 photo credit: isforinsects |
Many people dislike many things. We are all individuals, after all. Some of us hate spiders, dogs, and heights, among other things, and avoid them at all costs.
Does this mean that they have a specific phobia?
The answer is, probably not, depending on the extent of their aversion to dogs, heights, or whatever bothers them. A phobia is a much more serious condition than a simple fear and can be debilitating in some cases.
Doctors do not understand everything about phobias at this point in time, but physicians agree that a phobia is an irrational fear of an object or situation. A fear is determined to be irrational when the reaction to the threat is much greater than the situation requires. In addition, phobias are usually accompanied by other disorders, most commonly panic attacks or obsessive compulsive disorder.
The seriousness of a phobic reaction would be treating a non-threatening thing like a life and death situation. In people who are afraid of snakes, they fear every snake as if it were a cobra, or other snake that would or could kill them. Many times people with phobias are paralyzed by their fear, or they have a panic attack.
Some phobias are relatively harmless. They start as being nervous about something, but a small incident can almost escalate it to a phobia level. One of the most common dislikes is the fear of public speaking, which if the person is placed into the situation of absolutely having to give a speech for example, and they become embarrassed by being unable to do it, it can become a social phobia and lead to a panic attack when faced with any similar situation.
Panic attacks are a physical response by the body that is characterized by some or all of the following symptoms: increased heart rate, shaking, shortness of breath, being lightheaded, fear of dying, nausea, or feeling of choking. Like phobias, panic attacks are an irrational disorder, and is an over reaction to a series of thoughts or an outside stimulus. Panic attacks can even happen because a person begins to worry about having a panic attack.
I experienced this personally as a teenager who was timid of giving a speech, or even standing up at a social function and saying a few words. It probably originated at school in my P2 class when we had to stand and either spell something or give the answer to a small mental math question. I was crap at maths at that age, and for a long time struggled with learning addition and substraction. Unfortunately that meant a caning across the hand for getting it wrong every time.
It was an inter club juniors golf club competition that brought it out. I had difficulty winning a match that I should have had no difficulty with, and then I was told it was my turn to say a few words to the opposing team at the dinner afterwards. I stood up, choked on the third word which came out strangled, everything faded and I had to sit down in embarrassment. For about a year afterwards I had the same type of panic attack even trying to answer a question in class from a sitting position. I had developed a temporary public speaking phobia.
Panic attacks can be triggered when someone has an extreme anxiety about something, and are worse in people who have anxiety disorders, such as obsessive compulsive disorder. In people with obsessive compulsive disorder, a minor worry or irritation can quickly progress into a full blow panic attack. The irrationality of these disorders fuels a response that is not proportionate to their thoughts or outside stimuli.
A panic attack essentially causes the body to enter into a fight or flight response without just cause. The fight or flight response is a way psychologists describe the body’s reaction to extremely stressful situations, and attribute prehistoric man’s survival to this natural response. The classic example is what your body would do if you were walking down the street and were suddenly uncomfortably close to a hungry bear.
The instant your brain processed the situation a large quantity of adrenaline would be dumped into your bloodstream. Adrenaline speeds your heart rate, causes your pupils to dilate, and enables your body to fight or run like never before. Adrenaline temporarily makes a person more athletic, allowing them to escape dangerous situations.
Panic attacks can be very frightening for people because they have a panic attack for no apparent reason or in response to something that poses little or no threat. For someone with a phobia, the sight of a flower or small spider can be as scary as a bear, and their body prepares to deal with the presence of their phobia like it is absolutely life-threatening.
A common one is a dislike of needles which can become a needle phobia, but the most common you will see is a spider phobia, a height phobia, and an unproportionate fear of mice.
A phobic reaction is a major overreaction to something most people would consider ordinary. Spiders and snakes are not usually welcome, but most people do not consider the presence of a small creature to be a crisis situation. A panic attack is also not a normal response. Phobias are very serious and should be dealt with if they begin to impact on the quality of your life.
Tags: phobia, phobias, specific phobia, social phobia, needle phobia, spider phobia, public speaking phobia
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