Welcome to the Phobia Room!

AnxietySecrets.com welcomes you to the Phobia Room in which you can learn about specific phobias. If you need information about Anxiety or Panic Disorder click here!

We believe that the same underlying causes of panic and obsessive-compulsive disorder are at work in phobias. Learn more about our self-help program here.

What is a phobia?

A phobia is an irrational (unrealistic), persistent fear of a specific situation, object or activity. The fear that the phobic person experiences is so intense that it keeps them from wanting to enter situations in which they will come into contact with the fear. The intense fear can be experienced as a panic attack, leading the person to avoid the object or situation to a greater extent. When avoiding the stimulus, the individual may feel a relief or an absence of anxiety symptoms all together and promote the reaction to avoid having to feel those terrifying symptoms again.

Generally, people suffering from a specific phobia, will indeed try and avoid the feared stimulus as much as possible. An individual may change their job - just to avoid riding the elevator! By avoiding the feared stimulus, the person's life can become hard to manage and other issues can emerge.

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The three types of phobias:

•Specific Phobia      •Social Phobia •Agoraphobia

Specific Phobia: An extreme fear of a stimulus in which there are generally no rational or realistic reasons to fear the stimulus (generally). The person usually knows that their fear is irrational or excessive, yet still feel the fear and behave accordingly. About 8% of the population has a diagnosable form of a specific phobia. It is more common in women than it is in men.

A simple specific phobia is a classification of the most common of the wide variety of phobias. (E.g. Heights, bees, sharks, illness, spiders, etc.) These simple phobias could have developed because of a real situation you had experienced, such as swimming in an area where there was a shark, a severe bee attack, and so forth. A simple phobia does not usually interfere with daily functioning, but if a person starts to avoid situations in a less rational way (such as avoiding the beach because of fear of a shark attack or avoiding going outside because of fear of bees) the fear may be diagnosed as a phobia. Studies have found simple phobias to be more common than social phobia.

Social Phobia: Social phobia is an excessive fear of being judged, criticized or evaluated by other people. They worry constantly whether they are being looked at and judged by others. The person will try and avoid social situations, jobs that require social interaction and other "debilitating" circumstances. Although, the fear is irrational (and they often know it is), they continue to avoid social atmosphere. See the social anxiety disorder page.

Agoraphobia: (Originally intended to mean fear of open spaces) Agoraphobia usually develops over time, after the individual experiences panic attacks in many social or other situations to the point in which the person fears going almost anywhere. The fears are so severe that an agoraphobic sometimes seeks to avoid leaving the house!

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How does a phobia develop?

A phobia develops when a person learns to anticipate anxiety-provoking situations before the situation occurs. The person anticipates the stimuli or situation as threatening and doesn't want to experience the feelings of anxiety. By leaving a situation or avoiding a situation because of fear, the person's fear is made worse. Eventually, a person may fear things that are far from the feared object because of fear that they will eventually come into contact with the object. The positive feeling felt by relief of not entering the situations and making contact with the fear, is what gives energy to the fear.

THE PHOBIA LIST

Feel free to browse the alphabetical phobia list:

Feel free to browse the alphabetical phobia list:

A B C D E G H I K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

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