My Phobias And How I Overcome Them
Surprisingly I have various phobias, but none to an extreme degree. I have arachnophobia, apiphobia, acrophobia, and two phobias that I have not exactly found a name for. My arachnophobia and apiphobia started equally when my dad stung me with a bee at a young age because my uncle told him that I would never get sick if he would sting me with one. Since then, my fear of anything that can sting or bite started but mostly focused on bees and spiders (this may have started my fear of needles that I had at a young age but no longer have). As I aged, I got stung with a wasp, but it surprisingly did not hurt at all so my fear of bees and wasps has gone down since BUT because of a movie I watched at a young age (Arachnophobia) my fear of spider has slightly increased and I’m still not over it to this day.
My other phobia is more serious and while I can handle it to a certain degree, it is much harder to control – acrophobia, the fear of heights. When I look down from a high place, my whole body tenses up and I just cannot seem to get over it as I have aged (yet I surprisingly do not fear airplane rides). My other two phobias I do could not names for, but one is the fear of roller coasters or rough rides. As a kid, I always wanted to ride roller coasters, but I was not tall enough to get on them. When I finally reached the height, I saw a Final Destination movie where some people die from riding on a malfunctioning roller coaster and since then I have wanted nothing more than to stay off of them. My last phobia is my most serious and intense one, but I confront it more often than I do the others. When I am around a large group of people and there are many conversations going on at the same time, I become extremely anxious and immediately lose all my energy. I would not call it a panic attack or anxiety attack, but it does cripple my ability to speak to people while in this situation because of the volume of the conversations and the amount of conversation going on. Interestingly enough, this does not happen when I go to concerts. While my arachnophobia and apiphobia are minor cases, my other phobias are much more intense and show signs better than the former.
Phobias are described as extreme and irrational fears of objects or situations in which there really is not much of a danger or risk. They are classified as common anxiety disorders but not all phobias need treatment but if the phobia in some way affects one’s social or day-to-day life then one should seek treatment. Most phobias can be categorized into situations, nature, animals or insects, blood, injection, injury, and others like choking and loud noises. Phobias can have many signs like immense fear, inability to control the irrational fear even if one is aware of it, worsening anxiety, avoidance, difficulty functioning while the fear is present, rapid breathing, sweating, rapid heartbeats, nausea, trembling, dizziness, or even tantrums. How one develops a phobia can be explained by classical conditioning.
Taking my original fear of bees/wasps and spiders before seeing the movie, classical conditioning explains why I personally developed a fear of bees, spiders, and any other insect that could potentially cause harm. The bee in my case was a neutral stimulus. Originally, I did not exactly fear bees or spiders so I did not have a response to them yet, an unconditioned response. The pain, the memory of the situation, and the insect itself all simultaneously became the conditioned stimulus and my fear of the insect become the conditioned response. To explain why spiders, other insects, and other arachnids became part of my fear too can be explained by stimulus generalization. Because I know that certain insects and arachnids can cause harm via a sting or a bite, I generalized all harmful insects and arachnids into my phobia because of my negative experience.
For apiphobia and arachnophobia, I could use modeling by present myself with smaller and less harmless (though those two do not always correlate with each other) and seeing people handle them first. After I am comfortable and relaxed enough, I can move on to possible holding them while trying to remain calm. Once this is successfully reached, I could move on to bigger yet still harmless bees and spiders. This process is known as systematic desensitizing and is effective. When the person being treated learns to fully relax, he/she is taken through a systematic process of the lowest anxiety-inducing situation to the highest. This is only successful when the patient is fully relaxed though.
Psychotherapy is normally successful to help patients get over their phobias over time. If the patient has a phobia that is commonly present, then psychotherapy works much better because it is something that can easily be presented to the patient, so he/she can work towards desensitizing. If a phobia like aviophobia (fear of flying) is developed, then psychotherapy might not be as effective and medication might be the better choice for the patient because this is not something the patient deals with on a daily basis.
Having to treat a patient with a phobia may not be as easy to treat as some would think. Depending on how extreme the phobia is, the process may take a prolonged period of treatment before the patient has overcome their fear; so patience is something that the clinician must have to work well with the patient. As a client, overcoming a fear is definitely not easy. One’s mind can be conditioned to immediately feel anxiety and fear when presented with the situation, so having to accept that there is no reason to fear the stimulus is difficult.
