Phobias

• A phobia is an irrational fear of an object, place or situation that causes a constant avoidance of said object, place or situation
• social phobia is a phobia of a social situation such as public speaking or using a public toilet
• specific phobia is a phobia of an object (item, animal etc) or a situation such as an injections
• agoraphobia is a phobia of being outside or in a public space
• Emotional Characteristics

  Primary - fear is consistent + likely to be excessive and unreasonable

  secondary - anxiety + panic
• Behavioural Characteristics


  avoidance

  endurance/freeze
• avoidance is when someone's faced with the phobic stimuli, the immediate response may be to avoid it.
• avoidance has significant effects on one's day-to-day life and is what distinguishes phobias to normal fears
• Cognitive Characteristics


  resistance to rational arguments against their phobia

  recognition of their phobia being excessive or unreasonable is a defining characteristic that differentiates between phobias and mental illness
• Two-Process Model (Mowrer 1947)


  phobias are acquired through classical conditioning and continue because of operant conditioning
• Operant Conditioning in the Two-Process Model

  when we avoid a phobic stimulus we successfully escape the fear and anxiety; that is rewarding and reinforces the avoidance behaviour and the phobia is maintained
• Counter Conditioning is a therapeutic/behavioural modification technique used in psychology to alter/replace an undesired behaviour/emotional response with a more desirable one
• Counter Conditioning involves

  pairing the stimulus associated with the undesirable behaviour/emotion with a new and positive stimulus to change the individual's leaned response

  primary goal is to create a new association
• Flooding/Exposure Therapy is exposure to phobic stimulus but without a gradual build-up in an anxiety hierarchy; it is immediate exposure to a very frightening situation
• Flooding


  immediate exposure to a very frightening situation

  learn that the stimulus is harmless

  no longer produces the conditioned fear response

  ethical issues - full informed consent, protection from harm
• Systematic Desensitisation

  create an anxiety hierarchy

  relaxation techniques taught

  visualise least feared situation whilst using techniques

  exposure to next level in hierarchy until reached most feared