Specific Phobias ...

"I'm terrified of spiders. I don't go hiking or take my daughter to the park any more. It makes me too anxious."

Phobias are intense fears of certain objects or activities, and this fear interferes with your ability to live a normal life. Common phobias include fear of crossing bridges, fear of heights, fear of certain animals (dogs, rats, snakes, spiders etc.), or fear of elevators, trains or other enclosed areas. More specifically, phobias are defined by:

Marked and persistent fear that is excessive or unreasonable, and are brought on by a specific object or situation (e.g. heights, animals, receiving an injection, flying, seeing blood).

Exposure to the phobic situation almost always provokes an immediate anxiety response, which may even be a Panic Attack.

The person recognizes that the fear is excessive or unreasonable (in children this feature may be absent).

The phobic situation is avoided or is endured with intense anxiety and distress.

The avoidance, anxious anticipation, or distress in the feared situations interferes with the person’s normal routine, job (or school) functioning, social activities and relationships, or there is marked distress about having the phobia.

Phobias can involve animals (fear of dogs, insects etc.), the environment (fear of storms, heights, water), activities (getting a shot, seeing blood), or specific situations (riding public transportation, tunnels, bridges, elevators, flying, driving, enclosed spaces).

Cognitive-behavioral model of Specific Phobias:

The cognitive-behavioral model of specific phobia stresses the role that cognitions (such as, "If a spider bites me I will die") and behaviors (such as escape and avoidance) play in causing and maintaining the phobia. People who have specific phobias typically overestimate the danger of the feared situation and underestimate their ability to handle the situation. Because they usually avoid the situation, they do not have the opportunity to learn, at a visceral level, that their beliefs about it are unrealistic.

Specific phobias may also have a built-in biological or even evolutionary basis. Certain objects or situations tend to be feared more than others because they do in fact present some danger (snakes are more dangerous than flowers, and snake phobias are more common than flower phobias). The evolutionary hypothesis provides an elegant account of the fact that blood, injection, and injury phobias sometimes lead to fainting; it proposes that an evolutionary advantage was conferred to those of our early ancestors who, in response to the sight of blood or a bodily injury, experienced a drop in blood pressure.

Cognitive-behavior therapy for Specific Phobias:

Cognitive-behavior therapy for specific phobia includes several types of interventions:

Monitoring: Learn about the physiological, cognitive, and behavioral components of your phobia.

Cognitive: Identify your beliefs about the phobic object or situation, challenge them, and correct your misperceptions.

Behavioral: You and your therapist will devise a plan to gradually and systematically expose you to your feared object or situation. This can be done in real life or in imagination or both. With repeated practice, you will challenge and change your negative expectations, gain confidence in your ability to cope with the feared situation, no longer associate the situation with anxiety and fear, and decrease your anxiety and physiological arousal in feared situations. If you fear certain sensations (for example, increased heart rate), exposure treatment will involve gradually and systematically bringing on and experiencing those situations in order to overcome your fear of them.