Phobias:

What is your fear ?

Are you simply terrified of confined spaces or heights? If so you are definitely suffering from a phobia. Now, if you are not familiar with what the word phobia means, let us enlighten you. The English dictionary defines it as; a strong unreasonable fear or hatred of something. Everybody is generally afraid of something and such fears are accepted as normal.

However, if you have a deep seated fear of something that makes you break out in a cold sweat, races your heart beat, virtually suffocates you and makes you want to run away from it, because otherwise you think you will die, then you are having a phobia.

It is generally not easy to recognise a phobia at first, but as much research has been done into this, and even remedies have been found, a phobic can be identified, by observing his reactions.

Millions of people around the world suffer from some kind of a phobia, and a majority of them do not undergo any treatment. They learn to cope as they go on in life. Some have invented their own methods of treatment to deal with the situations.

As there are a large number of phobias from which many people suffer, much research has been done to determine what phobias are, what kinds of neurochemical storms they trigger in the brain and for what evolutionary purpose such psychic fears were encoded in the brain.

A majority of psychologists have now assigned phobias to one of three broad categories; social phobias, panic disorders and specific phobias.

When a person has a social phobia, the sufferer is said to experience a paralysing fears at the prospect of social or professional encounters. If anyone is periodically blindsided (taken unawares from time to time) by an overwhelming fear for no known reason, the researchers say that person is having panic disorders. Those who are afraid of snakes, heights, closed spaces and so on are affected by specific phobias. According to experts, of these three types of phobias, specific phobias are the easiest to treat because they can be easily identified and understood too.

Contemporary researchers are of the view that specific phobias usually fall into one of four subcategories: fear of insects or animals, fear of natural environments, like heights and the dark, fear of blood or injury and fear of dangerous situations like being trapped in a tight space.

As fear in some circumstances is perfectly appropriate, drawing the distinction between normal fear and a phobia is perhaps not an easy task, even for the experts. But, they have identified certain external reactions that are unmistakable. They claim that phobics (people who suffer from phobias) experience sweating, difficulty in breathing, racing heart and even a fear of imminent death, all accompanied by an overwhelming need to flee, whenever they are confronted with something, person or animal that triggers their fear. If you have any classmates, friends or family who are phobic, watch out for such signs and behaviour. Do not laugh at them because it is not a laughing matter, even though what they are so afraid of may seem very silly to you.

Phobias could be genetically influenced and also be the result of a childhood trauma. Experts say individual temperament, for instance how two different people react to the same situation also come into play in some instances. Even second hand fears (how a parent or adult reacts) will influence a child.

So, if you ever come across someone who is petrified (extremely frightened) of bicycles, claws, trees or open spaces don’t treat it as a joke or ignore it. The fear is real and the phobic is truly affected by it.

When you read some of the phobias listed here you’ll realise that there are actually people who are really scared of many things most of us encounter in our day-to-day lives with ease, without any fear. Some of the phobias seem crazy.

Did you know that there’s at least one phobia for virtually every letter of the alphabet?