A phobia is a disproportionately strong fear response to an object, creature, situation or  activity which actually a relatively low level of risk.

Phobias are often described as irrational. However, as the fears they represent are often founded in deep evolutionary learning, many prefer to describe them as ‘disproportionate fears’, ‘over generalised fears’ or ‘out of place fears’.

Characteristics of phobia

There are several characteristics common to a phobia;

• Disproportionate fear. The fear experienced is notably more than the trigger (object, creature, situation or activity) justifies. The spider which sends you fleeing the bathroom is probably harmless*¹.
• Persisitent. The disproportionate fear of the object / creature/ situation etc has been present in your life for some time (six months or more). Some phobias have a seasonal element, such as those with arachnophobia experiencing an upswing in anxiety due to the tendency for spiders to enter the house and move around more in September and October*¹, but the fear of spiders itself does not change, just the number of encounters.
• Avoidance. The person with the phobia will avoid wherever possible the object / creature/ etc. This avoidance may result in substantial disruption or cost. Avoidance behaviours indicate anticipatory anxiety is present and are what make phobia an anxiety condition.
• Emotional and Physical response. The person with the phobia experiences physical symptoms consistent with the ‘Fight-flight’ reaction such as raised heart rate, fast breath, and possible dizziness. Some people with phobias experience secondary psychological symptoms like panic attack triggered by the physical symptoms.

Causes of phobia.

The causes of phobias are various and hotly debated, frequently more than one of the below elements will have been present in a phobias development;

Learned phobic response.

it is theorised that phobias can be learned in one of four ways;

1. Conditioned response.In this the phobia has been learnt by repeated startle responses in proximity to the stimuli. The traditional example of this is the ‘little Albert’ experiments in which a child (Albert) was exposed to a white rat, which he was initially fine with, until it was paired with the bashing of a very loud gong until the startle from the gong developed into phobic reaction to the rat.
2. Modelled by a family member. When a family member, especially parent,  has a phobia or even legitimate concern about a stimuli it is natural that you learn that response from them. A wasp phobic may have seen their mother, who had a known potentially lethal allergy to wasps, panic when wasps were around and as such learnt to act the same when wasps were around.
3. Taught by wider culture or media. We are impressionable and sensitive when young and being exposed to sensational accounts of the dangers of certain situations, especially when accompanied by pictures or film. Films like ‘jaws’ are responsible for many shark phobias.
4. Trauma.  A single traumatising event can set up associated phobias, this can be from PTSD or the more common traumatic learnings, which don’t always meet the criteria of PTSD. An example of the latter might be; being laughed at by classmates at school due to an inadequate or inappropriate answer to a question, resulting in nervousness about answering questions which eventually generalises (see below) to speaking in public.

Other contributary factors to phobia development

There are a few factors which may well contribute to the development of a phobia, but are unlikely to fully explain it;

Lack of positive exposure to stimuli and cultural acclimatization.

Lots of people simply don’t grow up in environments where they get used to certain animals, or situations. As such, they are always a little intimidated by these things which leaves them open to developing phobias of them. In theory the family with dogs is much less likely to have a child who grows up with a phobia of dog.

 Biological and evolutionary sensitivity.

Some people are more sensitive than others.

• This can be general; they are taking in more information from their environment than others and thus the causes mentioned above happen faster and deeper.
• Sensitivity can also be more specific and possibly have an evolutionary basis. Children appear to have a recognition of animals from a very early age and it has been theorised that this is an evolutionary response to help them avoid dangers, such as venomous spiders and snakes. Some people may have more of this capacity than others and thus retain the sensitivity, making them especially prone to developing phobia to that particular stimuli.

Generalisation and ‘What if?’ thinking.

This is part of the development of a phobia. The process of generalisation is where an initial fear stimuli begins to be associated with similar things which then become stimuli themselves. The example of ‘little Albert’ (see conditioned response above) is once more the traditional example here. Once Albert had developed a phobia of the white rat it began to generalise to a number of furry objects.

The ‘What if?’ question is a cognitive vehicle for generalisation. In this the person asks themselves a  ‘What if?’ question in relation to their phobia. To give an example a wasp phobic may ask themselves ‘what if there are wasps in the park’, and now they have anxiety about going to the park, this can repeat as for numerous situations

Types of phobia

There are a number of ways in which phobias tend to present and be classified, here are two of the most common;

1. Specific. The phobia is limited to a specific object/creature/ situation and doesn’t generalise much beyond that. Animal phobias are very common examples of specific phobias.
2. Social. The fear of negative assessment by people may present as an inability to give presentation, to talk in groups or to strangers, or just being in crowded places.

Hypnotherapy for Phobia

If you would like to book a free consultation with Dr Matt for an in-person or online therapy for a phobia, please contact me on 0778 909 7741 or email mattkrouwel@gmail.com

footnotes

*¹ I’m assuming you are reading this in Britain.