How to overcome a phobia?
Question Answered by by Paul Douglass
Fears and phobias are two very different things... a phobia is often an 'overprotection' mechanism that the psyche uses when it's not sure of the root cause of the anxiety.
Here's something I wrote about it for a webpage, it explains the differences between a fear and a phobia.
Phobias can be helped if you get the right treatment.
Hope it helps...
Fears
A fear is an unpleasant reaction we feel when confronted with real danger. it is an essential 'fight or flight' instinct, which makes us prepare to either run away from that danger, or stick around and fight it out.
Phobias
A phobia on the other hand (while still a very strong and unpleasant reaction), is an irrational fear which has been 'symbolically attached' to an object, or situation, which causes little or no real danger.
There will usually be strong avoidance behaviour connected with the phobia, which will run alongside intense feelings of anxiety, loss of control and panic.
Sometimes, confrontation with the phobia, can even lead to fainting, but this is usually only associated with blood, injury, or needle-type phobias.
Specific phobias
Specific phobias can be categorised into five main types:
Animal: such as rats/mice, spiders, insects, snakes, flying creatures, dogs, cats and reptiles.
Natural Environment: such as water, thunderstorms, heights, fire, and the dark.
Blood / Injury /Needles: such as injections, the sight of blood, dentistry, surgical operations, or other invasive medical procedures.
Situational: such as flying, lifts, driving, tunnels, bridges, enclosed spaces (claustrophobia), or being sick.
These fears relate to a fear of being trapped and unable to get away.Other: such as illness, germs, choking, vomiting.
Complex phobias
As well as the specific phobias, there are also the complex phobias of social phobia / social anxiety, and agoraphobia (the fear of open spaces). These can also be very distressing and debilitating, in a wide range of situations.
What causes phobias?
Phobias are often caused in childhood, where the child experiences a real fear, but the mind manages to detach (or repress) the feeling of terror, from the situation that caused it.
This leaves the mind with a strong fear, and nothing to attach it to. The mind doesn't like it this way, and will therefore, symbolically attach this fear, to a real object or situation that it does know about, be it a spider, an enclosed space, a lift... whatever it may find.
Whenever the person now comes into contact with the object or situation (say, a spider), they feel the fear that the subconscious mind has associated with it. and they have a 'phobia'.
Sometimes, however, phobias can develop after experiencing something.
The initial sensitising event, or triggering incident, may vary from witnessing, for example, an accident, visiting the dentist's office, or even just hearing about terrible disasters.
Or, a child may model their behaviour on that of their role model who has a phobia in their own right, and as a result, this can cause the child to become phobic as well.
An example of this, would be a child who became terrified of thunderstorms, simply because the mother was frightened of them and acted in a terrified manner, or hid herself away, whenever a storm raged overhead.
The child would quickly have picked up on the mother's fear, absorbed and formed a learned behaviour pattern, and thus developed a conditioned response.
Question Answered by by Paul Douglass
Source:
http://www.avonhypnotherapy.co.uk/phobias.htm
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