Symptoms And Treatment Of Phobias

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.

The biological explanation for the acquisition of phobic disorders establishes that phobias are caused by genetics, innate influences and the principles of biochemistry. This theory recognizes that an oversensitive fear response may be inherited, causing abnormal levels of anxiety. This is illustrated in the basis of inheritance, particularly the adrenergic theory that convicts that those who have an acquisition to phobic disorders consequently show high levels of arousal in the automatic nervous system, which leads to increased amounts of adrenaline, thus causing high levels of anxiety.

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).

They were to watch a prerecorded video feed of the tarantula in one of the compartments, which they did not know was prerecorded. Results found that the closer in proximity the tarantula was to the subject’s foot, the higher recorded fear ratings. Experienced fear correlated with Fear of Spider Questionnaire ratings. Augmented activity was observed in the bilateral amygdala, midbrain PAG, ventral striatum, BNST, bilateral anterior insula, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which are regions that are involved in fear-evoking events and flight responses, according to the paper. It was also stated that the amygdala and BNST monitor the rates of threat increase or decrease. Stimulation of PAG results in extreme fear and panic, but there is no connection of the PAG and evolutionary fears. With increased distance between the spider and the foot, increased activity in the omPFC, which deals with passive coping, and posterior cingulate cortex was

“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

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?

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

In Chapter 8 “Where the Wild Things Are,” the author Le Doux looked at the how our brain regions and systems functioned during the development of anxiety disorders. He introduced many researchers’ ideas and theories such as Pavlovian conditioning and instrumental conditioning; then, he listed the brain regions that were associated with anxiety and fear conditioning such as hippocampus, amygdala, sympathetic nervous system, and various brain cortexes. He also explained how our brain became conditioned for different anxiety disorders.

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

Psychological Explanations of One Anxiety Disorder Phobias are an example of an anxiety disorder and the psychological explanations of these are cognitive, psychodynamic, behavioral and social factors. The Behavioral, Psychodynamic and social factors of the psychological explanation will be discussed in greater detail. Behavioral explanations say that all behaviour is learnt whether it is normal or abnormal and this approach has been applied to humans and animals.

To continue the research, Jordan Smoller distinguishes this section of the genetics of anxiety, “…the majority of the genetic association studies of the anxiety disorders have been candidate gene studies based on a limited number of biological hypotheses. [These are] commonly focused on genes related to monoaminergic neurotransmitter systems [(refer to the particular neurotransmitters dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin)], neuropeptides, and HPA axis function [(hypothalaic-pituitary-adrenal axis)]” (Smoller, p. 308). Individually, settled test creature models catch critical parts of human nervousness and dread conduct, and neuroimaging considers have gained free ground in mapping the primary and practical segments of uneasiness/fear symptoms.

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

Arachnophobia or having the intense fear of spiders is the earliest as well as most typical anxiety experienced in Western society. Just observing the response to spiders shown by an arachnophobic person may seem illogical to others and also frequently to the sufferer himself. For some individuals, it is a learned reaction which means that they discover to be afraid only after having actually seen others being frightened. What is the origin of this fear and what is the best way to manage it if one has tried everything from avoidance to medication? Answers to these questions in this article will explore alternative research that has been conducted to address

Everyone in life has fears, it’s a natural way our brains process certain objects or situations that may be dangerous. Common fears may be heights or spiders; some would rationally go out of their way to avoid these, but this is quite different from having a phobia. A phobia is an irrational distress with a particular object or concept/idea. Although fears are well known now, they do not have to disrupt the lives of those who are living them. Throughout the essay there will be three different treatments with three different phobias in ways to cure a phobia; the first is a trauma-focused treatment approach for travel phobia, assessment and treatment for childhood phobias, and hypnosis in facilitating clinical treatment of injections.