Fears and Phobias

 

We are all afraid of something whether we like to admit it or not. Fears are something we prefer to avoid. Evolution left us with the fight or flight response. Normally faced with a fear, we choose to run away from that fear since our survival instincts kick in. We rarely fight the fear even though that fear may be harmless. Fears can dictate our behaviour and affect our lives to a certain extent. We have to understand our fears to overcome them. To understand it we have to talk about it. It helped me to talk about certain fears since after talking about them I realize there is nothing to be afraid of. There are medical articles about fears available online written by mental health professionals who know what they are talking about. Therefore, instead of focusing on the symptoms, cause and treatment of fears, I wanted to write down my experience with fears and how I perceive certain fears. I believe by laying out my thoughts could help me understand my fears more. Since we are all afraid of the unknown, so with this article I wanted to layout my unawareness and hopefully learn from it.

One confusion I wanted to get out of the way before I get started is that fears and phobias are not exactly the same. Many people use those terms interchangeably without knowing the difference. Since I love clear cut definitions, I just wanted to explain the difference between fears and phobias. However, writing this article I realize that I used fear and phobia interchangeably, so you have to bear with me. Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm and phobias are just extreme or irrational fear of something. In comparison to fears, phobias can be exaggerated to a bizarre extent. Let´s use a common fear as an example. The fear of snakes or in other words ophidiophobia. Being afraid of snakes means that one may just get a little nervous seeing a snake but in case of a phobia one will completely avoid the reptile enclosure at a zoo even though the reptiles are guaranteed to stay in their enclosures.

One thing, I found out when I start thinking about fears is that fears do not have to be solid objects that one can see but fears can be also something mental. One can be afraid of certain ideas. An example of that would be atelophobia and atychiphobia, which are the fear of imperfection and the fear of failure respectively. One can also be afraid of actions, which one does not have influence over. Proditiophobia would be an example. For all who don´t want to google what proditiophobia means. Proditiophobia just means in simple terms that one is afraid of betrayal. The betrayal may lead to pistanthrophobia, which is just the fear of trusting people due to negative past experiences. Phobias can go hand in hand with another fear, which makes identifying fears and phobias even harder. Since one can just be scratching the surface by knowing one fear and not actually going to the source of the fear, which may be a phobia. One can be afraid of the loss of something that one owns. For example, scotomaphobia, which is just a fancy way of saying that the person is afraid of blindness in the visual field. The idea of being plunged into complete nothingness is frightening even to me. There is a long list of phobias (I compiled a list of phobias for anyone interested) and I do not have enough time to get into each one. All I am trying to say is that fears and phobias come in all shapes and sizes. One should not dismiss someone else´s fear or phobias since it can cause severe traumas and other mental health issues.

I have many fears, which is a hard thing for me to admit since who would willingly admit a weakness? Some of my fears are not as severe as some others. For example, I have necrophobia which in other words just means I am deathly (*poor choice of words*) afraid of death and anything related to death. I am not afraid of me dying but I am afraid of creatures that are dead. When it comes to me dying, I am indifferent. The thought of others dying and/or already dead beings on the other hand just scare me to an extent where I have to disappoint my friends and family by telling them I won´t be coming to their funeral and won´t visit their burial site. Sometimes, I cannot sleep since there are images of corpses flashing in my mind and I am afraid that I would wake up next to a corpse. I know that me waking up to a corpse is highly unlikely but that is just enough to keep me awake at night. Something about the dead just scares the living light out of me and frustratingly I still can´t figure out why that is. Another example would be my fear of clowns. I know that I am more afraid of the dead than I am afraid of clowns. However, that does not make my fear of clowns less frightening but it just makes my fear of death seem more frightening. I also know that I am more likely to run into a clown than a corpse but I am still more afraid of death than clowns, which is fascinatingly frustrating. On the one hand, it is fascinating to find out the severity of fear can depend on different things. In my case, I only have a slight fear of clowns, since most clowns are not killer clowns. However, I am genuinely afraid of the dead and anything related to it, which includes horror movies. One in this case is just a simple fear and the other is a severe phobia. On the other hand, it is frustrating to not know the reason behind fear or phobia. Sorry, it got a bit morbid. I am fully aware that a lot of people don´t like to think about death, so I am going to stop writing about it. To explain my fears I just wanted to put an example out there.

I hate to admit this, but I used to be afraid of dogs. Chihuahuas specifically. The reason for that fear is somewhat embarrassing, now thinking about it. I used to be afraid of dogs because when I was younger (roughly four or five), I was walking down a street with my mother and saw a Chihuahua. I thought the Chihuahua was adorable and I wanted to pet it. However, the Chihuahua didn´t like it that much and barked angrily. Before I had the time to react, the Chihuahua attacked. Therefore for a while, I was really afraid of dogs since it seems obvious to me that I should avoid anything that harmed me. I walked around town with that fear of dogs. Every time I saw a dog especially a barking dog, I would just hide behind my mother. Somehow, I just felt my heartbeat speed up and I start to tremble a bit. Just being around a dog made me focus my attention solely on something I feared and the environment around me just faded away. It was only when the dog was no longer around and I was 100% sure that the dog could not harm me any longer, then and only then did I feel safe again. Until the next dog came around, then the whole anxiety process started again. However, after a while, I realize that not all dogs are bad. Most are even adorable. I learnt that not all dogs attack unless triggered and the Chihuahua is a one in a one hundred case. Chihuahuas are generally tiny little aggressive not loving monsters. Later my fear just turned into a liking of dogs. I mean, I will still be cautious around Chihuahuas but I won´t be afraid of dogs anymore.

There are many ways for someone to get over a fear. For example, the cold turkey method. Just facing that fear head-on. If one is afraid of flying then one should board a plane. Of course, one should seek mental health professional beforehand to make the flying experience calming rather than traumatic. After facing that fear, one could realize that their fear was misplaced and there was nothing to be afraid of in the first place. However, there is also a chance that facing that fear may just have a backfire effect where the person with the fear is even more afraid of the fear after a failed fear-facing attempt. Another method could be just slowly facing that fear instead of facing it all at once. Just try to slowly expose oneself to that fear. Using the fear of flight as an example again. Instead of boarding a flight, one could instead just try to sit in an aeroplane simulator or watch a video of a flight. This may make the idea of flying sound and feel less dangerous since one is already familiar with some aspects of that fear and not everything will be unknown. To help with the facing of fear, some calming exercises may help. Of course, there is also the method of hoping that one does not have to come face to face with one´s fears. That method may be applicable for fears that don’t show up in day to day situation and environment but if that is not the case one has to get used to that fear. I believe the best method is just to slowly try to get used to a fear but if one is feeling insecure, then one should seek mental health professional since a backfire effect is the last thing one wants when faced with a fear.

To sum up, everything that has been stated thus far fears can take up many different forms. Fears do not have to have a reason but in some cases, a traumatic encounter caused a scar for life. The severity of a fear can be dependent on multiple factors. Last but not least, fears can follow one for the rest of one´s life or eventually disappear depending on how one wants to deal with the fears. There are treatment plans for people with severe fears and one should certainly seek help since we can´t let fears dominate our lives.