Phobias Essay

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

The article, “Phobia Statistics and Surprising Facts About Our Biggest Fears”, says that around forty-five percent of panic attacks can cause the fear of crowds(2 of 11). This is because the attack might have been embarrassing, so the individual fears going back to comparable situations. Another article titled, “Fear of people and how to overcome it”, says that phobias could actually be caused by genetic predispositions. This meaning it is in an individual's genes to be afraid of particular social situations(2-3 of 7). Many different sources suggested that most phobias could come from traumatic events. For instance, a child might have been trapped in a crowd of lots of people. This could have scared them and as a result, they avoid these situations. Phobias can be caused by many different circumstances which make them specific to

Everybody has a different perspective on fear and everybody is affected differently. The Mental Health Foundation stated that, “Fear can last for a short time and then pass but it can also last much longer and stay with us. In some cases it can take over our lives, affecting appetite, sleep, and concentration for long periods of time. Fear stops us from travelling, going to work or school, or even leaving the house.” This quote shows that fear does not affect people as much as it does to others. Although, fear can affect people for a long time which can cause them to stay isolated from others. There are many types of fears and some examples of fears include: the fear of the number 13, the fear of spiders, the fear of heights, and many others. There are hundreds of fears and many people have these fears and everybody is affected differently.

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.

Everybody that you come into contact with on a daily basis will have a fear of something but a phobia can be defined as an irrational fear, this can provoke feelings of intense anxiety and initiate avoidance behaviour.

A phobic disorder is marked by a persistent and irrational fear of an object or situation that presents no realistic danger. Agoraphobia is an intense, irrational fear or anxiety occasioned by the prospect of having to enter certain outdoor locations or open spaces. For example, busy streets, busy stores, tunnels, bridges, public transportation and cars. Traditionally agoraphobia was solely classified as a phobic disorder. However, due to recent studies it is now also viewed as a panic disorder. Panic disorders are characterised by recurrent attacks of overwhelming anxiety that usually occur suddenly and unexpectedly (Weiten, 1998).

Though the experience of phobias is relatively common and their physical characteristics are generally well understood, there is no real consensus on the neurobiological basis of phobias. Instead, there are currently several different models and theories that work to try to understand how and why phobias occur in the human brain. Most hypotheses regarding phobias take a different approach, from biological to psychoanalytic to evolutionary. Is there one model that seems "less wrong" or more satisfying in our efforts to understand the biology of phobias? Using the various models, how do phobias seem to come about? How does thinking about phobias add to our understanding of the brain and behavior?

Phobias, an extreme fear of something, can best be understood through use of the psychodynamic perspective. Oftentimes, childhood traumas or exposure to the object of the fear at an early age can lead to the phobia to manifest itself when the patient is an adult.

There are various phobias that develop from specific traumas and scenarios that have a severe impact on the mind. There is a movie that gives perfect examples of Agoraphobia and it is called Finding Forrester. Agoraphobia is translated from the Greek language as “fear of the market place”(n.a , 2007). Agoraphobia is a powerful anxiety connected to a setting that is difficult to avoid or neglect. An explanation for Agoraphobia is that a person can have diversified quantity of anxiety attacks that associate it to a panic disorder.

A phobia is an overwhelming and unbearable fear of something, such as an object, place, situation, feeling or animal. Phobias are a lot profounder than fears. In my essay I will be looking at a scenario of a woman called Amy with an extreme phobia of birds and how we can explain her fear looking at different psychological theories that explains learnt behaviour.

A phobia can be acquired by a person by making the person associate one thing with something not pleasant or painful to them. The effect of this can be permanent if the extinction process on the person

Causes: There is no known specific cause for Agoraphobia, but there are some different theories. One theory is that it may be genetic and could run in a family. Another theory is that one develops it through a personal experience. This irrational fear may stem from a previous, damaging experience that occurred in a public or open place. This would lead to bad feelings or memories and anxiety of something else similar happening. The phobia may also be somatic, meaning that one will assume anxiety will accompany a situation, so anxiety really does follow. These symptoms are caused by thoughts and worries that are consciously and purposefully thought about, but not intended to cause problems, though they do.

Some fears that are common are fear of the dark, thunder-lightning storms, and supernatural beings (boogy man/ someone something under the bed).I remember always crying that there was a fox at my window by my bed. Later the fear tend to turn to more fear that are movie or television furled or come from scary events. Children can have a phobia of school that may come from harsh teachers, stress and bullies. Children of the age five to seven may have problems being away from home. The years eleven to thirteen can be hard if there are harsh living conditions in which create anxieties, even problems in school.

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).

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