Specific Phobias

Phobias are extreme and irrational fears of specific objects or situations. It’s a type of anxiety disorder. Phobias are generally learned emotional responses to triggers; a person with a fear of electricity, for instance, may have had a bad electrical shock as a child. But there are phobias that are not triggered by anything – a fear of spiders, for instance, may have no apparent cause.

Most phobias, though, are caused by something bad that happened in the past, and the person suffering from the phobia will try to avoid any situation involving their fear. Though this reduces anxiety in the short term, avoiding a phobic trigger will reinforce the association of the trigger with the onset of anxiety. And it may be detrimental to a person’s normal functioning in society. A fear of electricity can extend into a fear of anything electrical, for instance; and a fear of heights may translate into a fear of flying. Ochlophobia, the fear of crowds, may even make the person suffering from the phobia housebound, fearful of stepping outside their doorsteps because they might have to enter a crowd.

There are hundreds of named phobias. The most common ones are:

Acrophobia, the fear of heights
Claustrophobia, the fear of closed places
Nyctophobia, the fear of the dark
Ochlophobia, the fear of crowds
Xenophobia, the fear of strangers
Zoophobia, the fear of animals
Agoraphobia, the fear of open or public places

Some phobias are more debilitating than others. Zoophobia is fairly easily avoided, for instance, while agoraphobia can cause a person to become housebound.

Behavior or exposure therapy is the most common treatment for phobias. In this treatment, the phobic person is gradually exposed to more and more of the anxiety-provoking triggers in a controlled and safe setting until he or she ceases feeling anxious at it. For instance, a person suffering from a fear of the dark is gradually exposed to a darker and darker room with a variety of anxiety reducing methods until they start recovering from the fear. Because the anxiety trigger is used in a safe and nonthreatening way, the person suffering from the phobia gradually learns to not feel anxious at it, and can function without fear around it. Psychotherapy is also used in cases where the phobia cannot be easily treated with behavior therapy.

Children often have phobias of different types, but they are rarely as debilitating as adult phobias. School phobia and separation anxiety, for instance, are fairly common among all children, and in most cases the child will grow out of them.