Phobias

We are all born with the ability to feel fear, which is simply a mechanism of survival of the human being to face situations of risk. But when becoming irrational and uncontrollable reactions, they turn into an anomaly in our behavior, and this is called PHOBIAS.

In a stricter sense we can define it as: An exaggerated response in the form of distress or fear due to an external entity or stimulus, even if it is insignificant or presents little physical or mental risk. The response to this stimulus is usually disproportionate.

In our social environment there are many myths, and phobias do not escape this epithet, but it is a real fact that a phobia is something that many people suffer from and they are not freely expressed for fear of being rejected and labeled as being "Weird" without knowing that this is a very common condition nowadays.

It is very important to distinguish fears from Phobias as they have different meanings from several points of view, because fear itself is already intrinsic to our behavior from birth as a survival reaction to danger as it was mentioned earlier. However, Phobias as such, intensify that reaction, meaningless at times, attributing a great fear to things, animals, people or situations that often seem unusual.

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Not only could this disorder be deemed a fear, a phobia can also be considered a feeling of hatred or rejection towards something that, although it would not be regarded as an emotional disorder, it would cause many problems in the social life as well as in the political sphere. For example, "Xenophobia," which is the irrational hatred of a nationality or a foreign or unknown person.

This irrational behavior will be a disorder that not only affects the individual who suffers from it, but would also involve third parties who would be hurt, since this behavior triggers violence and abuse among people, resulting in a big concern for society.

The symptoms, so to speak, that accompany this irrational fear can be identified by the presence of sweating, tachycardia, sensation of respiratory distress, trembling, nausea, feeling of knot in the stomach, etc.; it can also trigger irrational aggressive behaviors as stated above.

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It should be noted that phobias are not innate to humans, nor can they be inherited, simply put phobias can be learned. We are all born with the ability to feel fear, but the development of these fears is linked to experiences and how and what we learn over the course of our lives, learning to fear certain things or objects almost instinctively, which makes phobias or irrational fears not very different from normal adaptive fears.

According to a study in the United States by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), between 8.7% and 18.1% of Americans suffer from irrational phobias, where women are the most affected; it is also the second psychopathic disorder in men older than 25 years.

Now, where does this psychological disorder come from?

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Phobias have been studied in psychology for many years; Freud, the father of psychoanalysis in 1929 classified phobias in two phases:

• The first is the repression of the libido and its evolution in the distress, a phase that is linked to an external danger.

• In the second phase, all means of defense are created to prevent contact with this danger, which remains an external fact.

So phobias are a disproportionate fear of the real danger to which we are exposed; they are instinctive and drive us away from the situation that causes us fear. They are expressed in a considerable period, are maladaptive and do not lies with age or evolutionary status.

There is another theory that has to do with the displacement of fear, psychologically we transfer the fear that we feel; for example, if a small child is afraid of his father, and that fear does not allow him to feel love for him, what does he do to be able to love him? He simply transfers that fear to an animal: spiders, dogs, snakes, etc. This behavior mostly occurs in children and is known as a phobigenic object.

Therefore, this behavior causes people who suffer from it to live a limited life, and because of the distress and anxiety that are experienced, individuals are not allowed to be aware that their reaction is irrational.

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Phobias can be expressed in many ways, and there are as many phobias as people in the world, as each individual can develop an irrational fear of anything.

They are classified in several ways:

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1. Social Phobias: They have to do with the fear of social interaction, shyness, stage fright. The most common is *** Agoraphobia ***, which is the fear of open spaces or public places from where escape is difficult, such as public places, shopping malls, public transport, etc.

2. Specific Phobias (They are the most "common"): They have to do with objects, animals or situations, for example.

• Dogs (Cyphobia)
• The Height (Agoraphobia)
• Spiders (Arachnophobia)
• Fly (Acrophobia)
• Fear of Closed Sites (Claustrophobia)
• Fear of the Heights (Acrophobia)

1. Complex or Rare Phobias: These are unconventional phobias and sometimes we are surprised by how odd they are:

• Fear of Sharp objects (Aichmophobia)
• Fear of Sex (Genophobia)
• Fear of water (Acuaphobia)
• Fear of love (Philophobia)
• Fear of vegetables (Lacanophobia)
• Fear of trees (Dendrophobia)
• Fear of books (Bibliophobia)
• Fear of poverty (Peniaphobia)
• Fear of children (Pedophobia)
• Fear of ridicule (Catagophobia)
• Fear of the People (Anthropophobia)
• Fear of Homosexuality (Homophobia)
• Fear of the red color (Eritriphobia)

And so you can describe a lot of apprehensions that people can develop even for the most unbelievable things you can imagine.

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Currently there are treatments that help overcome this mental phenomenon, and of which we can specify the most common:

1. Behavioral treatment or Desensitization: Which consists of putting the person in contact with the source of fear over and over again progressively until the feeling of fear disappears.

2. Psychotherapeutic Treatment: Which looks for the real origin of fear, without worrying too much about the symptoms, but tackling the underlying problem.

Likewise from a psychological point of view, it is sought not to turn the phobia into a physical or biological problem, teaching the patient to harmonize everything through specific psychological techniques, helping him make efforts to observe what frightens him and not so much to watch his environment.

In specific cases, specific and specialized medications can be administered, such as Anxiolytics that help reduce anxiety or Antidepressants that help with depressions, always under medical supervision.

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In conclusion, we can say that phobias being a learned behavior and their sources clearly identified can be treated systematically with different therapeutic or psychological methods, increasing the quality of life of the people affected by this condition.

I hope you liked the article. It was very interesting and informative to me. Regards and a big hug to all.

Source Images: https://pixabay.com/

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