Spiders. Heights. Small, enclosed spaces. Clowns. These words alone may not strike fear into the hearts of the general populace, but for some people, these words, and the beings or situations to which they refer, are enough to cause fear, anxiety, and perhaps even physical illness. When an individual’s fear of a certain being or situation goes beyond the realm of rational anxiety, it is likely that individual is suffering from a phobia.
Auburn student Liz Racette, for example, is phobic about water tubing behind a moving boat. Since a bad accident at the age of 12, Racette reports that she has been unable to engage in the activity. She is able to watch other people go tubing, and she does not feel that this phobia affects her life in any profound way, yet it is one she cannot quite overcome.
Phobias are intense, irrational, yet persistent fears that accompany certain activities, persons, situations, or things. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic report that people suffering from phobias commonly exhibit a strong desire to avoid the object or cause of their fear. Although many realize that their level of fear and anxiety is disproportionate with the cause of the phobia, they are unable to do anything about it. In severe cases, phobias can actually interfere with an individual’s ability to function in a “normal,” productive manner, affecting the health and livelihood of the phobic individual.
“One of the most common phobias,” according to Dr. Sheryl Jackson, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, “is the fear of dentists. People who suffer will literally let their teeth rot out because they are afraid to go to a dentist.”
With the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) reporting that between 8.7 percent and 18.1 percent of Americans suffer from some sort of phobia, this makes phobias a very real issue facing the American public and the most common mental disorder in the United States. Still, it seems little is commonly known about phobias, their causes, and their treatments.
According to the organization Mental Health America (MHA), phobias are organized into three distinct groups. Specific phobias, also called simple phobias, are by far the most common. These phobias focus on one specific panic trigger, like a fear of spiders, snakes, elevators or flying. Some of the more commonly known specific phobias are acrophobia - the fear of heights, aviophobia - the fear of flying, belonephobia - the fear of needles, claustrophobia - the fear of confined spaces, and phasmophobia - the fear of ghosts. Auburn graduate student, Nick Kirby, is an atychiphobic; he suffers from an irrational fear of failure.
“Failure has always been something in the back of my mind,” says Kirby. “No matter how hard I try to shake the phobia, it’s always there.”
Next, there is social phobia, also known as social anxiety disorder. Individuals suffering from social phobia experience extreme anxiety in social or public
situations. The final phobia category is agoraphobia, or the fear of open spaces and leaving a perceived safe area, such as the home.
While no one knows exactly what causes phobias to form in certain people, they are believed to be the result of a combination of internal predispositions and external events. Specific phobias also seem to run in families and are slightly more prevalent in females. The good news is that phobias are treatable, often with a great deal of success. Often, the solution comes in confronting the source of fear.
“I’ve always been claustrophobic,” says Auburn student Chelsea Quinlan. “Small spaces have always made me uncomfortable. I went on a cave crawling trip in attempt to overcome my fear. There were spaces we had to crawl through that were eight inches wide. There was also a 180 foot crawl where we had to crawl on our stomachs. It helped me get over [my claustrophobia] because we were on a 6 hour tour of the cave and couldn’t turn around.”
Quinlan added that she had to force herself to keep going and stay calm because there was no way out.
“I don’t know that this experience made me completely overcome my fear, but small spaces don’t bother me as much anymore.”
Quinlan’s experience confronting her fear is a common method of treatment. Both Behavioral therapy and Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) require phobic individualls to meet with a trained therapist and slowly confront the feared object or situation in a planned, controlled environment. This allows the phobic individual to gradually face and overcome the source of their fears. Exposure therapy, such as Quinlan experienced, takes a faster approach, exposing the phobic individual to the cause of his or her fear for extended periods of time so that he or she can see the that cause of fear is generally harmless. Other methods of treatment involve hypnotherapy, systematic desensitization therapy and drug therapy.
For many, dealing with a phobia or phobias is just another part of life. However, phobias do not have to keep you from fully experiencing everything you want to do. There are many treatment options available to individuals suffering from phobias. If you believe you or someone you know may be suffering from a phobia, the following organizations can provide more information: National Institute of Mental Health (nimh.nih.gov), National Mental Health Association (nmha.org) and the American Psychiatric Association (psych.org).