Essay on Psychological Explanations of One Anxiety Disorder

Sigmund Freud believed that phobias had to do with our external bodies reflecting what our internal emotions feel. Sigmund also believes the source of phobias always links back to your childhood. I agree with this theory. As a child, your mind is so open and vulnerable that anything can influence it. So if you were taught to be scared of snakes as a kid, you will most likely carry that with you your whole life. Luckily, our world has learned to be so advanced to be able to help us cope with these phobias. There are many therapy techniques that are made specifically with your phobia in mind. In an article I read, I learned about a case of a woman named Ellen. Ellen had a fear of flying due to a past uncomfortable experience. She was given hands on therapy that exposed her completely to her fear. She was taken to visit airports and gradually worked up to just sitting on planes. Once she was comfortable, she took various flights that increased in time. Nearly two years later, Ellen got her pilot’s license. As we advance farther into science, we are able to get closer and closer to picking apart phobias. We are able to reach into the human brain, study it, and help cure our fears! How cool is that? Although testing on animals isn’t right, we can thank monkeys for helping expand the knowledge of psychologists on phobias. As the years go on and we accumulate more cases, we

“While biological factors certainly increase the vulnerability to developing fear and phobia, findings have not yet confirmed that these behaviors are controlled by biological mechanisms” (Rofé). Treating and understanding, psychoanalysis, phobias are believed to be a defense mechanism against trauma that might have been brought up as child. It still debated wether phobias are biological or created through life experiences. Due to varied experiments and evaluation, stating phobias derive from young childhood traumas would be untruthful and not factual. In the theory of psychoanalytic fear and phobias are created if the child remembers the experience which have brought

The classical conditioning model was one of the first theories used to describe phobias. Many years ago, scientists observed that one could willingly elicit a fear response in an animal or human through systematic teaching. For example, if every time a rat is presented with a low buzzing noise, it is electrically shocked, eventually, when it hears the noise alone (with no shock), it will exhibit symptoms of fear. (3) Scientists

Furthermore, phobia of spiders is a case where the biopsychosocial approach to understanding anxiety is not helpful, and an example of that is Kate phobia (The Open University, 2016a). The reason is that spider phobia happens because of an environmental learning process about a frightening experience, and an evidence about this is the case study of “little Albert” (McLannahan, 2010, p107). On the other hand, snake phobia is the result of the evolutionary process of human, which is genetically inherited for protecting the survival of human; thus, it has a biological explanation only (McLannahan, 2010, p108). Also, there is evidence from twins’ studies for the genetic predisposition for specific animal phobias (Kendler, et all, 1992, cited in Mclannahan, p 109). Thus, a biopsychosocial approach did not contribute to understanding these specific phobias.

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

Anxiety is a small, fair skinned, and timid being. Her fraternal twin sister is Fear and her cousin is Depression. She is so small because she is constantly worried about things like her appearance, school, money, family, and her size. She rarely eats due to her self consciousness and forgetfulness but still wears a dark long sleeve hoodie two sizes too big. Her skinny jeans range from colors of dark blues to black. She tries to keep herself covered up because of her fear of her size, this is why she is so pale. She has big dark brown eyes that are covered by her long black hair because she is constantly looking down, away from others. She has a small crack down the side of her cheek from stress.

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.

“A phobia is defined as an irrational fear that produces a conscious avoidance of the feared subject, activity or situation.” In Adrian Preda’s article “Phobic Disorders”, it was said that many people have multiple specific phobias. The average person with specific phobia fears around 3 objects and/or situations, and approximately 75% of people with specific phobia fear more than 1 situation or object. (Adrian Preda, “Phobic Disorders”). Acrophobia comes from the fear of falling and being injured or even killed. This is normally the result of a traumatic experience from a point in someone’s life. The purpose of this paper is to give some background knowledge on phobias, specifically Acrophobia: fear of heights. Also, about the symptoms and causes, some case studies and the treatments for Acrophobia.

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.

People have difficulties to distinguish between the realities they face, but they do concentrate more on their experiences. Lift phobia is considered as a threatened believes affright by getting stalled and having no capability to get out, by increasing the fear and putting it in an inevitable danger situation and setting up and increasing the state of anxiety towards a panic attack (Lefton L., 1997). However, there is not enough evidence to prove, why some people developed this specific phobia. Furthermore some researchers suggested that understanding the cause of these fear is not important to control, because most people are conscious of their fear, already know and over analyzed their fear logically, so do not have to fear or getting embarrassed of getting trapped and unable to escape when anxiety occurs, but they find way to adapt and live with that fear. Anxiety will not kill me; there are a lot of unpleasant things in the world (Ellis A.

spaces (agoraphobia). This is a fear of an actual or anticipated situation, such as using public transportation, being in open or enclosed spaces, standing in line or being in a crowd, or being outside the home alone. The anxiety is caused by fearing no easy means of escape or help if intense anxiety develops. Most people who have agoraphobia develop it after having one or more panic attacks, causing them to fear another attack and avoid the place where it occurred. For some people, agoraphobia may be so severe that they're unable to leave home.

Fear is an aspect of life people deal with every day. Being afraid is part of what makes people human. Fear that grows with adulthood or causes people to have different conduct is known as a phobia. A phobia can elicit physical or emotional discomfort when it comes to the fear of an object or situation that can be treated by therapy or medication in most cases, or untreatable in others. There are four subtypes of specific phobias known as: blood injection injury, animal, situational, and natural environment. Sometimes treatment of phobias can be difficult to determine because of the wide range of phobias that exist. There has not been an adequate amount of research conducted on phobias which makes it difficult to study or comprehend

Gross, R. (2007, December 28). Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy. Key Studies in Psychology. 5, 239-251. Kaufmann, F. (2008, August 29).

A phobia is an intense but unrealistic fear that can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, brought on by an object, event, or situation. “Many people to this very day fail to understand the difference between a phobia and a fear”(Richards). A fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat. “Fears are more common than phobias in the population today and are often bland reactions to objects or events”(Richards). For example, many people fear spiders, which causes them to experience a mild to moderate anxiety reaction when they see one. Phobias are known to be another form of anxiety, which is an emotional state of fearfulness or displeasure. “Anxiety is a common mental disorder that many people experience

The amount of phobias present is high, as there are several kinds which can be categorized into three groups, “agoraphobia”,