Chapter 15 Phobias Analysis

Specific phobia, also known as simple phobia, is an anxiety disorder characterized by persistent and unreasonable fear of something or fear of a situation, wherein such fear is not proportionate to the danger or risk of that thing or situation that a person has the fear of. The five sub-type of specific phobia are the animal, natural environment, blood injection injury, situational and others. The most common specific phobia is the animal phobia. Examples of this animal phobia include fear of dogs, snakes, insects or mice. To prevent over diagnosis of specific phobia, DSM 5 have made several changes based on the over assessment of danger or erratic fear. To be considered as one of the specific phobias, it should meet the requirements

Taking into consideration that all people are unique, we all have different phobias. A phobia is an extreme or irrational fear of something. Many phobias are in relation to one another. For instance the phobias agoraphobia, anthropophobia, and stenophobia. These three are related by the reason of they can correspond with social situations. Agoraphobia is mainly the fear of crowds. It can also be the fear of bridges or being outside. Anthropophobia is the fear of people and society. It is also known as an extreme pathological form of shyness. The last phobia, stenophobia, is very rare. It is the fear of narrow things or places. All phobias are important to understand. Being able to understand a phobia means a person could help to possibly cure

Known as a mental disorder a phobia is a persistent fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to compelling desire to avoid it. Phobias tend to affect the way people live their lives, for example, their working and social environments, considering that they last for a very long time and are capable to cause intense psychological physical stress. It is considered today the most common mental and anxiety disorder in the United States (Matig Mavissakalian & David H. Barlow 1981 pp 2). There are many phobias such as: the fear of aging, fear of changing, fear of clowns, fear of getting fat, fear of being in closed spaces, etc.

Social phobia very common in America, affecting 15 million, and some people confuse this with the occasional nervousness that comes. An example to distinguish between the two would be taking a public speaking class. If a normal person is nervous, they might sweat and stutter, but someone who as a case of social anxiety would try to skip the class entirely and when they finally spoke, they would have lots of troubles speaking. Another is example is giving a speech. It’s perfectly normal to get nervous before giving a big speech, but if you have social anxiety disorder or social phobia, you might worry for days or weeks before it. The individual will do everything to do anything to get out of it, like calling in sick. Someones social anxiety is often triggered by events like meeting new people, being the center of attention (like at a birthday party), being watched while performing a task, public speaking, including speaking up, being teased, etc. People with this mental illness also suffer from negative thoughts, such as “People will think I’m dumb.”, that disable them being apart of the norm. In terms of treatment, psychoanalysis is often used. They use cognitive behavior therapy, a special kind of psychoanalysis. This kind of psychoanalysis is primarily used for

You are in an airport waiting for your plane to arrive. You've never flown before, and are more terrified than you can ever remember being. Everyone has told you the supposedly comforting statistics - "millions of planes take off each day and there's only a handful of crashes," "flying is safer than driving." You know rationally that there is no reason to be so scared, but regardless your heart is racing, your palms are sweating, and you're light-headed. Simply the thought of being up in the air, out of control, makes you feel faint. Finally the flight attendant announces that your plane has arrived. But as all the other passengers line up to get onboard, you grab your luggage and walk straight out of the airport,

Universal human phobia is close interpersonal violence that a person experiences throughout their life. This phobia is not brought upon by mother nature, but by the actions of another human being. In the book, the authors explained how people were not angry if a tornado sent them to the hospital and destroyed their house. Yet when a gang beats them and destroys their house, it’s personal and the victims are angry. The actions of others that causes people to be scared is the concept of universal human phobia.

Phobic disorders are objects, places, things that people develop a fear of that are not realistically dangerous. People often develop this usually from one past experience. Many people have arachnophobia, acrophobia, claustrophobia, and hydrophobia. There is some strange phobias that people develop like homophobia, fear of long words, fear of popping balloons and fear that somewhere a duck is watching you. I don’t know if it was from when I was a child but I fear that people are going to let go of their balloons or pop them, which is very strange. My friend has agoraphobia which greatly affected her social life, and only last year got over it to find a job and be able to shop by herself. I used to have to drag her into town when I needed to go and if she saw someone we knew she would hide, and would even run out of the store.

Introduction: Almost everyone has an irrational fear or two—of mice, for example, or your annual dental checkup. For most people, these fears are minor. But when fears become so severe that they cause tremendous anxiety and interfere with your normal life, they’re called phobias. A phobia is an intense fear of something that, in reality, poses little or no actual danger. Common phobias and fears include closed-in places, heights, highway driving, flying insects, snakes, and needles. However, we can develop phobias of virtually anything. Most phobias develop in childhood, but they can also develop in adults. If you

Phobia in clinical psychology context is an irrational fear of something or situation. The person suffering from phobia will try their best to avoid their phobia. In the extreme case that the person suffering from the phobia cannot avoid it, they will attempt to endure through the situation with a lot of distress ADDIN EN.CITE Swanson1986158(Swanson, 1986)15815817Swanson, Guy E.Phobias and Related Symptoms: Some Social SourcesSociological ForumSociological Forum103-130111986Springer08848971http://www.jstor.org/stable/684555( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_2" o "Swanson, 1986 #158" Swanson, 1986). Phobias can cause difficulties in a person performing their daily activities.

Social fears are considered an anxiety disorder and include excessive self-consciousness in social situations. Some people can fear being judged so much they avoid specific situations. All of these fears seem simple but they are quite difficult to overcome. On the other hand, there are some weird phobias that are hard to understand if you don't have them such as Hylophobia- fear of trees. Nomophobia- fear of being without mobile phone coverage.

Agoraphobia is a mental disorder. It is a type of anxiety or fear. People with agoraphobia fear public places where they may be trapped, helpless, or embarrassed in the event of a panic attack or loss of control. They often start to avoid the feared situations or insist that another person go with them. Agoraphobia may interfere with normal daily activities and personal relationships. People with severe agoraphobia may become completely homebound and dependent on others for groceries and other errands.

Social Phobia, also called social anxiety disorder (SAD), is one of the most common, but misconstrued mental health problems in society. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), over 15 million adults suffer from the disorder. First appearing in the DSM-III as Social Phobia, and later in the DSM-IV as Social Anxiety Disorder, this newly established disorder denotes afflicting stress and anxiety associated with social situations (Zakri 677). According to James W. Jefferson, two forms of Social phobia exist: specific and generalized. Specific social phobia indicates anxiety limited to few performance situations, while generalized indicates anxiety in all social situations (Jefferson). Many people often interchangeably link this disorder to shyness––a personality trait. However, although they have striking similarities, the two are divergent. To begin with, SAD has an extensive etiology ranging from multiple factors. Furthermore, symptoms of various aspects accompany SAD. Moreover, SAD has detrimental impacts affecting quality of life. Lastly, SAD has numerous methods of treatment. Social Phobia is prevalent in both women and men beginning at the onset of puberty (ADAA).

In general, a phobia refers to “extreme [and] irrational fear reactions” (Powell, Honey, & Symbaluk, 2013, p. 190). Phobias are developed through a process called classical conditioning. Classical conditioning involves “a process in which one stimulus that does not elicit a certain response is associated with a second stimulus that does; as a result, the first stimulus also comes to elicit a response” (Powell et al., 2013, pp. 109-110).

(Clark & Beck,2010) There is a “marked and persistent fear of social or performance situations in which embarrassment may occur” DSM-IV-TR; APA, 2000, p.450) Social Phobics seem unable to assess friendly facial expressions. (Ballenger,2009) They have an enhanced vigilance to angry faces relative to happy and neutral faces. (Mogg,2004) This affects interpersonal functioning. (Joorman, 2006)

However, phobia can even cause people to risk their health. For example, the fear of dentists can leave people suffering from it willing to risk the health of their teeth in order to avoid having to go through an exam or procedure ( MacKay). When one knows about an upcoming confrontation, it can be the reason why one can not sleep or finds it hard to focus on important tasks. Due the change in daily routine, this unrealistic fear can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, brought on by and object, event or situation. But even animals have anxieties and phobias just as every human being (www.phobia-help.de). A phobia is an irrational fear, one knows that the object or situation, one is scared off, can not hurt one, but one is still afraid. A reason for this is that the human mind can not distinguish what is real and imaginary. When one has uncontrollable anxiety attacks, he loses rational judgement, leading to complicated problems. However, anyone can develop a phobia, men and women, teens and young adults, and elderly lady or a one-year-old boy (MacKay).