Phobias

• Phobias are irrational fears of an object or the anticipation of it.
• The symptoms of phobias are behavioural- How you behave when you see object. (Avoiding the feared object.)

  Emotional- How you feel when you see feared object. (Feelings of anxiety and fear.)

  Cognitive- What you think about your feared object. (Irrational thinking)
• The three types of phobia are Agoraphobia (fear of open spaces or leaving your home), Social phobia (fear of social interactions) and Simple phobia (Fear of specific object.)
• Phobias are a result of classically conditioned association between an anxiety provoking object and a previously neutrual stimulus.

  For example, a kid gets bitten by a dog, now the kid associates the fear and pain of being bitten with dogs.
• Generalisation = The kid is now scared of all dog-like animals.
• Phobias are maintained via operant conditioned.

  For example, the kid sees a dog. He crosses the road in order to avoid the dog. The kid has now reinforced the behaviour of avoiding dogs which maintains the phobia.
• Systematic desensitisation aims to remove the fear response of phobias and substitute it for a relxing response.

  First, your taught massaging and breathing techniques.

  Second, a fear hierarchy starting with a stimulus that produces the least anxiety and you slowly build your way up to the most anxiety-provoking stimulus.
• Flooding is when a patient is exposed to their most feared object without any chance of escaping.

  Limitation: It's very dangerous if patient has any health conditions that could be worsened by severe anxiety.
• Little albert showed no anxiety when presented with a(neutral stimulus) rat. The experimenters then started making very loud noises(Unconditioned) stimulus uses metal at the same time as the rat was with albert. Albert then began associating the fear from the loud banging with the white rat. (conditioned stimulus)