Dangers Of Phobias

Improved Essays
Are you scared of heights or tight, enclosed spaces? Of the wriggly legs of a spider? You might be frightened of these things, but people with phobias are actually impaired physically or psychologically by them. They experience extreme panic attacks, heart palpitations, dizziness, nausea, or even fainting! These are not the symptoms of a normal fright, but rather of a phobic, a person who has a phobia. Phobics avoid the object of their fear at all costs, to the point where it is unreasonably affecting their normal lives. Dr. R. Reid Wilson says: “I had a woman come in who was afraid of spiders, and it got to the point where she wouldn 't go out at night because she couldn 't see where they were.” Phobias that impair people and disrupt their …show more content…
As defined by Oxford Dictionaries, a phobia is “an extreme or irrational fear of something.” A phobia is persistent, and excessive, even if the actual object itself poses little, or no danger. There are three main categories of phobias: specific, social, and agoraphobia. Specific phobias are irrational fears of a certain object or situation. Examples include arachnophobia, acrophobia (fear of heights), and claustrophobia. Social phobias, according to the Mayo Clinic, are “a chronic health condition in which social interactions cause anxiety.” In other words, a social phobia is a fear of social situations pertaining to interactions with people, the public, and society. This may in due course lead to depression and self-harm. On the other hand, agoraphobia is the fear of crowded public places and enclosed spaces. Unfortunately, this can’t be cured, but agoraphobia is shown to be able to be reduced through …show more content…
Although some phobias are chronic and may never be fully cured, they can be healed to the point where they are bearable. Exposure therapy includes gradually being exposed to the object of the phobia, over and over, until the patient’s tolerance has strengthened. A standard way to treat phobias in the past was systematic desensitization, where the patient is taught to relax and stay relaxed while being exposed from different levels. Once the relaxed state dissipates, the exercise would stop until the patient once again achieved the state of relaxation, and it would start all over again, this time upping the ante. Since then, as medicine has advanced, so have treatments. Now, cognitive-behavioral modification is the norm. Similar to systematic desensitization, cognitive-behavioral therapy teaches patients how to manage their feelings instead of forcing relaxation. This type of treatment allows the patient to modify their attitude towards the phobia. The feelings of fear become tolerated and acknowledged, instead of the person being overwhelmed and controlled by them. Virtual reality is the final option for seeking healing for phobias. It is not as widespread, as the cost for manufacturing the equipment is high. This treatment involves being exposed to a virtual situation or object. Therapy and other treatments can lessen the negative effects a phobia(s) has on functioning in normal life, even if the phobia(s) isn’t

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    When watching the video Rapid Behavioral Treatment of a Phobia on therapist Lars Urst helping to stop patient Mariam Dum phobia on snake. He showed many steps that really helped her get over her phobia. Lars treated Mariam to go under serious of test facing her fear of snake. At the beginning when he was able to identify Mariam phobia, it helped him to see how deep her phobia towards snake. What Dr. Urst did in identifying her phobia was very important because it can really help him find out how serious her fear is and how much anxiety she have towards snakes.…

    • 515 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Parkinson Late Adulthood

    • 473 Words
    • 2 Pages

    One of the most common growing disease in late adulthood is Parkinson which is a progressive disease of the nervous system with symptoms including tremor of the hands, arms, legs, jaw and face which is caused by failure of the normal cellular compensatory mechanisms in vulnerable brain regions, bradykinesia or slowness of movement, rigidity or stiffness of the limbs and trunk, postural instability or impaired balance and coordination. One of the main reason for these symptoms is the loss of dopamine which helped the Thalamus to regulate the movement by reporting the sensory information about the movement of the body to the brain. According to McNamara (2017), the loss of dopamine in the brain circuit which disrupts the performance of thalamus.…

    • 473 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Phobia In The Mayo Clinic

    • 213 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Phobia is an uncontrollable anxiety disorder that overwhelms a person, even when all logic is to the contrary. The Mayo Clinic relates that a phobia is the tenacity to fear an object or a place and avoid it at almost any cost. The psychological disorder can cause tremendous stress and inhibit a person’s life. Hippocrates the first Greek physician, made the first written reference to a phobia, which he called Nicanor. ——————————————————————————————————————— Phobia’s can appear at the most inconvenient times.…

    • 213 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Abstract: The aim of the study is to test the hypothesis that CBT with exposure is better than CBT without exposure at decreasing avoidance and decreasing Agoraphobic symptoms in adults with PD. The results of these studies suggest that data on baseline fear and avoidance can provide compelling prognostic information regarding the conditions under which intensive treatment for PDA is most effective. Regarding the frequency of panic attacks, 68% of the patients showed improvement from pre- to post-treatment, while 6% had deteriorated. From post-treatment to follow-up, 24% showed further improvement, while 8% had deteriorated. In order to treat avoidance in Agoraphobia, the findings demonstrate that treatment delivery factors are relevant to…

    • 611 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The fear can be of a certain place, situation, or object. 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…

    • 1843 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Behavioral therapy holds the real cure for agoraphobia because while agoraphobia patients are generally panicked when they are outside their homes, this therapy gives them a pleasant experience outside their homes. With behavioral therapy, a patient is accompanied while leaving the house, sometimes at a rate of one step further each day. The turnaround happens when the patient becomes impatient with this slow rate of progress and forces the issue. Involves the patient becoming more knowledgeable about their panic fits and agoraphobia, and how they can control them. The patient will learn what it is that triggers their attacks and what will lessen their effects.…

    • 494 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Nineteen million people have at least one specific phobia, that is 8.7 percent of Americans. Women are twice as likely to be affected than men, this typically starts in childhood at the age of 7. Usually you develop a phobia in an event that happened in the person’s childhood. Specific phobia means that you can fear anything like dogs, water, bees, death and so much more. People with a phobia start to overthink and then get strong irrational fear of anything that has to do with that phobia, even if it doesn’t make sense.…

    • 1480 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Causes Of Agoraphobia

    • 920 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Agoraphobia is paired with panic disorder most of the time, but can be much worse alone. Agoraphobia is the fear of being in any place or situation without being able to escape or flee easily (Spiegel,2015). There are many definitions and translations of agoraphobia, but the literal one is the fear of the marketplace. Some might think that the phobia means that people are just afraid of going outside, but really they are afraid of all and any public places, or crowds of people (Spiegel,2015). People with the fear often establish mental safe zones where they can go to quickly to lose anxiety or stress.…

    • 920 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Treating Mental Disorders

    • 1488 Words
    • 6 Pages

    One of them is the systematic desensitization/confrontation “in sensu”. In this case, the patient starts to imagine the feared object or the anxiety-triggering event as if he/she were involved. The phobical stimulus is actively visualized. Repeated confusion induces a habituation effect, which can diminish or eradicate the phobic reaction. In systematic desensitization, the “In sensu” confrontation is combined with a relaxation method, eg. with progressive muscular relaxation according to Jacobson, which is previously learned by the patient.…

    • 1488 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Phobia is regarded as a disease that people should go to therapy, moreover mysophobia also easy to treate. There are two ways for them to therapy. They are cognitive-behavioral therapy and drug therapy. Cognitive- behavioral therapy means using imaginary exposure when people imagine being in the situation which will make them fearful, then give them encouragement this way will make fearful subconscious is constantly reducing, but it will take long time. For example, give a patient's psychological hint so that people thought they were in contact with a dirty thing and then tell them that they are just touching a clean thing without having to wash their hands.…

    • 161 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    One of mine is musophobia or the fear of mice and rats * I will certainly use the desensitization procedure which is an empirically researched therapy procedure that is time consuming, and clearly an effective and efficient treatment. *To begin with the process: 1) relaxation (teaching relaxation skills to eliminate any fear or anxiety) 2) developing the anxiety hierarchy (using real objects or circumstances to bring the anxiety provoking stimuli) 3) systematic desensitization proper (using emotive imagery to desensitize the phobia) * I choose desensitization over flooding because being put into a situation that causes excessive fear and terror might worsen the case.…

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Overcoming Decidophobia

    • 163 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Overcoming Decidophobia Making choices is something everyone has to do on a daily basis. For some people, the experience of making a decision is so traumatic, that they can’t make up their minds at all. This is called decidophobia. People who experience this may have dry mouth, excessive sweating, dizziness or nausea, and hyperventilation when they are faced with making a decision.…

    • 163 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The most commonly used form of treatment for social anxiety is therapy. Through professional care, success might vary from a “few months to more than a year” (“Social Anxiety Disorder”). Treatment is individualized, but usually contains a combination of several therapies. These therapies are cognitive-behavioral, exposure, acceptance and commitment, dialectical behavioral, interpersonal, and eye movement desensitization, and reprocessing therapy (“Social Anxiety Disorder”).Exposure therapy is the reducing of fear and anxiety responses. The patient is gradually exposed to a feared situation or object and learns to become less sensitive.…

    • 1699 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Fear And Phobias Essay

    • 1295 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The three major types of treatments are behavior therapy, self-help, and medications. Medical professionals need to stop prescribing medication to people with fears and phobias, because people need to focus on long term management. In most cases people don’t know why they’re afraid of something, “Sometimes it is really easy to figure out why you are afraid of something... Other times, identifying the situation that ignited your fear can be really hard to spot.…

    • 1295 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Everyone has a fear. When we were little, we were afraid of the monsters that lived under our beds; however, when one grows up fear always tends to get in the way. Fear is this adrenaline that runs through ones body not knowing what to do next. People can act upon fear in two ways; run from it or face it. Fear can eventually turn into a phobia.…

    • 2182 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics