Phobias Chapter 15

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.

In everyday life, anxiety is an adaptive response to deal with short-term threatening, dangerous or emergency situations (Grivas & Letch, 2017). This can temporarily activate the sympathetic nervous system and the fight-flight-freeze response, causing physiological symptoms of dizziness, trembling, shortness of breath and increased heart rate. Stress and anxiety may be seen in other mental disorders, such as specific phobia, but are not considered mental disorders. Specific phobia is a phobia “marked by persistent fear or anticipation of a specific situation in which exposure to the phobic stimulus almost invariably provokes an immediate anxiety response” (Grös & Antony, 2006). Specific phobias can be categorised into four main types ,animal type, natural environment type, blood-injection-injury type and situation type.

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

Everyone experience fear occasionally in their life, but there are some who experience fears that are so intense that their daily lives are disturbed. An extreme fear towards a specific object or situation that is relentless and illogical to the point that a person avoids confronting the situation or object at all cost is known as a phobia. This anxiety disorder can interfere with the a person’s body and mind causing severe symptoms and disturbances to one’s everyday life, eventually leading to long hours of treatment with professional helpers. Many theories have been proposed to explain how phobias have developed, but the real challenge is to propose a

A phobia is a persistent and unreasonable fear of an object or situation which can initiate an anxiety response such as a panic attack or crying and freezing in children – the response is out of proportion to the threat posed. The sufferer is aware that their fear is unreasonable, causing distress, but also distinguishing the disorder from schizophrenia and psychosis. The anxiety response includes dizziness and difficulty breathing and is maladaptive as avoidance or distress in response to the feared situation or object interferes considerably with the individual’s daily routine. For those under 18, symptoms have to be present for at least 6 months and cannot be better explained by the criteria of another

Just imagine for a moment that you have a cynophobia or the fear of dogs, would this be how you would feel. Driving down the road the oil light comes on. "I must stop the car to add more oil or I will damage the car engine. This looks like a good place to pull over. I'll just stop in front of this house. The oil is in the trunk, so I'll pop the top first, then get the oil out of the trunk. OK, I have the oil, but what if there is a dog at this house. Hurry, I have to hurry. A dog might come running out and bark at me any minute. Just get the oil in the engine. I can't my hands are shaking. Don't worry, there is no dog. Just get the oil in the engine. I don't care

Specific phobia is the disproportionate fear or avoidance of a particular object or situation. Phobias are intense, unreasonable fears that interfere with functioning. Anxiety and fear are common to be a part of most of the other anxiety disorders like social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and agoraphobia. The development and maintenance of a specific phobia can be the result of fear conditioning. The behavioral model of specific phobia is based upon the assumption that thoughts and beliefs can influence our own behavior, emotions, and physiology. This model is built from Mowrer’s two-factor model of conditioning. The learned preparedness model suggests that fears of objects with evolutionary significance may be more sustained after condition. Although not all people with negative experiences will develop phobias.

Phobic disorders are one of the most common forms of psychiatric illness. There are so many different phobias. Some examples are, Social Anxiety Disorder, Agoraphobia: the fear of being alone in public places, Cynophobia: the fear of dogs, and Arachnophobia: the fear of spiders. Anxiety is a big common factor when experiencing phobic disorders. A disorder can start off really small and not be that big of a problem, but over time it can increase and get

However, there is a fear induced by the mind which is called Phobia. Phobia comes from the Greek word “Phobos” that means fear. This type of fear is known as irrational or inappropriate since it is caused by pure imagination. Most common phobias are the fear of evil powers, snakes, enclosed spaces, water, spiders and heights.

According to Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner, & Nock (2015) There are three different forms of phobic disorders; specific phobia, social phobia, and agoraphobia. Specific phobia is when someone is afraid of something like an animal, or heights

When a person has a phobia, they’ll do anything to avoid it. Sometimes when they attempt to dodge it, they make the thing they were dodging happen. This can all lead up to therapy where the person will confront their phobia and deal with the problem like a man.

Phobias are anxiety disorders. Phobias are excessive fears of specific things or situations. Fear of heights (acrophobia’s) is a hyper-reaction and survival mechanism of a fear response. Often it is learned response from a previous

Phobias have impacted millions of people just in the United States. Whether they or someone they know has a phobia, phobias have affected their lives somehow. Researchers have found various methods for treating these phobias, but still have not found the exact cause for the development of phobias. To help organize these phobias, researchers have created three main categories that group the phobias by the general subject of fear. As previously stated, researchers have not yet determined the cause of the development of phobias, but have narrowed it down to two main theories. With treatments, researchers have been a bit more successful with finding working treatments, however, there still aren’t very many alternatives. Through the use of three broad categories of phobias, probable causes and treatments can be determined.

There are fears which are healthy and can be separated from extended fears in phobias. The patient in phobia case feels troubled with overstated, unreasonable fear and anxiety confronting direct contact with a certain object the lift and situation that stimulate immediately panic attack. The possibility of exposing their certain fear or certain situation could have an effect on the nature of response (Flykt, 2005). Mrs. F also is conscious that this situation of anxiety is irrational and it does affect in her daily life with a matter of phobia reaction. According to some researches if this phobia it lasts up to six months then it is classified in the group of suffering from phobia disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).

Thereby it is not completely clear, what the causes for phobia are. Phobia is often caused by something scary that happened earlier in somebody’s life, but not every one develop phobias after special experiences. An explanation for this could be that for some people certain parts of the brain and specific neural pathways are associated with phobias. It is