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What are phobias?

A phobia is an excessive and irrational fear reaction. If you have a phobia, you may experience a deep sense of dread or panic when you encounter the source of your fear. The fear can be of a certain place, situation, or object. Unlike general anxiety disorders, a phobia is usually connected to something specific.

The impact of a phobia can range from annoying to severely disabling. People with phobias often realize their fear is irrational, but they're unable to do anything about it. Such fears can interfere with work, school, and personal relationships.

An estimated 19 million Americans have a phobia that causes difficulty in some area of their lives. Seek the help of your doctor if you have a fear that prevents you from leading your fullest life.

Genetic and environmental factors can cause phobias. Children who have a close relative with an anxiety disorder are at risk of developing a phobia. Distressing events, such as nearly drowning, can bring on a phobia. Exposure to confined spaces, extreme heights, and animal or insect bites can all be sources of phobias.

People with ongoing medical conditions or health concerns often have phobias. There's a high incidence of people developing phobias after traumatic brain injuries. Substance abuse and depression are also connected to phobias.

Phobias have different symptoms from serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. In schizophrenia, people have visual and auditory hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, negative symptoms such as anhedonia, and disorganized symptoms. Phobias may be irrational, but people with phobias do not fail reality testing.

Agoraphobia is a fear of places or situations that you can't escape from. The word itself refers to "fear of open spaces." People with agoraphobia fear being in large crowds or trapped outside the home. They often avoid social situations altogether and stay inside their homes.

Many people with agoraphobia fear they may have a panic attack in a place where they can't escape. Those with chronic health problems may fear they will have a medical emergency in a public area or where no help is available.

Social phobia is also referred to as social anxiety disorder. It's extreme worry about social situations and it can lead to self-isolation. A social phobia can be so severe that the simplest interactions, such as ordering at a restaurant or answering the telephone, can cause panic. People with social phobia often go out of their way to avoid public situations.

Many people dislike certain situations or objects, but to be a true phobia, the fear must interfere with daily life. Here are a few more of the most common ones:

Glossophobia: This is known as performance anxiety, or the fear of speaking in front of an audience. People with this phobia have severe physical symptoms when they even think about being in front of a group of people. < Glossophobia treatments can include either therapy or medication.

Acrophobia: This is the fear of heights. People with this phobia avoid mountains, bridges, or the higher floors of buildings. Symptoms include vertigo, dizziness, sweating, and feeling as if they'll pass out or lose consciousness.

Claustrophobia: This is a fear of enclosed or tight spaces. Severe claustrophobia can be especially disabling if it prevents you from riding in cars or elevators. < Learn more about claustrophobia, from additional symptoms to treatment options.

Aviophobia: This is also known as the fear of flying.

Dentophobia: Dentophobia is a fear of the dentist or dental procedures. This phobia generally develops after an unpleasant experience at a dentist's office. It can be harmful if it prevents you from obtaining needed dental care.

Hemophobia: This is a phobia of blood or injury. A person with hemophobia may faint when they come in contact with their own blood or another person's blood.

Arachnophobia: This means fear of spiders.

Cynophobia: This is a fear of dogs.

Ophidiophobia: People with this phobia fear snakes.

Nyctophobia: This phobia is a fear of the nighttime or darkness. It almost always begins as a typical childhood fear. When it progresses past adolescence, it's considered a phobia.

People with a genetic predisposition to anxiety may be at high risk of developing a phobia. Age, socioeconomic status, and gender seem to be risk factors only for certain phobias. For example, women are more likely to have animal phobias. Children or people with a low socioeconomic status are more likely to have social phobias. Men make up the majority of those with dentist and doctor phobias.

The most common and disabling symptom of a phobia is a panic attack. Features of a panic attack include:

A person with a phobia doesn't have to have panic attacks for accurate diagnosis, however.

Treatment for phobias can involve therapeutic techniques, medications, or a combination of both.

Cognitive behavioral therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most commonly used therapeutic treatment for phobias. It involves exposure to the source of the fear in a controlled setting. This treatment can decondition people and reduce anxiety.

The therapy focuses on identifying and changing negative thoughts, dysfunctional beliefs, and negative reactions to the phobic situation. New CBT techniques use virtual reality technology to expose people to the sources of their phobias safely.

Medication

Antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications can help calm emotional and physical reactions to fear. Often, a combination of medication and professional therapy is the most helpful.

If you have a phobia, it's critical that you seek treatment. Overcoming phobias can be difficult, but there's hope. With the right treatment, you can learn to manage your fears and lead a productive, fulfilling life.

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Phobias: Causes, Types, Treatment, Symptoms & More

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What are phobias? A phobia is an excessive and irrational fear reaction. If you have a phobia, you may experience a deep sense of dread or panic when you encounter the source of your fear. The fear can be of a certain place, situation, or object.

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Excessive and irrational fear reaction  can led to phobia.  Phobia is an extreme fear towards  a specific thing or subject. An estimated 19 million American  have a phobia that causes difficulty in some area of their life.(healthline) People suffered from Phobia since it brings inconvenience  to their life. They tend to escape to the subject once they have phobia towards it. They might be scared just by thinking of it. One response towards extreme fear is having phobia about it.

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Fear, a survival instinct, that helped us to response towards extreme situation. However, we are often scared of fear itself. We treated fear too seriously.One typical response towards fear is escaping from it, which could cause phobia , depression and  week immunity.

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One typical response towards fear is escaping from it, which could cause phobia , depression and  week immunity.

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Fear, a survival instinct, that helped us to response towards extreme situation. Fear appeals differently from people to people. People have different things to scared of, different reaction to deal with the things afraid of. The fear alone is a human instinct that help us react to extreme situation by freeze, fight and flight.

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some simple explanation of response towards fear

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Fear is an involuntary reaction that helps us quickly respond to potential threats.

Credit: Joe Prachatree/Shutterstock.com

For many people, fall is the spooky season. Daylight wanes as nights become longer, a chill touches the air, and trees lose their leaves and take on a skeletal silhouette.

If that alone doesn't make you uneasy, Halloween's approach triggers an outpouring of decorations and costumes that embrace the macabre: jack-o'-lanterns with evil grins; skulls and bones; crumbling gravestones; bloodthirsty vampires; and shambling, rotted corpses lurching toward an impending zombie apocalypse.

It's enough to send shivers down your spine. But why do certain things frighten us, and what can science tell us about what happens in our bodies when we're afraid? [ The Anatomy of Fear (Infographic)]

Cultural influences can lead people to be fearful of certain things, such as black cats or killer clowns. But there are also universal triggers of fear, according to neuropsychiatrist Dr. Katherine Brownlowe, chief of the Division of Neurobehavioral Health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

"Typically, those are things that are going to make you die," Brownlowe told Live Science.

[Everything You Wanted to Know About Halloween]

"Heights, animals, lightning, spiders, somebody running after you in a dark alley - generally, people have some kind of fear response to those kinds of things," she said.

Fear is, first and foremost, a survival mechanism. When the senses detect a source of stress that might pose a threat, the brain activates a cascade of reactions that prime us either to battle for our lives or to escape as quickly as possible - a reaction in mammals that is known as the " fight-or-flight" response.

Fear is regulated by a part of the brain within the temporal lobes known as the amygdala, Brownlowe told Live Science. When stress activates the amygdala, it temporarily overrides conscious thought so that the body can divert all of its energy to facing the threat - whatever that might be.

"The release of neurochemicals and hormones causes an increase in heart rate and breathing, shunts blood away from the intestines and sends more to the muscles, for running or fighting," Brownlowe explained. "It puts all the brain's attention into 'fight-or-flight.'"

Some of our bodies' responses to mortal terror are throwbacks to mechanisms that served our ancient ancestors, though these responses aren't as useful to us anymore. When fear raises goose bumps on our skin, it makes the hair on our arms stand up - which doesn't seem to help us either fight an enemy or escape from one. But when our early human ancestors were covered with hair, fluffing it up could have made them look bigger and more imposing, Brownlowe said.

Freezing in place like a deer caught in a car's headlights is another frequent response to being scared, and Brownlowe noted that this behavior is commonly seen in animals that are preyed upon.

"If you freeze, then the predator is less likely to see you and pay attention to you - and, hopefully, less likely to eat you," she said.

The emotional response that we feel when we're afraid serves a purpose, as well - it heightens alertness, keeping the body and brain focused on staying safe until the threat is neutralized.

Even babies can be fearful of things such as loud noises, sudden movements and unfamiliar faces, and young children may be terrified of things that adults know aren't real - like a monster hiding under the bed or a boogeyman in the closet. It isn't until kids reach age 7 or so that they can differentiate between real-world threats and threats that live only in their imaginations, Brownlowe said. [ Goblin Sharks and 'Skeletorus': 6 Scary Beasts to Haunt Your Halloween]

What makes humans' responses to fear different from other animals' is that people can process that fear and tamp it down once they consciously understand that they are not really in danger.

"We can get startled, but instead of running away like bunny rabbits, we reassess the situation and figure out that we don't need to respond in a 'fight-or-flight' manner," Brownlowe said. "And then we can just get on with our day."

Some people even deliberately seek out the experience of being frightened - they watch horror movies, brave the terrifying drop of towering roller coasters and do whatever generates a feeling of immediate personal risk. According to Brownlowe, they're enjoying the chemical aftermath that follows a rush of fear - a feeling that can be euphoric.

"Once the 'fight-or-flight' signals cease, the brain releases neurotransmitters and hormones that mediate what we call the 'rest-and-digest' system," Brownlowe said. "The heart rate is coming down, the breathing is slowing, goose bumps are relaxing. There's a sense of internal cognitive relief in the body, and that feels good."

The modern world comes with a number of stresses that early humans never faced and never could have imagined - financial burdens, performance anxieties, and a number of other social pressures that can generate fear and crushing anxiety. A good old-fashioned scare can make some of the everyday fears we face seem less terrifying, Brownlowe added.

"It gives people perspective," she said. "If you're anxious about talking to your boss about getting a raise and then you get the crap scared out of you, talking to your boss is no big deal."

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Scary Science: How Your Body Responds to Fear

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For many people, fall is the spooky season. Daylight wanes as nights become longer, a chill touches the air, and trees lose their leaves and take on a skeletal silhouette.