Types Of Phobias

A phobia is an intense, unreasonable fear of a thing or situations that is far out of proportion to the actual danger or harm that is possible. The fear and distress lead the person to avoid the object or situation they fear. And there are several types of phobias.

With a phobia, a person's fear is so intense that they do whatever they can to avoid coming into contact with the object of their fear, and often spend time thinking about whether they're likely to encounter it in a given situation. For a fear to be considered a type of phobia it has to be so extreme and cause so much distress that it gets in the way of a person's normal activities.

Certain types of phobias interfere with a person's life because the need to avoid the object of the phobia limits what a person feels comfortable doing. A teen with a phobia limits what a person feels comfortable doing. A teen with a phobia of dogs, for example, may avoid going to friends' homes because they have dogs or to the park because there might be a dog there.

Some people may be more likely to develop certain types of phobias than others. Anxiety problems often run in families and a phobia is one type of anxiety disorder. Kids and teens who tend to be fearful and who worry a lot often have parents who have these traits. Types of phobias that run in families can partly be explained by biology and genetics.

The term specific type of phobia is used for an intense unreasonable fear of a specific object or situation. Someone may have a specific phobia of snakes, heights, elevators, or blood, for example. Specific types of phobias may develop when a person has an encounter with an object or situation that involves or provokes fear. A brain structure called the amygdala, which keeps track of memory and emotions, remembers when that person encounters the object the next time that it provoked fear in the past. The amygdala then signals that the object might be dangerous.

Gradual exposure to the object or situation is a very effective way to help people overcome specific phobias. Exposure is a technique based on certain principles of learning and behavior. The idea is that the brain can learn to adapt to something that seems dangerous at first, but isn't actually dangerous, by gradually having time to encounter that thing is a controlled, gradual, supported way.

Just as kids can learn to overcome their fear of the dark by gradually getting used to it with the right support and reassurance of safety, gradual exposure can introduce someone slowly to the feared object or situation, allowing the brain to readjust.

With this gradual exposure, anxiety decreases as the person faces the fear - first from a distance, then gradually closer and more fully. Exposure may even begin by having the person simply imagine the object or look at a picture of it because with certain types of phobias this can be enough to trigger the intense fear.