A phobia is an excessive and irrational fear reaction. If you have a phobia, you may experience a deep sense of dread or panic when you encounter the source of your fear. The fear can be of a certain place, situation, or object. Unlike general anxiety disorders, a phobia is usually connected to something specific.

The impact of a phobia can range from annoying to severely disabling. People with phobias often realize their fear is irrational, but they’re unable to do anything about it. Such fears can interfere with work, school, and personal relationship.

  CAUSES:

• Genetic and environmental factors can cause phobias. Children who have a close relative with an anxiety disorder are at risk of developing a phobia.
• Distressing events, such as nearly drowning, can bring on a phobia. Exposure to confined spaces, extreme heights, and animal or insect bites can all be sources of phobias.
• People with ongoing medical conditions or health concerns often have phobias. There’s a high incidence of people developing phobias after traumatic brain injuries. Substance use and depression are also connected to phobias.
• Phobias have different symptoms from serious mental illnesses such as Schizophrenia. In schizophrenia, people have visual and auditory hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, negative symptoms such as anhedonia, and disorganized symptoms. Phobias may be irrational, but people with phobias do not fail reality testing.
•  Agoraphobia is a fear of places or situations that you can’t escape from. The word itself refers to “fear of open spaces.” People with agoraphobia fear being in large crowds or trapped outside the home. They often avoid social situations altogether and stay inside their homes.

Many people with agoraphobia fear they may have a panic attack   in a place where they can’t escape. Those with chronic health problems may fear they will have a medical emergency in a public area or where no help is available.

Social phobia
Social phobia is also referred to as Social Anxiety disorder. It’s extreme worry about social situations and it can lead to self-isolation. A social phobia can be so severe that the simplest interactions, such as ordering at a restaurant or answering the telephone, can cause panic. People with social phobia often go out of their way to avoid public situations.

OTHER TYPES OF PHOBIA:

Many people dislike certain situations or objects, but to be a true phobia, the fear must interfere with daily life. Here are a few more of the most common ones:

Gloss o phobia: This is known as performance anxiety, or the fear of speaking in front of an audience. People with this phobia have severe physical symptoms when they even think about being in front of a group of people.

Acrophobia: This is the fear of heights. People with this phobia avoid mountains, bridges, or the higher floors of buildings. Symptoms include dizziness, sweating, and feeling as if they’ll lose consciousness or pass out.

Claustrophobia: This is a fear of enclosed or tight spaces. Severe claustrophobia can be especially disabling if it prevents you from riding in cars or elevators.

Avio-phobia: This is also known as the fear of flying.

Dent Phobia: Dent phobia is a fear of the dentist or dental procedures. This phobia generally develops after an unpleasant experience at a dentist’s office. It can be harmful if it prevents you from obtaining needed dental care.

Hemophobia: This is a phobia of blood or injury. A person with hemophobia may faint when they come in contact with their own blood or another person’s blood.

Arachnophobia: This means fear of spiders.

Cynophobia: This is a fear of dogs.

Ophidimophobia: People with this phobia fear snakes.

Nycto Phobia: This phobia is a fear of the nighttime or darkness. It almost always begins as a typical childhood fear. When it progresses past adolescence, it’s considered a phobia.

Risk factors

People with a genetic predisposition to anxiety may be at high risk of developing a phobia. Age, socioeconomic status, and gender seem to be risk factors only for certain phobias. For example, women are more likely to have animal phobias. Children or people with a low socioeconomic status are more likely to have social phobias. Men make up the majority of those with dentist and doctor phobias.

Symptoms of phobias

The most common and disabling symptom of a phobia is a panic attack. Features of a panic attack include:

• Shortness of breath
• Rapid speech or inability to speak
• Elevated blood pressure
• Trembling or shaking
• Chest pain or tightness
•  Dry mouth
• Upset Stomach
• Nausea
• Choking sensation
• Dizziness and lightheaded
• Profuse sweating
• A sense of impending doom.
  
  Treatment for phobias:
  

Treatment for phobias can involve therapeutic techniques, medications, or a combination of both. Among them few mostly used therapies are:

1. EXPOSURE-BASED THERAPIES

It reflects a variety of behavioral approaches that are all based on exposing the phobic individuals to the stimuli that frighten them. From a behavioral perspective, specific phobias are maintained because of avoidance of the phobic stimuli so that the individual does not have the opportunity to learn that they can tolerate the fear, that the fear will come down on its own without avoiding or escaping, and that their feared outcomes often do not come true or are not as terrible as they imagine.

Avoidance can occur either by not entering a situation at all or by entering the situation but not experiencing it fully (e.g., because of consuming alcohol before taking a flight for a person with flying phobia).

Exposure therapies are thus designed to encourage the individual to enter feared situations (either in reality or through imaginable exercises) and to try to remain in those situations. The selection of situations to try typically follows an individually-tailored fear hierarchy that starts with situations that are only mildly anxiety-provoking and builds up to the most feared encounters, though in some forms of exposure therapy (e.g., implosion therapy), the individual starts out being exposed to a very anxiety-provoking stimulus rather than building up to that point more gradually.


2. COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (CBT)

The most commonly used therapeutic treatment for phobias is CBT. It involves exposure to the source of the fear in a controlled setting. This treatment can decondition people and reduce anxiety.

The therapy focuses on identifying and changing negative thoughts, dysfunctional beliefs, and negative reactions to the phobic situation. New CBT techniques use virtual reality technology to expose people to the sources of their phobias safely.

References:

• Gotstam, K. G., &Hookstud, A. (2002). One session treatment of spider phobia in a group setting with rotating active exposure. European Journal of Psychiatry, 16, 129? 134.
• Gilroy, L., Kirkby, K. C., Daniels, B. A., Menzies, R. G., & Montgomery, I. M. (2000). Controlled comparison of computer-aided vicarious exposure versus live exposure in the treatment of spider phobia. Behavior Therapy, 31, 733? 744.
• Ost, L. G., Ferebee, I., & Furmark, T. (1997). One-session group therapy spider phobia: direct versus indirect treatments. Behavior Research and Therapy, 35, 721? 732.