Learn About Phobias – Deep Irrational Fears

Many things in life need to cause some fear for you to stay safe. Fear is a natural part of life – a healthy warning sign that there are things in the world that represent danger. There's nothing wrong with fear. As the saying goes:

"A man without fear is a fool. A man that controls fear is a champion."

The problem isn't fear. The problem is irrational fear. The problem is when your fears cause you to change your lifestyle and run your life in a way that no fear should. When you have something – or many things – that cause you intense, irrational fear, then you have developed a phobia.

What is an "Irrational Fear?"

The word irrational can be offensive to some people. After all, the fear seems very real – and in some cases, there may be a reason to have that fear. But even a legitimate fear can be irrational depending on the way that it runs your life.

For example, let's say you have a fear of snakes – known as Ophidiophobia. Snakes can be dangerous – there are many poisonous snakes – but 99.99% of the time there are no snakes around you, and even if there were, snakes don't bite on a whim. In fact, in the United States, you have a 1 in 48,942,807 chance of being killed by a snake.

Read that again: 1 in 48,942,807.

You have a better chance of dying in an earthquake (1 in 9,788,561). You have a better chance of being struck by lightning (1 in 576,000). There are reasons that someone may want to fear a poisonous snake since snakes can be dangerous and possibly cause pain. But if you change your life to address that fear, you're likely suffering from a phobia.

There are many examples of these type of phobias. Some of them are based on real fears. Some of them are not. Examples include:

• Arachnophobia (fear of spiders)
• Acrophobia (fear of heights)
• Cynophobia (fear of dogs)
• Trypanophobia (fear of injections)
• Pteromerhanophobia (fear of flying)
• Mysophobia (fear of germs)
• Ornithophobia (fear of birds).

Phobias don't have to be common either. Almost anything can cause a phobia. There is a phobia known as hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, or "fear of long words" which, if you have that fear probably forced you to run away from your computer.

Phobias tend to fall into the following categories:

• Animal Type Phobias: Fear of dogs, cats, snakes, rats, dogs, mice, or other animals.
• Natural Environment Type: Fear of heights, firestorms, water, sickness, aging, or other natural phenomena.
• Blood-Injection-Injury Type: Fear of contamination, seeing blood, needles and similar events.
• Situational Type: Fear of closed spaces, of the dark, of going to the dentist or other situations.
• Other Type: Fear of the number thirteen, fear of clowns or mimes, fear of loud noises, and several that are difficult to categorize.

There are also some types of phobias – such as agoraphobia and social phobia – that are considered a bit different to therapists than traditional phobias and may not fall into that same category but show similarities to the phobias on the above lists.

It's not just the existence of an intense fear that causes the diagnosis of a phobia. To be diagnosed with a phobia, you need to show one or more of the following:

• You experience severe anxiety when faced with a stimulus (the thing that causes fear).
• You experience severe anxiety when anticipating the possibility of facing the stimulus.
• The fear is uncontrollable, to the point where it can escalate – possibly into an anxiety attack.
• You alter your life in some way to avoid the stimulus.

A little bit of fear may still be considered a phobia in the traditional sense, but probably won't require treatment. If you get a little scared when you see spiders but can still pick them up and throw them outside, it's still a phobia, but it's not one that plays much of a role in your life.

But if you're genuinely changing who you are because of your phobias, or you're going out of your way to avoid the fearful stimulus, or you experience severe and uncontrollable anxiety over the idea or the sight of the object that causes you fear, you have a phobia that needs help.

What Causes These Phobias?

As with most anxiety problems, it can be hard to pinpoint an exact cause of the fear. There may be some evolutionary reasons for many of these fears. At one point during evolution, there may have been reasons to fear snakes or spiders. But now those fears make less sense.

It may also be a misfiring of natural fear. There is a reason to have a bit of fear of heights, for example. Otherwise, you would be jumping off buildings or taking risks when in danger. But that fear should not be too severe. If it is, it may be a sign that your fear response is over-firing.

For others, the fear is learned. Those that have a parent that shows extreme fear at the sight of a spider will often develop their own fear of spiders. Those that have been attacked by a scary dog may develop phobias of dogs. These are all examples of learned fears.

Finally, fear may also develop out of nothing, but get reinforced by fear itself. This is why phobias are somewhat of a catch-22. What happens is the following:

• You have a fear that you know is a bit unusual.
• You tell yourself that it shouldn't cause that much fear.
• You see the object that causes fear and experience anxiety.
• Your fear is now reinforced – your brain is convinced that your response is justified. That it really IS something that you should fear. This reinforcement causes you to become more likely to fear the object or event next time.

Fear causes more fear because fear tells your mind that you're right to fear it. Your brain convinces you that you must be afraid of something very real, because otherwise why would you experience that much fear? In the end, every time you encounter your phobia (even if it's just in a dream), your fear of that stimulus becomes even more pronounced.