What Causes Phobias?
Fear is one thing that has been existent since the beginning of time. It is said that it is a channel which keeps a person from immediately jumping on to something difficult or dangerous as it may harm him or her. On the other hand, fear is connoted by others as something that is a major burden – what keeps a person from trying out and exploring beautiful things in nature, even from vast possibilities and opportunities, preventing him or her to gain success that already lies ahead of him or her. In contrast, some other people say that fear is a driving force. It is a positive thing because it is the ultimate test of a certain person's capacity to live and survive in this dangerous world.
Actually, whether fear is a burden, a challenge, or a warning, it is universally acknowledged that it is objectively a negative and subjectively a heavy feeling, something either to be fought and faced head on or turned away from. To some people fear is a consequence – a result of hurtful or dark situations that already happened and experienced before, such as calamities, crimes, mystery, and even embarrassment – something that happened and that a person would never, as in never, want to encounter again. As a result, excessive fear promotes withdrawal. All these believed to having been contributing to what causes phobias.
Phobia is a major anxiety which is experienced whenever a person is exposed to something, someone, or somewhere he or she is extremely scared of. Several examples of phobia are Agoraphobia (fear of open spaces), Anemophobia (fear of wind), Arrhenophobia (fear of men), Arachnophobia (fear of spiders), and many more. Having a phobia is such a burden because it has many implications, mainly on the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of a person. Physically, a person with phobia is affected by keeping himself or herself from the functions and benefits of the feared object. For example, a hydrophobic person is compromised of hygienic privileges since he or she refuses any contact to water.
Mentally, his or her thought process is largely affected due to improper or inappropriate rationalization of existence of things. As for the emotional aspect of the person, his or her social preference and lifestyle are dramatically changing because he or she tends to be excessively on-guard of him or herself. He or she usually insists exclusion of his or her feared object from any subject of his or her friends and significant others, affecting his or her relationship with them. Phobias are indeed disturbing in terms of the person's personality change. That's why many people wonder what causes phobias.
What causes phobias? A direct factor involved is the chronic accumulation or abrupt impact of traumatic experiences from certain objects, also referred to as the feared object. This is what causes phobias. However, fear is a normal response to whatever it is that inflicted pain on the person (physically or emotionally). It's just that as time passes by, fear must be gradually neutralized.
Continuous and worsening fear implies ineffective coping of the person. He or she now builds a bizarre thought which is already make-believe. These become wild, irrational thoughts and they actually persist therefore contribute more fear. The basic cure would be gradual exposure to the feared object and repeated explanation regarding its reality. It is indeed really helpful knowing what causes phobias.
PanicBuster.com was created by anxiety treatment expert David Mellinger, MSW (RESUME). Click on the link to learn more about anxiety, worry, phobias, and obsessions and compulsions (OCD).