Specific Phobias
What Are They?
Phobias are defined as extreme or irrational fears of normal situations or people. They often start in childhood. Examples would be fear of the dark, spiders, dogs, heights, lifts, storms, enclosed spaces, injections/needles, dentists, flying etc.
Who Gets Them?
Many of us have fears of normal situations that we are usually able to overcome, perhaps with a bit of discomfort. I don’t like going to the dentist but prefer it to toothache so overcome my dislike by telling myself it’s better than the alternative.
However some of us can get extremely distressed, even have full blown panic attacks when we get into situations that other people may find ordinary (see our page on Panic Attacks). This can be a real problem but can also be the sort of stuff that people make jokes about. We’ve all seen the cartoons of the woman standing on a chair screaming because there’s a mouse in the room.
The trouble is that for her it’s not funny.
Imagine you have a needle/injection phobia and you are diabetic or have to have some dental or medical treatment. In this situation your phobia can rule all your decisions about what’s best so you may refuse essential, even life saving treatment. This is an extreme case but it does happen. It shows how powerful these phobias can be in some people.
Even in less extreme situations phobias can have a massive influence on your life. If you can’t go into a room because you’re frightened there is a spider, or go in a lift because you’ll have a panic attack then this will limit your life. Some people’s phobias are so bad they avoid masses of situations on the off-chance that they’ll come into contact with the feared object or situation.
About 11% of the population are said to have simple phobias. Some of these get more than one. There’s no doubt that people who have other anxiety problems seem to develop phobias more often.
Females develop phobias about twice as much as males.
Why Do We Get Them?
There are lots of complex theories but we’re back to the usual explanations about brain biochemistry and heredity – it runs in families for most of us. A few people may have an obvious cause; if you get bitten by a dog or stung by a wasp when you’re little you may become oversensitive afterwards and react strongly if you think there’s a dog or wasp about.
What Do I Do About It?
If your symptoms are interfering with your life then have a chat to your doctor or someone else you trust.
The good news is that simple phobias usually respond very well to a simple treatment called Behaviour Therapy. The main strategy here is desensitization; basically you draw up a list of situations that you are scared of, starting with situations that you can just about cope with and ending in ones that you can barely even think about without getting incredibly panicky . For example, a spider one hundred yards away, ending up with being covered in spiders.
You can then work through the list as far as you want to. Of course most people wouldn’t really want to get covered in spiders just to prove they weren’t frightened of them; the idea is to help you cope with the feared situations by supporting you through them, sometimes starting doing this in imagination, sometimes actually doing it.
The therapist supports you through the process, helping you cope with the situation without you panicking. For most people this will take a few sessions, for some, a little longer. If it doesn’t work then adding Cognitive Behavioural Therapy may help, most therapists would use a combination anyway.
If none of this works then you can use medicinal drug therapy. This would usually be the SSRI group of medication (see our Anti Depressants page).
The aim of treatment is to get you to be able to manage without the phobia being in control of your life. YOU are in control of the treatment. You go at your own pace deciding what you can and can’t do.
So most people do really well.
In the meantime you may want to Chat to a Buddy, or check out our Treatments and Self Help sections, try to take little steps everyday to make yourself feel better.