Am I Suffering From a Phobia?
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
There is no shortage of people who despise snakes, planes, tight spaces, and many other things, but does that mean they have a phobia. For most people, they just have an extreme dislike. A person with a phobia will be gripped by fear and show physical signs of discomfort when exposed to their phobic trigger. A phobia is much different than a simply disliking something.
Doctors do not understand everything about phobias at this point in time, but physicians agree that a phobia is an irrational fear of an object or situation. A fear is determined to be irrational when the reaction to the threat is much greater than the situation requires. In addition, phobias are usually accompanied by other disorders, most commonly panic attacks or obsessive compulsive disorder. The seriousness of a phobic reaction would be treating a non-threatening thing like a life and death situation. In people who are afraid of snakes, they fear every snake as if it were a cobra, or other snake that would or could kill them. Many times people with phobias are paralyzed by their fear, or they have a panic attack.
Panic attacks are a physical response by the body that is characterized by some or all of the following symptoms: increased heart rate, shaking, shortness of breath, being lightheaded, fear of dying, nausea, or feeling of choking. Like phobias, panic attacks are an irrational disorder, and is an over reaction to a series of thoughts or an outside stimulus. Panick attacks even can occur due tp an indivdual starts to become worried about getting a panic attack.
Panic attacks are extremely uncomfortable to endure and are very stressful to the mind and body. Because panic attacks can be overwhelming, many people with phobias have panic attacks in conjunction with their phobic episodes. However, some people will induce a panic attack simply by think about their fear of the panic attack. In many cases, people who have phobic panic attacks also have another disorder.
A panic attack essentially causes the body to enter into a fight or flight response without just cause. The fight or flight response is a way psychologists describe the body’s reaction to extremely stressful situations, and attribute prehistoric man’s survival to this natural response. The classic example is what your body would do if you were walking down the street and were suddenly uncomfortably close to a hungry bear. The moment that you physical brain processed the dynamics of the situation a huge amount of adrenaline would be dumped into your bodies blood stream. Adrenaline speeds your heart rate, causes your pupils to dilate, and enables your body to fight or run like never before. Adrenaline temporarily makes a person more athletic, allowing them to escape dangerous situations. Panic attacks can be very frightening for people because they have a panic attack for no apparent reason or in response to something that poses little or no threat. For someone with a phobia, the sight of a flower or small spider can be as scary as a bear, and their body prepares to deal with the presence of their phobia like it is absolutely life-threatening.
In short, a phobia an extreme reaction to something that is not extreme at all. Although a spider or snake can pose some kind of threat, and most people are bothered by them, the majority of people do not feel so threatened by these creatures that they fear death. Phobias, as well as panic attacks, can be serious medical conditions and should be discussed with a physician if they interfere with your life.
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