Phobia is the fear of a situation or object, which is not dangerous or troublesome to other people. Phobias range from someone being fearful of spiders to attending school. Phobia is a type of anxiety disorder that can overtake someone’s life. It can limit his or her social and mental life if not treated. Theories have been deprive from studies discussing what causes phobias and how it can affect the person’s life. Phobias vary from every person because everyone has a different perspective on an object or situation. However, there are three main types of phobias. These three main types of phobias are agoraphobia, social phobia, and specific (feared) phobia. Agoraphobia is the fear of a situation where there is no escape or assistance is not available. Social phobia is the fear of being judged/scrutinized by people and having to socialize or interact with others. While, specific phobia is a persistent fear marked by an atrocious association to an object or situation. An example of an agoraphobia could be a young woman stuck in an elevator by herself with no assistance being availab...
For a person diagnosed with agoraphobia, there are a number of restrictions and consequences associated with the disorder. A serious consequence is the incidence of severe and paralysing panic attacks. In the early stages of agoraphobia people suffer recurring panic attacks when in certain public places or situations. These attacks cause the person to feel generally uncomfortable in public settings. Eventually, fear of the recurrence of the panic attacks results in an obvious reluctance or refusal to enter all situations associated with the attacks. Other consequences of agoraphobia may include fear of being alone, fear of being in places where escape might be difficult, feelings of helplessness, dependence on others and depression. These consequences place many serious restrictions on a person with this disorder. Agoraphobia causes people to restrict their activities to smaller and smaller areas in order to avoid crowds, and open and public places or situations. This may finally lead to the inability of a person to leave their home without suffering a panic attack.
Characteristics of agoraphobia are a marked fear or anxiety about two or more of the following: "using public transportation" like cars, planes, trains, and buses; "being in open spaces" like a market, a parking lot, a bridge, or ship; "being in enclosed places" like a store, a theater, or an elevator; "standing in line or being in a crowd"; or "being outside of the home alone." (APA, 2013, pg 217) This fear differs from other phobias in that the fear is not the specific place or thing, but the person is afraid that they might not be able to leave or get help if they panic or are incapacitated or have embarrassing symptoms or situations. This might be because of other medical conditions such as vomiting or inflammatory bowel symptoms. Older adults might fear falling. Children might fe...
Phobias have been in existence for many years. As humans we fear things that are life threatening and unnatural. Someone who has an irrational fear of something is considered a phobia, which is an extreme illogical fear or dislike of something. Fear is a very common emotion which distinguishes from phobia regarding the severe distress someone with a phobia goes through. Fear is a rationalized and instinctive emotion that comes in response to a threatening situation. The reaction caused by fear can be managed. Phobias can hinder someone’s life. People who struggle with phobias constantly avoid the object of fear, and will do anything required not to see it. It’s hard to directly to clearly figure out the cause regarding
Phobias are considered a part of anxiety disorders, a phobia is an intense and irrational fear of a certain thing or situation. Some examples of phobias include fear of heights, insects, and even talking in front of a large crowd. The intensity of phobias differ from patient to patient but the severity of phobia...
Panic attacks are the third kind of phobia. They can change the quality of a person’s life. Someone with a phobia this bad may be shopping at the supermarket and suddenly experience dizziness and a feeling of being out of control. At that moment, the person experiences a fear of dying, with no safe place to go. When this happens more than once, the person might think they are going crazy. Someone with panic attacks soon won’t leave the house because of fear of a panic attack happening outside the house. Soon, depression s...
What goes through your mind when you see a clown? Does the sight of one make you feel joy or fear? Many people find these crazy haired, makeup wearing, entertainers to be scary or unsettling. What has caused people to be so afraid of something that was meant to fun and entertaining for all, some people have such an extreme fear that it is considered a phobia, coulrophobia. How does this fear affect people, especially in the last few decades, with movies such as Stephen king's It and the movie Poltergeist fueling people's fears, and t.v. shows like American Horror Story. As well as the more recent event of people dressing up as clowns and hitting the
If a fear controls your life and you obsess over it, then it is known as a phobia. A phobia poses little or no harm, but emotionally a person cannot let it go and lead a normal life. It may wreck your life so much that you go to extreme lengths to avoid situations and even change your lifestyle. For example, maybe you get a fantastic job offer, but you have to ride an elevator to the office, and you are claustrophobic; turning down this great opportunity because of your phobia, would be considered an extreme and irrational fear(Melinda Smith, M.A., Robert Segal, M.A., and Jeanne Segal, Ph.D: November 2016).
In case one the Subject Ann has a disproportionate fear of being away from home unaccompanied, as well as various open spaces, events, and even while driving the car. A result of this fear is that Ann rarely leaves her home, and when she does, she seeks escape or needs an immediate relative to accompany her. These symptoms have developed over a period of three years, and could be used to diagnose agoraphobia in Ann.
Phobias are not life threatening or an illness, but it does impact one’s life. Some people do not go into town or to the park because they are afraid of dogs. This is an example of how phobias can limit one’s life. Phobias are not an illness, but they are not healthy. They can cause one’s heart to race and can cause extreme panic. For example, people who are epileptic and have a phobia need medicine to control the panic or else they can go into a seizure or pass out. The most successful treatment is exposure therapy. This treatment usually involves a therapist to help the patient. In this treatment the therapist exposes the patient to their fear until the patient realizes how irrational the fear is and becomes emotionless toward the stimuli causing the
This is for instance the case when one develops a panic attack simply because they find themselves in an elevator or other enclosed space especially if they have a fear of heights or are claustrophobic. For the former, if an individual is in an elevator and realizes that they are in the fiftieth floor of a building, then they can easily get terrified and even develop panic attacks fearing that the building might just collapse leading to their demise. In such a case, one can begin trembling and holding on to solid items in the room in a bid to ensure that a solid structure is protecting them, and not simply the glass on the walls. Another symptom is the use of all efforts to ensure that one does not encounter the item or situation that causes phobia (American Psychiatric Association, 2015). This can for instance be in the form of avoiding an airport at all costs where an individual suffers from aviophobia. Where one suffers from agrizoophobia, then they will try as much as they can to avoid contact with an environment that has animals. Such an individual will always come up with strong excuses on the reasons why it is a hundred times better to go swimming in a pool as opposed to visiting a zoo. This is all in a bid to ensure that one is as far away as
Agoraphobia can be divided into two word parts: agora, a Greek term meaning “marketplace” and phobia, meaning “the fear of something” (Miller, 2011). It is the fear of being in a communal or open place (Miller, 2011). When people have agoraphobia, they often evade situations that may cause them to panic, such as crowded places, leaving a common place, being unaccompanied, or being confined or humiliated (“Agoraphobia,” 2011; “Agoraphobia,” 2014). People often become imprisoned in their own home because they do not feel safe in public places or crowded places, such as malls, planes, sporting events, elevators, or public transportation (“Agoraphobia,” 2011). Initiating treatment can be difficult because it means facing the fear, but a combination of therapy and medicine can reduce the symptoms substantially (“Agoraphobia,” 2011; Miller, 2011).
one considers phobias and disorders that aren’t socially common. One example of this is Agoraphobia, especially considering the idea of society. Agoraphobia is generally defined as an anxiety disorder related to fear in uncomfortable, usually social, situations where it may be hard to escape.
ld. 7. Fear memories: A phobia is an irrational fear about certain objects, features or animals that is out of proportion to the existing circumstances. Thus, Ornithophobia, or the fear of birds makes me extremely uncomfortable around birds.
Introduce Topic: A phobia as defined by medicalnewstoday.com, “is an irrational fear, a kind of anxiety disorder in which the sufferer has a relentless dread of a situation, living creature, place or thing.”
In general, the fear of something or a phobia refers to one having an acute or severe aversion to an experience or object (Craske, Antony, & Barlow, 2006, p.4). According to Powell, Honey, & Symbaluk (2013), phobias are considered as a basic form of elicit behavior, at which, when a stimulus is presented it leads to an involuntary response to occur. This is the rate of occurrence is known as a reflex. Reflexes are often caused by conditioning through learned associations or classical conditioning involving a stimulus and the elicit reaction of a stimulus, particularly, within one’s environment (Powell, Honey, & Symbaluk, 2013, p.109-110).