Phobia : - An intense feeling of fear

When a fear severely impairs a person’s ability to function properly, they would be diagnosed as having a phobia.
Phobia is an irrational, intense and persistent feeling of fear of a specific
Object, situation, animal or people, that is strongly out of proportion on the
Reality of the danger.Phobia is the most common mental disorder.
Generally it is a disrupting behaviour or we can say
it is a common form of anxiety disorder.the main symptom of this disorder
Phobia is the excessive and unreasonable desire to avoid the feared stimulus or object.
The term phobia emerged from Greek word "phobos".phobos is the name of Greek
God who was afraid from his rivals.That's why phobia is meant as fear.

Common signs of phobia
• conciseness of breath
• Accelerated heart rate
• Chest pain or discomfort
• Trembling or shaking
• Sweating
• Feelings of choking
• sickness or stomach distress


There are various theories about how phobias develop .social learning theorist suggest that because an object has been associated within situation that is in itself frightening people may become conditioned to fear the object as much as they feared the original situation.
Psychoanalytic theorist on the other hand argue that phobias are overt manifestation of repressed conflicts. The particular object or situation that phobic individuals fear is only a symbolic representation of an unconscious danger by restricting their activity,phobic individuals avoid bringing the actual conflict into the foreground and thereby escape a potentially threatening situation.

Types of phobia

These are the main types of phobia-

A) Specific phobia –

Acrophobia- fear of heights
Algophobia- fear of pain
Astraphobia- fear of thunder,lightening
Claustrophobia- fear of spaces
Gynophobia – fear of female
Hydrophobia- fear of water
Nyctophobia –fear of darkness’
Ocholophobia –fear of crowd
Pathophobia – fear of disease
Pyrophobia – fear of fire
Zoophobia – fear of animals
Phasmophobia- fear of ghost
Cynophobia – fear of dog
Monophobia – fear of loneliness
Thanatophobia –fear of death
Anthophobia – fear of flowers
Atychiphobia- fear of failure
Cibophobia and Sitophobia – fear of food (anorexia nervosa)
Decidophobia- fear of making decision
Glossophobia- fear of speaking in public

B) Agoraphobia-

It is a fear of open spaces.Agoraphobia refers not only fear of open spaces but also to fear of being in crowd,fear of traveling and in extreme cases fear of being away from home at all.

C) Socialphobia –

Fears of being among other people are also fairly common. The person feels that the other person will evaluate him , that’s why he wants to go away from the social places.He looks depressed and conscious.It is also called social anxiety disorder .Mostly it begins in adolescence stage.Bcoz in real sense a person starts interaction with other people in this stage.

Prevention

People who suffers from any kind of phobia should try to face the situation instead of avoiding it. This is the easiest way to deal with phobia disorder.But in case of severe case of phobia one should definitely go to counselor or a clinical psychologist and try to attain positivity of thoughts.

By
Kalpana Sharma