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Have No Fear: Treating Phobias

Some fears seem reasonable: galeophobia, the fear of sharks, or odontiatophobia; the fear of dentists. Some fears seem a little strange: catoptrophobia, the fear of mirrors, or metrophobia, the fear of poetry. And some fears seem simply impossible: ambulophobia, the fear of walking, or optophobia, the fear of opening one's eyes. But no matter your phobia, you can overcome whatever gives you goose bumps with a little determination and courage.

Indeed, it is natural—healthy even—to be fearful at times. If a hungry lion is headed your way, there should be a sense of nervousness and worry. However, if that danger is irrational—you are seized with panic at the mere thought of you neighbor's pet poodle—you may have a phobia.

"A phobia is irrational fear in which the person begins to either avoid that circumstance or approach it with intense anxiety," says R. Reid Wilson, PhD, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at UNC School of Medicine and author of Don't Panic: Taking Control of Anxiety Attacks.

Developing a Phobia
A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder that can begin at any age. In fact, these irrational fears are the most common psychiatric illness among women of all ages and the second-most common illness in men above the age of 25. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that between 5 and 12 percent of Americans have at least one phobia.

Scientists are unsure of why or how phobias develop. The onset of a phobia may be tied to a traumatic event, but often there is no such trigger, or the cause is subtle. "If you are a child walking down the street holding your mom's hand and hear a dog bark and then feel a little squeeze of your hand, you may develop this fear of dogs," says Dr. Wilson, "You make a conditioned response, an association, between that dog barking and a little signal from your mom that there's some danger there."

Additionally, the same event may happen to many people and only one will develop an extreme fear. Sometimes the terrible event doesn't even need to be experienced directly to develop into a phobia. For instance, people can develop a fear of flying, aviophobia, simply from seeing the video footage of a plane crash on the news.

Most people with a phobia will simply do what they can to avoid the situation they dread. For example, a person with galeophobia, a fear of sharks, can avoid beaches and aquariums. But a person who has a fear of dogs, cynophobia, may not be able to leave their house, afraid that a neighbor will be walking his dog at the same time. Most of the time, it is when a fear has seriously disrupted one's way of life that he or she seeks help.

Forgetting Your Fears
The most common treatment used to help one shed a specific fear is called cognitive-behavioral therapy. Its goal is to change the way a person thinks about a feared situation to allow the person to face the fear.

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