fear was unwarranted. You can do this by starting small:

First think about the object you fear until you stop fearing it.

Then look at pictures.

Then look at videos.

Then try to be in the same room as the object.

Do each task for hours on end as long as it takes until the fear starts to disappear before moving on to the next one. This type of process has the potential to drastically change how much fear you experience, allowing you to make the object a known entity and take away the mystery that leads to more fear.

 

Different Types of Phobias

The American Psychiatric Association recognizes more than 100 different phobias. Here are a few of the most common.

Agoraphobia

Agoraphobia is a fear of places or situations that you can’t escape from. The word itself refers to “fear of open spaces.” People with agoraphobia fear being in large crowds or trapped outside the home. They often avoid social situations altogether and stay inside their homes.

Many people with agoraphobia fear they may have a panic attack in a place where they can’t escape. Those with chronic health problems may fear they will have a medical emergency in a public area or where no help is available.

Social Phobia

Social phobia is also referred to as “social anxiety disorder.” This is extreme worry about social situations that can lead to self-isolation. A social phobia can be so severe that the simplest interactions, such as ordering at a restaurant or answering the telephone, can cause panic. Those with social phobia will often go out of their way to avoid public situations.

Specific Phobias

Many people dislike certain situations or objects, but to be a true phobia, the fear must interfere with your daily life. Some of the most common include the following.

Gloss phobia: Performance anxiety, or the fear of speaking in front of an audience. People with this phobia have severe physical symptoms when they even think about being in front of a group of people.

Acrophobia: The fear of heights. People with this phobia will avoid mountains, bridges, or the higher floors of buildings. Symptoms include vertigo, dizziness, sweating, and feeling as if you’ll pass out or lose consciousness.

Claustrophobia: The fear of enclosed or tight spaces. Severe claustrophobia can be especially disabling if it prevents you from riding in cars or elevators.

Aviatophobia: The fear of flying.

Dentophobia: Fear of the dentist or dental procedures. This phobia generally develops after an unpleasant experience at a dentist’s office. It can be harmful if it prevents you from obtaining needed dental care.

Hemophobia: Fear of blood or injury. A person with hemophobia may faint when they come in contact with their own or another person’s blood.

Arachnophobia: Fear of spiders.

Cynophobia: Fear of dogs.

Ophidiophobia: Fear of snakes.

Nyctophobia: Fear of the nighttime or darkness. This phobia almost always begins as a typical childhood fear. When it progresses past adolescence, it’s considered a phobia.

 Risk for Phobias?

Those with a genetic predisposition to anxiety may be at a high risk for developing phobias. Age, socioeconomic status, and gender only seem to be risk factors for certain phobias. For example, women are more likely to have animal phobias. Children or people with a low socioeconomic status are more likely have social phobias. Men make up the majority of those with dentist and doctor phobias.

What Are the Symptoms of Phobias?

The most common and disabling symptom of a phobia is a panic attack. Features of a panic attack include:

• pounding or racing heart
• shortness of breath
• rapid speech or inability to speak
• dry mouth
• upset stomach or nausea
• elevated blood pressure
• trembling or shaking
• chest pain or tightness
• choking sensation
• dizziness or lightheadedness
• profuse sweating
• sense of impending doom

A person with a phobia doesn’t have to have panic attacks for accurate diagnosis.

Treatment for Phobias

Treatment for phobias can involve therapeutic techniques, medications, or a combination of both.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most commonly used therapeutic treatment for phobias. CBT involves exposure to the source of the fear, but in a controlled setting. This treatment can reconditions people and reduce anxiety.

The therapy focuses on identifying and changing negative thoughts, dysfunctional beliefs, and negative reactions to fear. New CBT techniques use virtual reality technology to safely expose people to the sources of their phobias.

Medication

Antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications can help calm both emotional and physical reactions to fear. Often, the combination of medication and professional therapy makes the biggest difference.

If you have a phobia, it’s critical that you seek treatment. Overcoming phobias can be difficult, but there’s hope. With the right treatment, you can learn to manage your fears and lead a productive, fulfilling life.