A phobia is an anchoring type of unmotivated fear, as well as the state and actions caused by such unmotivated fear. Not every anxiety state should be called a phobia: minor and quickly passing anxieties do not belong to phobias. Phobia-type states continue for more than six months and are characterized by the fact that the patient is constantly trying to avoid approaching objects of phobia (there are usually several of them), but in the end everything ends with an acute attack. For example, at the sight of blood or a wound, such a patient may faint.
If you don’t faint and are busy with something else than trying to avoid getting close to the object of fear, you don’t have a phobia, but everyday fears and ordinary anxiety.
The causes of phobias are poorly understood. One observation is that people with increased hostility and anxiety suffer from phobias. This internal state requires “justification”, a person needs to be explained why or why he is so anxious and what exactly he is afraid of. And with an internal (albeit unconscious) desire, it is not difficult to find the necessary justification.
So I’m afraid — either spiders, or being alone. I’m afraid of darkness, manipulation and sects, I’m afraid of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy or the end of the world… See Causes of phobias
Fears and phobias — how experiences are similar, but according to the mechanism of formation they are different. Fear is more like gradual learning. First, a person learns to be afraid a little (not even a specific situation, but an “assumption” about such a situation can serve as a start), then more and more. In the end, he may have quite an intense experience. For example, a man was walking home in the evening and said to himself: “Here I am now walking along a dark street, but they might attack me.” Then he could begin to imagine how this could happen, and so on …
Unlike fear, the phobic reaction is an example of rapid, almost instantaneous learning. The mechanism is the rapid creation of a stable anchor (conditioned reflex).
I saw a spider — I got scared — now I get scared all the time.
You can be afraid of almost anything. The most typical, culturally approved, phobias have their own scientific names: Agoraphobia, Arachnophobia, etc. See →
Treatment of phobias
First, phobias are treatable, at least phobias are treated better than depression and schizophrenia. Secondly, some types of phobia are better treated with medications, other types of phobias are not treated with medications. With the help of pharmaceuticals (antidepressants, benzodiazepines or beta-blockers), social phobias and agoraphobia are well removed, while fears of spiders, snakes, fear of blood and other fears of objects and phenomena of a biological nature (the so-called specific phobias) are practically not removed by medicines and require the help of a psychotherapist.
We note right away that among the varieties of psychotherapy in the treatment of specific phobias, the most ineffective is psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysts, believing that phobias are the product of repressed content hidden under layers of psychological defenses, use free association, dream analysis, and interpretation to strip away the layers of defense and get to the heart of the conflict. Then, through catharsis — a sudden emotionally charged release of repressed material — the patient will be able to overcome the phobia and recover. So, this practically does not work, or works exactly because, since the patient lies on the couch in a relaxed state and, through pop-up associations, relates to situations that are disturbing for him. This may help, but this is not a matter of psychoanalysis, but of the usual desensitization technique.
More effective in the treatment of specific phobias are behavioral and cognitive-behavioral approaches, namely exposure therapy, implosion therapy, NLP (rapid phobia treatment) and rational-emotive therapy.
In exposure therapy, the person faces the source of their anxiety until they master the ability to overcome it.
In rational-emotive therapy, the therapist convinces (often in a very effective, impressive way) the patient about the distortions in his thinking. This is similar to a psychopedagogical technique, and it really aims to make the patient aware of how illogical thinking leads to an illogical and phobic style of behavior.
In NLP, psychologists break the connection between the picture of the situation and the phobic reaction.
In exposure therapy, the person faces the source of their anxiety until they master the ability to overcome it.
At the same time, one gets the impression that all these methods, no matter what specific external form they have, are based on the mechanisms of classical desensitization, namely the methods of re-experiencing a difficult (terrible) situation against a bodily background that erases negative experience. See Desensitization is the queen of psychotherapy.