Sometimes phobias can cause fear so intense it totally disables its victims. Phobias are among the most common of all mental illnesses, and they are usually the most successfully treated. Phobias are divided into categories according to the cause of the reaction and avoidance.
Phobias can limit your daily activities and may cause severe anxiety and depression. Complex phobias, such as agoraphobia and social phobia, are more likely to cause these symptoms.
Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of having peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth. Arachibutyrophobia is a rare phobia that involves a fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a specific phobia is classified as an anxiety disorder and involves significant fear about a specific object or situation that does not pose a threat.¹ For example, the fear might include excessive terror about heights, flying, seeing blood ...
A phobia is a persistent, excessive, unrealistic fear of an object, person, animal, activity or situation. It is a type of anxiety disorder. A person with a phobia either tries to avoid the thing that triggers the fear, or endures it with great anxiety and distress. Some phobias are very specific and limited.
What Does It Mean to Fear Long Words? Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words. Understanding the phobia can help you overcome it and live a fulfilling life. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is one of the longest words in the dictionary, and ironically, it means the fear of long words.
As we age, we produce much less adrenaline, which can cause racing hearts and dizziness. This means the intense fears we may have experienced in youth no longer trouble us as much. However, older people often experience a greater sense of vulnerability, so things like heights or big crowds become more of an issue.
Phobia and OCD differ according to how stimuli are processed. In phobia, the complete category of object is feared (e.g. big and small spiders are feared), while in OCD specific types of objects are feared, mostly for their symbolic meaning (e.g. germs may be feared on glue and mud, but not on door handles).
Unfortunately, depression and anxiety disorders such as phobias often go hand in hand. People who are already susceptible to depression can experience a depressive episode after developing a phobia and experiencing a panic attack. Sometimes, the symptoms of depression can be worsened by phobias.
Simple phobias can be linked to an early negative childhood experience. For example, if you're trapped in a confined space when you're young, you may develop a fear of enclosed spaces (claustrophobia) when you're older. It's also thought that phobias can sometimes be "learnt" from an early age.
1) Arachnophobia – fear of spiders
Arachnophobia is the most common phobia – sometimes even a picture can induce feelings of panic. And lots of people who aren't phobic as such still avoid spiders if they can.
Cherophobia. This is the saddest phobia that could ever be. Imagine being terrified - of being happy. A happy state of mind, or being joyful in a moment are not goals for cherophobics.
In fact, any event that triggers a strong fear (phobic) response can lead to PTSD. Children have even developed PTSD symptoms from watching horror films on TV.
It has the negative valence of bad memories in the right amygdala as well, but it also affects other parts of the brain. Phobias can also be symptoms of traumatization and of trauma since they carry avoidance as PTSD does, but PTSD has many other symptoms that people with phobias don't present.
Examples of causes of phobias. Past incidents or traumas. Certain situations might have a lasting effect on how you feel about them. For example, if you experienced a lot of turbulence on a plane at a young age, you might develop a phobia of flying.
Almost all phobias can be successfully treated and cured. Treating simple phobias involves gradually becoming exposed to the animal, object, place or situation that causes fear. This is known as desensitisation or self-exposure therapy.
Phobias can happen in early childhood. But they are often first seen between ages 15 and 20. They affect both men and women equally. But men are more likely to seek treatment for phobias.
Psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, can cause delusions, hallucinations, and other symptoms of psychosis. Non-psychotic disorders, which used to be called neuroses, include depressive disorders and anxiety disorders like phobias, panic attacks, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The mechanics of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder can leave you worrying that the worst-case scenario — your worst fear — is always looming. These intrusive thoughts distort reality. A person with OCD may not be able to tell the difference between minor and serious risks.
Do you often find yourself worrying about everyday issues for no obvious reason? Are you always waiting for disaster to strike or excessively worried about things such as health, money, family, work, or school? If so, you may have a type of anxiety disorder called generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
Treating vomit phobia is best accomplished through cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure and response prevention (ERP). Treatment involves correcting faulty beliefs, reducing avoidance, and confronting challenging situations step-by-step.
Women develop specific phobias roughly twice as frequently as men. In addition, women tend to predominate in certain phobia categories.
a phobia may be a learned response that a person develops early in life from a parent or sibling (brother or sister) genetics may play a role – there's evidence to suggest that some people are born with a tendency to be more anxious than others.