Phobia - Types, Symptoms and Cure.

A phobia is an irrational, persistent fear of certain situations, objects, activities, or persons. The main symptom of phobia is the excessive, unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject. Generally it is described as fear, dislike, disapproval, prejudice, hatred, discrimination, or hostility towards the object of the phobia.

It is uncontrollable and persistent fear of a specific object, situation, or activity.

A phobia is different from fear because it is an extremely strong fear of a situation or thing people who have phobias often go out of their way to avoid the situation or thing that scares them.

Study have found that phobias were the most common mental illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older than 25.

Some common phobias are: acrophobia - fear of heights; agoraphobia - fear of leaving the familiar setting of the home; claustrophobia - fear of closed places; xenophobia - fear of strangers.(return to top

Different Kinds of Phobias

• Agoraphobia : Anxiety about being in places from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing. People experience increasing nervousness the further they travel from their own home. In several serious cases people may not venture from home at all.
• Social Phobias: Means you are afraid of what might occur when in the company of other people or social situations. Person fears of blushing, embarrassment by scrutiny of others, losing self control, forgetting what you are about to say, fear of trembling eating in public.
• Simple Phobias : such as fear of heights, ladders, frogs, enclosed places, etc.
• Complex Phobias : Fear of flying, the person may be afraid of crashing of plane, being enclosed in the plane, losing self control.
• Panic attacks : Panics are very common and appear to mainly affect people who normally give the impression of being confident, reliable and dependable.
• Specific phobias - fear from spiders, heights, dogs, driving, elevators, water, flying, catching a specific illness.

Symptoms of phobia:

• Breathlessness,
• Dizziness,
• Excessive sweating,
• Ignoring the positive
• Nausea, dry mouth,
• Feeling sick,
• Catastrophising
• Shaking,
• Heart palpitations,
• Inability to speak or think clearly,
• Fear of dying,
• becoming mad or losing control,
• Over generalizing
• A sensation of detachment from reality or a full blown anxiety attack.
• Sensation of falling,
• A feeling of unreality (depersonalization),
• Looking for disaster
• Loss of bladder or bowel control,
• Vomiting or cardiac distress when he leaves home or crosses a bridge.

How Are Phobias Treated?

The treatment options are not mutually exclusive. Often a therapist will suggest for single/multiple treatments.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) therapy lets the patient understand the cycle of negative thought patterns, and ways to change or cope with these thought patterns. CBT may be conducted in a group setting. CBT is successful, provided the patient is willing to make a continuous effort over a long span of time.

Benzodiazepines could be prescribed for short-term use in many cases as it is anti-anxiety or anti-depression medications.

Flooding , where the person is immersed in the fear reflex until the fear itself fades away. In some cases flooding must be done through one's imagining the phobic stimulus, rather than engaging the phobic stimulus itself.

Counter-conditioning , one is trained to substitute a relaxation response for the fear response in the presence of the phobic stimulus.

Systematic desensitization , the patient is trained to physically relax, establishing an anxiety hierarchy of the stimuli involved, and counter-conditioning relaxation as a response to each feared stimulus starting with the least anxiety-provoking stimulus and moving forward to the next least anxiety-provoking stimulus until all the anxiety items have been dealt with successfully.