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What Are All The Different Phobias

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Treatment Procedure And Medications For Phobias

Photos That Will Reveal Your Phobias

Medical therapists suggest both medication and counseling sessions of people suffering with phobia. Adults need treatment and cannot get out of it usually without proper medication process. The medical procedure includes ways of bringing the person out of the anxiety he is going through and teach him better ways of handling situations in life.

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How Are Phobias Diagnosed

A variety of healthcare professionals may diagnose phobias, including social workers, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and primary-care professionals. Both physical and psychological symptoms are assessed. The doctor will rule out potential physical causes for the symptoms. Phobias often occur along with other anxiety disorders. Anxiety may be a feature of other medical conditions or occur as a side effect due to the use of certain medications. The doctor may order lab tests to explore other potential causes of symptoms.

What Is A Phobia

A phobia is a strong, irrational fear of something that poses little or no actual danger. It is a type of;anxiety disorder. A phobia is a persistent, excessive, unrealistic fear of an object, person, animal, activity, or situation. Phobias are diagnosable mental disorders. People with phobias try to avoid what they are afraid of. If they cannot, they may experience the following

  • Panic and fear
  • A strong desire to get away

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Ophidiophobia The Fear Of Snakes

The fear of snakes or Ophidiophobia is the second most common zoophobia;;affecting nearly 1/3rd of the adult human population. Like the phobia mentioned below, the fear of snakes also has evolutionary roots. To an extent, the fear of venomous snakes is also essential for survival. Extreme Ophidiophobia can affect ones life as one tends to avoid hiking, camping and related activities or might even become afraid of pet store snakes and other reptiles. Next up is the number one phobia of all time.

The Difference Between Fear And Phobia

A to Z: List of Phobias, From the Strange to the Common

The term phobia gets thrown around a lot these days, but having a fear and having a phobia arent exactly the same thing.

Essentially, fear is temporary; phobia isnt.

Having a phobia creates a stumbling block in your life, and the fear it causes can be so strong that youll do anything to avoid the object of that phobia. Phobia that becomes debilitating is a type of anxiety disorder. Take, for example, a job offer. You made it through the hardest partlanding your dream positiononly to find out that your office will be on the 20th floor of an office buildingand you have a phobia of heights. In order to avoid being so high off the ground, you turn the position down and pass up a significant job opportunity because of your phobia.1

Phobias can be debilitating and crippling, and they can keep you from enjoying the things you love with the people you love. But it doesnt have to be this way. There is hope and help for people with phobias.

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Signs And Symptoms Of Phobias

The symptoms of a phobia can range from mild feelings of apprehension and anxiety to a full-blown panic attack. Typically, the closer you are to the thing youre afraid of, the greater your fear will be. Your fear will also be higher if getting away is difficult.

Physical symptoms of a phobia include:

  • Difficulty breathing

Emotional symptoms of a phobia include:

  • Feeling overwhelming anxiety or panic
  • Feeling intense need to escape
  • Feeling unreal or detached from yourself
  • Fear of losing control or going crazy
  • Feeling like youre going to die or pass out
  • Knowing that youre overreacting, but feeling powerless to control fear

Symptoms of blood-injection-injury phobia

The symptoms of blood-injection-injury phobia are slightly different from other phobias. When confronted with the sight of blood or a needle, you experience not only fear, but also disgust.

Like other phobias, you initially feel anxious as your heart speeds up. However, unlike other phobias, this acceleration is followed by a quick drop in blood pressure, which leads to nausea, dizziness, and fainting. Although a fear of fainting is common in all specific phobias, blood-injection-injury phobia is the only phobia where fainting can actually occur.

What Are The Different Groups Of Phobias

What are the different groups of phobias?There are three main groups of phobias which include the following

  • Specific phobia: These are the most common type of phobias and focus on a specific object. Specific or simple phobias produce intense fear of a particular object or situation that is, in fact, relatively safe. People who suffer from specific phobias are aware that their fear is irrational, but the thought of facing the object or situation often brings on a panic attack or severe anxiety. Examples may include persistent fear of dogs, insects, or snakes; driving a car; heights; tunnels or bridges; thunderstorms; and/or flying.
  • Social phobia: People with a social phobia are afraid of being in the company of other people. They fear being humiliated or embarrassed in front of other people. This problem may also be related to feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem and can drive a person to drop out of school, avoid making friends, and remain unemployed.
  • Agoraphobia: People with agoraphobia are afraid of being in open spaces such as markets, bank queues, or bridges. In some cases, panic attacks can become so debilitating that the person may develop agoraphobia because they fear another panic attack. In extreme cases, a person with agoraphobia may be afraid to leave their house.

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The Most Common Phobias

Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Terrified of the creepy-crawlies? Scared of slithering serpents? Well, youre not alone. According to the American Psychiatric Association, phobias are the most common psychiatric illness among women and the second most common among men.

The National Institute of Mental Health suggests that phobias;affect approximately 10% of U.S. adults each year. These phobias typically emerge during childhood or adolescence and continue into adulthood. They also impact twice as many women as they do men.

There are a number of explanations for why phobias develop, including evolutionary and behavioral theories. Whatever the cause, phobias are treatable conditions that can be minimized and even eliminated with;cognitive;and;behavioral therapy;techniques and medication.

How The Brain Works During A Phobia

Phobias A to Z ( All ) || Mis.Medicine

Some areas of the brain store and recall dangerous or potentially deadly events.

If a person faces a similar event later on in life, those areas of the brain retrieve the stressful memory, sometimes more than once. This causes the body to experience the same reaction.

In a phobia, the areas of the brain that deal with fear and stress keep retrieving the frightening event inappropriately.

Researchers have found that phobias are

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Az List Of Some Of The More Common Phobias

While not comprehensive, this phobia list offers a glimpse of the many phobias that can have a serious impact on a person’s life. As you may notice while you browse through this list, most specific phobias fall into one of four major categories:

  • Fears of the natural environment
  • Fears related to animals
  • Fear related to medical treatments or issues
  • Fears related to specific situations

One important thing to remember is that virtually any object can become a fear object. The names of specific phobias are often formed as nonce words, or words coined for a single occasion only.

These names themselves are often formed by taking a Greek prefix that represents the fear object and adding the -phobia suffix. Because of this, any attempt at a completely exhaustive list of phobias would simply be an exercise in futility. Any list of phobias could grow with the addition of newly coined terms for previously unnamed specific phobias.

While listing all of the phobias that may exist is not possible, it can be helpful to look through a list of some of the more commonly described phobias. As you can see by looking at this list, almost any object or situation can become the source of fear.

Acrophobia The Fear Of Heights

Acrophobia is an irrational fear of heights or the fear of falling . It is a specific phobia that causes the sufferers to be highly agitated or in a state of panic which could interfere with his/her ability to climb down. In severe cases of Acrophobia, a panic attack might be triggered even when the sufferer is climbing up or down a chair. Nearly 10% of people in the United States are known to suffer from Acrophobia.

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What Are The Different Types Of Phobias

The fear associated with a phobia is much greater than that caused by stress or worry. Phobias cause extreme fear. There are many different types of phobias. Its possible to be afraid of certain situations, animals, and social interactions. When someone is afraid of a certain object or item they are said to suffer from a specific phobia. The list of different types of phobias is endless. The following slides contain information about the most common phobias.

What Causes Specific Phobias

10 of the Most Common Phobias

The exact cause of specific phobias is not known, but most appear to be associated with a traumatic experience or a learned reaction. For example, a person who has a frightening or threatening experience with an animal, such as an attack or being bitten, can develop a specific phobia. Witnessing a traumatic event in which others experience harm or extreme fear can also cause a specific phobia, as can receiving information or repeated warnings about potentially dangerous situations or animals.

Fear can be learned from others, as well. A child whose parents react with fear and anxiety to certain objects or situations is likely to also respond to those objects with fear.

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How Common Are Specific Phobias

The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that about 5%-12% of Americans have phobias. Specific phobias affect an estimated 6.3 million adult Americans.

Phobias usually first appear in adolescence and adulthood, but can occur in people of all ages. They are slightly more common in women than in men. Specific phobias in children are common and usually disappear over time. Specific phobias in adults generally start suddenly and are more lasting than childhood phobias. Only about 20% of specific phobias in adults go away on their own .

Diagnostic Criteria For Different Types Of Phobias

According to the DSM-5, there are three types of phobia:

The clinical characteristics of phobias depend on the type of phobia, the degree of severity in a particular individual and the amount that it interferes with the individuals ability to function normally. However, common to all three types of phobias is extreme fear or anxiety in response to a particular object or situation.

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Treating Phobias With Technology

The treatment of phobias is going high-tech as well, with virtual reality being used as a tool in helping people overcome their anxieties.

“Virtual reality is the other newer treatment being used for phobias,” says Wilson. “It’s three to four years away from being used on a broad basis because the equipment is so expensive to use, but there are four or five places in the U.S. that are using it today.”

The University of Washington is one institution that uses virtual reality , coupled with real life, in treating phobias. According to a news release, “Researchers at the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Lab measured aversion and anxiety responses of students, some of whom had a clinical phobia of spiders, before and after undergoing VR therapy. During the therapy, some of the subjects touched a realistic model of a large spider while grasping a virtual one.”

The combination of fact with fiction worked: Those students were able to come twice as close to a real spider after completing three therapy sessions, and reported a greater decrease in anxiety during treatment, than those who underwent VR therapy alone.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Probability Comparison: Phobias and Fears

As a human being, there are always risks that put your life in danger. Most people are lucky enough to avoid these dangers and live a nice and safe life. But in some cases, you may experience a life trauma â either physically or emotionally â and this can cause an anxiety problem known as post-traumatic stress disorder.

As the name implies, PTSD is an anxiety disorder that comes after the traumatic event has occurred. Those living with PTSD often must get outside help, because PTSD can affect people for years after the event occurs â possibly even for the rest of their life.

PTSD affects people both psychologically and physically. In most cases, the person with PTSD is the one that experienced the traumatic event, but it’s possible to get PTSD by simply witnessing an event or injury, or even simply discovering that someone close to you dealt with a traumatic event.

Symptoms include:

You may also experience severe “what if” scenarios everywhere you go, including disaster thinking or feeling helpless/hopeless in public situations. Many of those with PTSD also experience avoidance behaviors of events, things, and even people that may remind them of the event â even if there is no link between these issues and the trauma.

Those with post-traumatic stress disorder may be at a greater baseline of stress on most days. They may be short-tempered or easy to anger. They may be startled/frightened easily or be unable to sleep. PTSD can be a difficult problem to live with.

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Agoraphobia The Fear Of Open Or Crowded Spaces

Nearly 2 out of every 100 Americans suffers from Agoraphobia, the fear of open or crowded spaces. This is a debilitating condition which prevents the phobic from visiting malls, markets, theaters and other crowded areas as well as open grounds. The individual feels intense panic at the mere thought or sight of such a space . Agoraphobia becomes a vicious circle where the sufferer feels afraid of experiencing a panic attack and these thoughts again lead to a panic attack. Limiting activities and avoidance behavior becomes a part of the phobics life. Depression is hence a common symptom of this phobia.

A List Of All Phobias And Their Meanings: Know What Scares You

A phobia is an unreasonable fear of something, that in reality, may not be very harmful. Here is a list of all phobias and their meanings, which will help you to get familiarized with the terminologies related to various phobias, and at the same time, will increase your knowledge about them.

A phobia is an unreasonable fear of something, that in reality, may not be very harmful. Here is a list of all phobias and their meanings, which will help you to get familiarized with the terminologies related to various phobias, and at the same time, will increase your knowledge about them.

A phobia can be defined as an aberrant and intense fear of an object or situation, that poses little or no actual danger. Usually, a phobia is considered similar to a normal fear, but it is the extent to which a person is affected, that determines whether that fear has become a phobia. The most common fears or phobias that people usually suffer from include; heights, darkness, snakes, insects, closed-in places, etc.

Though your phobia can be an irrational fear for others, a single thought of that object or situation can actually make you anxious, and if in case you are exposed to that situation, the terror is automatic and overwhelming. The experience can be so scary or nerve-wracking, that you may go to any extent of avoiding it, and would eventually end up changing your lifestyle too.

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Managing The Fear Of Long Words

For many people, the fear of long words is mild. If your phobia doesnt significantly impact your life, making a conscious effort to expand your vocabulary can help. Look for opportunities to learn new words through reading or everyday conversation. If you come across an unfamiliar word, look it up. In many cases, familiarity can ease the symptoms of anxiety.

If your symptoms are more serious and are impacting your daily life, professional assistance may be needed. A mental health professional can help you work through your fears and provide coping strategies for managing your symptoms during the treatment process.

Cynophobia The Fear Of Dogs

126 best Phobic Phobias images on Pinterest

Cynophobia, the extreme fear of dogs, is one of the most common animal phobias around the world. Nearly 36% sufferers seek treatment for Cynophobia and the majority of these are also known to be afraid of cats. The extreme fear of dogs is actually even more debilitating than the fear of spiders and the fear of snakes due to the fact that dogs are commonly present in most residential areas. Nearly 75% of Cynophobes are women, though the fear also affects men. The condition usually begins in childhood, but;many patients are also known to have developed the fear in their adulthood.

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What Are The Three Types Of Phobias

There are three main types of phobias, and all of them fall under the category of anxiety disorders: specific phobias , social anxiety disorder, and agoraphobia.6,9 What they have in common, according to Mazza, is an intense emotional reaction that is not commensurate with what is actually happening in the environment, and the avoidance of the stimuli is what maintains the intense, emotional reaction.

Here are the differences between the types of phobias:

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