Specific phobia

Fear is a two part behavior, the respondent component is the physiological responses from the stimuli, anxiety. The second part is operant, in that a person will avoid or flee a stimulus until the response decreases (Koehler, 2015). This is negative reinforcement, as it is the removal of the adverse stimuli. Together these responses make up fear (Miltenberger, 2015). Therefore, Jackie’s situation could be explained as both respondent (also known as classical) conditioning, and operant…

I have aged enough to know that there are not physical monsters lurking beneath my bed or in my closet waiting to make their appearance in the brink of the night. Instead, I get the burden of “grown up” monsters, the monsters that don’t go away with a goodnight kiss or a nightlight. My personal monsters aren’t super scary in the frightening, yelping manner, yet they define a new category of much deeper presence. These monsters are insecurities that have built up a wall blocking my view from the…

The Thing Disease. It’s the Thing that makes you nervous before big games, important tests, delivering a speech, or the source of excitement before a trip. Everyone has it. It’s a natural part of life. Though, for the very few among us it is much more than that, it is anxiety. People with anxiety disorders aren't the only people who experience anxiety; in fact, everyone feels it everyday, they just don't know it. Depending on how you interpret this feeling, it can be your best friend or worst…

Ever since I was little I’ve had a fear of house centipedes. My mom once told me a story where she woke up and there was a centipede on the ceiling above her I am still horrified of house centipedes to this day. The reasons why they scare the crap out of me are because they move fast, they look very gross, and they hide in unsuspecting corners of the house. Whenever I try to catch them they run very fast and are sometimes hard to catch, for example I went to catch one late at night and when I…

There are several features about me that describe who I am. For instance; I can be funny, kind, intelligent and headstrong. However, I suffer from acute shyness and tend to panic easily and at times it has caused problems in my personal life. Such as writing essays about myself or having the confidence to stand in front of a room of my peers and present, but my shyness does not define who I am or what I stand for. What defines me are my passions such as animals and biology, my fears and…

Have you ever been faced with a danger so fierce that your mind became clouded with fear? What are some thoughts you may have if you were in a situation like this? Imagine being trapped in a place with no visible way out, succumbed to intimidating surroundings. In Bram Stoker’s, Dracula, the central idea is fear. Bram Stoker demonstrates this idea by using the literary devices of conflict and point of view. Conflict is when drama is added into the story. Point of view is the perspective that the…

Why do we as a people fear monsters and similar entities? Throughout history people have created stories centered around monsters who would terrorize communities. These stories would be used to rationalize findings they couldn’t understand. These monsters were used to rationalize dieses, deaths and many other occurrences. These monsters still persist in stories today because over time they would evolve past what they stood for and would become symbols of our primal fears. There are many monsters…

Fearnot-Narrative Fear can ruin your life. Fear is just a mentality. Fear can mean different things to people, it can be the difference between someone not exactly loving spiders, and not hating them and someone having a meltdown every time they see a spider. For some people, a fear can be so stressful and life-crippling that they’ll try anything in their power to avoid their fear even if it means staying at home for days at a time. Fear has the power to prevent people from experiencing the…

What do monsters, and the 1930s have in common? Fear. Fear is an unpleasant motion that can be caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous or evil. Film makers and story tellers, during times of great fear, love to introduce that certain fear into their ideas to make the movie and/or book even scarier. Fear has changed over many decades. For example, in today’s current, film World War Z depicts a virus that makes humans into monsters. This fear is that viruses will lead to the…

Have you ever experienced the powerful attraction of fear? Have you ever wonder why your imagination run wild when you experience something terrifying? Sometimes people react differently to fear as they normally would. Fear is a compelling phenomenon that drives people to react different or even against their own will when they are stimulated by fear. Imagination overcomes reason when the need for something to be true overwhelms the logic of an individual. A personal experience of fear that I…