Phhobias: Causes And Effects Of Phobias

You see it approaching coming closer to you, you tell yourself, to remain calm but you can’t. A wave of panic seizes over you, you feel as if someone is squeezing the breath out of you and your knees feel weak, and your legs turn to gelatin. Your heart is pounding so hard inside your chest, you feel like it might burst out. Your mouth turns dry, and your palms begin to sweat really badly, if only you could move but you are frozen. You may think I’m talking about someone who is experiencing falling in love, but this is what occurs when someone who has a phobia encounters it. It is important to know, what a phobia is, the effects it has on a person, what are the causes, the types of phobias, and the treatments that can be used to overcome a phobia.

Different researchers have different things to say about how these phobias form. You could sit for hours searching through articles each explaining differently the formation of phobias. According to LeBeau in 2010 you could use principles of learning to understand where they come from. (Licht, Hull, Ballantyne 555). Classical conditioning can be used to see how one acquired the fear, through stimuli pairing. Operant conditioning would aid in maintaining the phobia, negative reinforcement such as avoidance makes the behavior more likely to happen (Licht, Hull, Ballantyne 555). For example patients with arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, can have their fears activate from seeing a spider or learning about the presence of the spider (Peperkorn, Alpers, Mühlberger 704). For some trauma is the root of the evil, this is called vicarious acquisition (Patterson 58-62), for example someone who has Cynophobia, the fear of dogs would get this from the traumatic experience such as being chased as a small child. What some scientists are trying to figure out is why only some people who experience the same trauma develop a phobia while some do not (Hall 12). Another theory is informational transmission, which is when a person is told through the media, or from someone they know about a frightful event (Patterson 58-62). Different causes go along with different types of phobias. There are three defined types, agoraphobia, specific or simple phobias, and social phobias (Patterson 58-62). According to the Canadian Psychological Association they categorize phobias into types, four to be exact. They are: animal, natural environment, blood injury, and situational (Patterson 58-62). The animal type is, when an individual is afraid of a specific animal or insect, such as dogs, and cats. Natural Environment is when one fears natural forces, things like storm, water