phobias

• Phobias are anxiety disorders
• Specific phobia - fear of a specific object or situation
• Examples of specific phobias are arachnophobia or claustrophobia
• Social phobias are fear of humiliation in public places
• Agoraphobia is the fear of public spaces. Often includes panic attacks and the sufferer fears dying. Therefore they avoid places they don’t feel safe and there’s nobody to help them
• behavioural characteristics of phobias:

  • panic
  • avoidance
  • endurance
  • disruption of functioning
• emotional characteristics of phobias:

  • anxiety
  • unreasonable emotional responses
  • fear
• cognitive characteristics of phobias:

  • selective attention
  • irrational beliefs
  • cognitive distortions
• panic: crying, screaming or running away
• Avoidance: conscious effort to avoid stimulus
• Endurance: sufferer remains in the presence of the stimulus but experiences high levels of anxiety
• Disruption of functioning: response can be so extreme it can result in failure to function in everyday life
• Unreasonable emotional responses: disproportionate fear of stimulus
• selective attention: keeping attention on the stimulus is not useful in an irrational fear
• Irrational beliefs: increased pressure on sufferers to deal with situations
• Cognitive distortions: perception of the stimulus is distorted e.g  a person with a phobia of bugs may feel like they are ‘crawling under their skin’
• Sufferers are often unable to control the irrational thoughts which makes the phobia worse