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Phobias
are intense unrealistic fears relating to specific situations or things that are
not intrinsically dangerous, such as acrophobia a phobia about heights, or
agoraphobia which in essence is a phobia about being on unsafe ground, or away
from the safe haven of your home. Not surprisingly, people with phobias usually
avoid what they are afraid of. It is estimated that millions of people
experience varying levels of fear of flying and many of them will not even think
about boarding an aircraft. For most people in the world, air travel is not as
big a problem as finding their next meal, so not being able to fly is not too
great an obstacle. I certainly couldn't do my work because it involves
travelling long distances interstate in Australia, and if I was too afraid to
fly I'd have to spend days and days and days driving.
Nevertheless, people can and do
work around a phobia if it involves something they don't have to encounter in
their everyday life. Other phobias may involve more common situations or things,
and may be harder to steer clear of even if people do their best to avoid them.
Avoiding these things or situations tends to make the fear stronger each time
the person encounters them. I have a friend who used to really hate being in an
elevator or lift. However the thing she most feared was being with a group of
colleagues or friends and having to say to them "I'm taking the stairs".
That was often OK because she could pretend it was a health thing but when their
meeting was on the 24th floor of the Rialto, they just looked at her
as if she was very strange indeed.
Cure Your Phobias Now!
I used the best, the quickest
and the most effective way to overcome her phobia and she now can't quite
believe the extent to which that phobia dominated her life. I'm referring here
to Gary Craig's
Emotional Freedom Techniques™. Click here
--->
Emotional Freedom Techniques™ to go to his
website and download his FREE
Emotional Freedom Techniques™ manual which
explains step by step how to gain just that: emotional freedom. Freedom
to live your life without worrying about where you'll find the next spider, or
when you're going to have to find ways to avoid whatever it is that causes you
to have a phobic response.
Emotional Freedom Techniques™
is one of the many techniques and
strategies that I offer in my downloadable kit,
Calming Words. Why?
Because I've used it extensively and it works.
Types of Phobias
We've all - or most of us - heard of
arachnophobia or fear of spiders, and most of us know about
claustrophobia, fear of being enclosed. But do you know what
is the medical term for intense, and sometimes even paralysing, fear of sleep,
or crossing bridges, or water. No? The terms are
somniphobia, gephyrophobia, and for fear of water: nerophobia
or hydrophobia.
Go to
→Types
of Phobias to find the name, the symptoms and the characteristics
of any phobia you can think of. We humans are endlessly creative,
and we can be or become, afraid of anything.
The following table is a list of some
phobias but it is by no means all of them.
|
Fear
of 13, The Number |
Triskadekaphobia |
|
Fear
of 8, The Number |
Octophobia |
|
Fear
of Abuse Sexual |
Contreltophobia |
|
Fear
of Accidents |
Dystychiphobia |
|
Fear
of Air |
Anemophobia |
|
Fear
of Air Swallowing |
Aerophobia |
|
Fear
of Airborne Noxious Substances |
Aerophobia |
|
Fear
of Airsickness |
Aeronausiphobia |
|
Fear
of Alcohol |
Methyphobia or Potophobia |
|
Fear
of being Alone |
Autophobia or Monophobia |
|
Fear
of Alone Being/Solitude |
Isolophobia |
|
Fear
of Amnesia |
Amnesiphobia |
|
Fear
of Anger |
Angrophobia or Cholerophobia |
|
Fear
of Angina |
Anginophobia |
|
Fear
of Animals Wild |
Agrizoophobia |
|
Fear
of Animals |
Zoophobia |
|
Fear
of Animals Skins/Fur |
Doraphobia |
|
Fear
of Ants |
Myrmecophobia |
|
Fear
of Anything New |
Neophobia |
|
Fear
of Asymmetrical Things |
Asymmetriphobia |
|
Fear
of Atomic Explosions |
Atomosophobia |
|
Fear
of Automobile Inside/Moving |
Ochophobia |
|
Fear
of Automobiles |
Motorphobia |
Who has
phobias?
An American study by the Mental
Health America (MHA) found that between 5.1% and 21.5% of Americans suffer from
some types of phobias and inappropriate fears. One of the
difficulties in being precise about that number is that many people can live
their lives without having to deal directly with their phobia - it's just
something that's in the background of their lives. Therefore, they're
unlikely to disclose to researchers that they have a problematic phobic
response.
Why do we have phobias?
The short answer and the only
accurate one is that we don't really know.
Many theories abound and each group
pushes their own theory as the final explanation. One theory is that if we
have an intense and almost paralysing fear of one thing, for example
spiders, we are investing a great deal of our floating anxiety in spiders.
Almost as if we're dealing with our fears about life and the living of it, by
focusing all our latent fears on one thing. That's just one school
of thought. Many health professionals hold to that view, but others
discount it for one main reason. That is, they have clients who have
arachnophobia but those same clients have myriad other anxiety
problems.
Another widely held view is that eons
ago, we needed to have a much higher level of fear in order to survive the
predators in our physical environment. The fear that develops to phobic
levels is a remnant of that time when it was extremely dangerous for Cave men
and women to walk around outside their caves.
There's certainly a genetic component
to anxiety and phobias and it's not surprising to see a number of people
in the same family group with similar levels and types of phobias.
More Information
For more information about phobias
and their treatments, click here to go to
→
About.com
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