Phobias

Phobias

What do you fear? Spiders, snakes, death, the dark? These are common examples of fears that millions of people associate with, but to some, it is more than just a fear, it is an obsession. A fear that cannot be overlooked, or reasoned, it is a fear that is not just a thought in the back of the mind but a main concern. To these people, it is no longer considered a fear but a phobia. A phobia can be defined as an irrational, intense persistent fear of certain situations, objects activities or persons. A phobia translates from an everyday fear to an excessive unreasonable desire to avoid the feared object. Phobias are a well known type of anxiety disorder in our society, but to truly understand the nature of a phobia we must look at it from a psychological standpoint and break down not only its history but, the classifications and scientific perspective of why and how phobias occur.

Phobias are said be to the most common anxiety disorder in society, from the fear of confined spaces known as claustrophobia, to the fear of asparagus diagnosed as spargarophobia the list of phobias in our culture is extensive, and under constant growth. But where do these phobias come from how are they developed? Phobias are not a topic of psychology that has been tackled with authority and assurance. It is not well known by psychologists the direct cause of a phobia, but there are suggestions to their origin. Psychologists that study phobias have suggested their cause is related to an unpleasant experience involving the feared object (Wolpe p.115). This unpleasant experience is then stored in the memory and resurfaces when the memory is triggered by encounters with the feared object, which can be closely related to a form of classical or operant conditioning.

From a biological standpoint scientists have linked phobias to an area in the brain known as the amygdala (Wood 522). The amygdala is an area of the brain that lies behind the limbic system, it is linked to phobias because the amygdala is the area that secretes hormones that control fear and aggression. When a fear is triggered the amygdala assists in transferring the body into an alert state. What scientists have found through experiments is a difference between amygdala responses between objects that trigger a fear rather than a phobia. In experiments where a patient with a diagnosed phobia is shown two pictures one that is used as a control to obtain a reaction of fear. And another object that is used to stimulate the patient’s phobia, the results are dramatic. When shown the picture used to induce fear on the patient the amygdale triggers the response of fear, and a reaction to the picture occurs (Wood 522). The patient reacts with fear initially but is able to process that there is no need to fear the object and soon is able to maintain a normal state. When the object relating to the patients phobia is presented the amygdala reacts and triggers fear, but in this case the reaction is permanent there is no control of the reaction of fear. The amygdala continues to secrete the hormones triggering an alarmed state as oppose to labeling the object as a non-threat.

When a subject suffering from a phobia is triggered by their amygdala and enters a state of heightened alertness there are some characteristic symptoms that follow this reaction such as increased heart rate, shortness of breath, sweating and perhaps a dizzy or lightheaded feeling. In the United States these symptoms accompany more than ten million adults that are thought to suffer from a phobia according to the National Institute of Mental Health (Winerman). What fears could be tormenting the lives of over ten million United States adults? Psychologists and psychiatrists have organized most phobias into three categories known as social phobias, specific phobias and agoraphobia. These three categories are used to encompass the majority of all phobias that have been discovered and previously diagnosed. Social phobias consist of fears involving other people or social situations such as performance anxiety or fear of embarrassment by scrutiny of others such as eating in public. Social phobias may be broken down into the general social phobia known as social anxiety disorder and some more specialized social phobias that relate to specific situations where anxiety is a result of a unique encounter. A second general label is known as a specific phobia. A specific phobia relates to a specific panic trigger such as spiders, dogs, elevators or flying. Specific phobias are subdivided into five types. An animal fear where the fear is related to an animal or insect, a natural environment fear where the fear is generated from anything in the natural environment such as storms or water, a situational fear where a specific situation sparks the fear such as driving or crossing a bridge. A blood-injection-injury phobia ends the categorizing of phobias leaving the final specific phobia subdivision known as “other phobias” to embrace all phobias that lye outside the realm of the more specific subdivisions (Antony and Barlow). The final phobia that scholars have incorporated as one of the three categories is agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is a phobia that traditionally is associated with a fear of leaving home