Phobia

A phobia has many definitions but a generally excepted definition is an anxiety disorder or symptom characterized by avoidance of a situation out of fear or out of anticipation that anxiety would accompany exposure. Phobia is such a general term, so scientists have expanded upon that and split the phobias into types and categories. They organize them according to their symptoms. People who are diagnosed with a phobia experience certain symptoms for their specific type. Certain cues like traumatic events, unfortunate situations, and specific traits of something can cause a fear to grow or turn into a phobia. Such symptoms can interfere with daily life and become quite inconvenient. Luckily, phobias can be treated and controlled.

Types of Phobias

Putting all phobias into the same category can be dangerous. Separate categories are required to distinguish between certain kinds of phobias to avoid confusion for people like doctors. Currently, there are around 530 documented phobias in the world. Some of these fears are dually named, perhaps because certain medical workers gave a phobia a name when it already had one or some other mistake like that. When you take into consideration every phobia, they all can be placed into three categories. Psychiatry identifies these three different categories of phobias as agoraphobia, social phobia, and specific phobia. Agoraphobia is an irrational anxiety about being in places from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing. This can range from a wide variety of things such as the common claustrophobia to more obscure things such as a cell phone contract. Social phobia is an irrational anxiety caused when exposed to certain types of social or performance situations such as public speaking and the like. This type of phobia may also lead to avoidance behavior. A specific phobia is a persistent and irrational fear in the presence of some specific stimulus which commonly leads to avoidance of said stimulus at unreasonable costs. Such things can include a wide variety of experiences, objects, or things. This avoidance can seriously hinder these peoples' lives. For example, someone with acrophobia (fear of heights) might turn down a job simply because it requires them to work on the tenth floor of a building. As with most types of categorizing systems, there are subtypes. Such subtypes include but are not limited to: animal type, natural environment type, blood-injection-injury type, and situational type. These phobias can be cued by multiple sources such as public transportation, tunnels, bridges, elevators, flying, even vomiting, animals, or medical procedures.

Symptoms

Phobias are defined as irrational fears, which means that for a fear to be a phobia, it must be irrational and separate from common fears. Feeling queasy when looking down from a 10 story building is a common fear. These are normal feelings and are not phobias. For this to be an irrational fear of heights, the situation would call for a much more intense reaction to the situation. Certain factors make a fear irrational. Interfering with one's everyday life or daily routine makes a fear irrational. If you are not able to do the things you wish to do because of your fear, then it becomes irrational. Another component to diagnosing a fear as a disorder would be determining whether or no the fear is excessive and disproportionate to the situation. The presence of an irrational and excessive fear alone does not always mean that the person has a phobic fear. To distinguish a fear as an actual phobia, both fear and avoidance of the fear must be evident. In summary, the basic three symptoms of a phobia are these:

•Excessive, unreasonable, persistent feelings of fear or anxiety that are triggered by a particular object, activity or situation. The feelings are either irrational or out of proportion to any actual threat. For example, while anyone may be afraid of an unrestrained, menacing dog, it is not reasonable to run away from a calm, quiet animal on a leash.
•Anxiety-related physical symptoms, these can include tremors, palpitations, sweating, shortness of breath, dizziness, nausea or other symptoms that reflect the body's "fight or flight" response to danger.
•Avoidance of the object, activity or situation that triggers the phobia. Because people who have phobias recognize that their fears are unreasonable, they are often ashamed or embarrassed about their symptoms. To prevent anxiety symptoms or embarrassment, they avoid the triggers for the phobia.

Treatment

Phobias cannot be prevented, they can however be treated,controlled, and sometimes even overcome. Certain habits will help someone suffering from a phobia too maintain better control over their fear. Such things can include habits like avoiding stimulants in order to maintain a low anxiety level. The first step to treating a phobia is diagnosing it. There is specific criteria for diagnosing the different types of phobias that doctors must follow. This treatment process requires the patient to be in contact with their doctor because the treatment usually requires psychotherapy, medicine, or both. Each type of phobia requires an approach, occasionally with different methods that usually work well with their specific phobias. Specific phobia therapy utilizes exposure therapy, gradually increasing exposure to the fear in order to ease the patient into a sense of comfort with their fear under controlled circumstances. This is a slow process that teaches the patient to control their fear through techniques such as breathing control, relaxation, or other anxiety-reducing strategies. The doctor may also prescribe medicine to control anxiety, such as lorazepam (Ativan). Social phobias are more easily controlled with medicine. A beta-blocker such as propranolol can reduce the physical affects of fear, such as pounding heart or trembling fingers, without affecting the mental state of the patient. This allows the patient to feel more comfortable in social situations. Other medicines may be prescribed to deal with long term social phobias or more generalized forms, however Cognitive-behavioral therapy has also shown great results in both individual and group settings. Agoraphobia has similar methods to that of the other phobias. Drugs like lorazepam that work for specific phobias also is helpful in treating agoraphobia. Other drugs like diazepam or clonazepam also work to reduce anxiety. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is also a particularly helpful to treat agoraphobia as well as social phobias.