Homo sapiens has a feeling of fear, and has always been so. This is an emotional reaction of the body that plays the role of protection and encourages one to avoid danger. However, there is also an increased fear of any situation, object, or action. For a normal existence, treatment of fears and phobias is necessary.
It got its name from the Greek word "phobos", that is, fear - phobia. A person suffering from this mental illness is afraid of something imaginary in the present, and in certain cases this feeling becomes aggravated, and an unreasonable feeling of anxiety, restlessness and even panic arises.
For example, you are in the cabin of a flying airplane, and it enters a zone of turbulence and begins to shake, and you are scared - this is real fear. But if the mere thought of flying makes you sweat, then this is already a phobia. The individual is unable to explain such logical moments; he understands that it looks stupid, but he can’t do anything.
Phobic reactions change a person’s normal behavior, interfere with his life, and often put him in awkward situations. This is a big problem and needs to get rid of it. It is unlikely that you will be able to do this on your own. The specialists of our Psychoendocrinology Center will help you cope with fears of this kind.
Biological meaning of fear
In order to penetrate deeper into the essence of such a phenomenon as a phobia, we need to understand what fear is and why we need it.
Fear is an emotion that is caused by the instinct of self-preservation. We need it in order to be able to recognize a real threat to our lives. That is, fear is an emotion that is objectified by something specific that can cause specific damage to a person’s life, health or well-being.
And from a situation in which we experience fear, there are two main ways out: fight or flight.
For example, an angry dog barks at us and because of this we feel fear. If the dog is small, then we can shout to it: “Get out of here!” or even emotionally kick her aside. She will whine and run away. This is the “fight” reaction. And if this is an impressively sized dog, such as a shepherd or a Rottweiler, then we will begin to back away in fear, trying to find some kind of fence with a gate to isolate ourselves from the evil dog. This is the “flight” response.
But let's consider another situation in which the same Rottweiler or Shepherd does not pay attention to us, since the owner is walking them, clutching a leash in a strong hand. And at the same time the dog is wearing a muzzle. Will we experience fear in this situation? I think that most sensible people will not experience fear. And why? Because in this situation there is no threat to life. The situation is under control.
But if a person has a phobic fear of dogs, he will experience fear even in a situation where the dog is on a leash and muzzle.
If we ask him why he feels fear when the dog cannot attack him, he will say: “After all, it can twitch and snatch the leash from the owner’s hands, attack us and tear us up with its claws, or somehow throw off the muzzle and bite us. Who knows what to expect from dogs, they are animals after all!”
It becomes clear that fear is something rational, and phobic fear is something that cannot be rationally explained. After all, if you think about it, anything in the world at any moment in time can go wrong as planned and thereby cause harm to anyone. But nevertheless, this person we are considering is afraid of being injured by a dog. Most people do not constantly think about what might threaten them in this world, since such anxiety would prevent them from functioning effectively in society: going to work, performing everyday activities, taking care of their family and home. You can’t foresee everything, and therefore there will always be an element of unpredictability in a person’s life.
Treatment of anxiety-phobic disorders in Samara
Anxiety-phobic disorder (other names - obsessive-phobic disorder, obsessional neurosis, obsessive-phobic neurosis) is a neurotic disorder that causes phobias, obsessive (obsessive) states, sudden fears and thoughts. Obsessive states torment the patient, but he cannot get rid of them without outside help.
Alarm level
We come to another important concept - anxiety . Anxiety plays a key role in phobic disorders.
If fear is an emotion that concerns a specific threat to life, then anxiety arises when, in fact, there is nothing to be afraid of. Anxiety, to put it simply, is unformed fear. A person is afraid of something, but what exactly is unknown. He seems to be in anticipation that something will happen soon that could cause him harm. But whether this will actually happen or will never happen is unknown.
Anxiety levels may be normal, elevated, or decreased. We will focus primarily on the first two types.
Normal level of anxiety
Anxiety, in itself, like fear, has a useful function that protects a person. If a person does not feel anxiety at all, then he will not be able to soberly assess his capabilities. He will be careless and will constantly run into trouble. Anxiety helps us anticipate situations in which we might experience fear. In other words, anxiety is our caution and prudence. A moderately cautious person can achieve a lot. A careless person will constantly find troubles on his head and will not have the internal resource to get out of them, since this will require forethought, which he does not possess. A person who is overly cautious will, on the contrary, be overly afraid of everything.
Increased level of anxiety
This type of anxiety is characterized by the fact that a person expects danger everywhere. He is constantly afraid, but does not know what. Such a person is inclined to draw conclusions based on a single case. For example, a person got stuck in an elevator and after that began to ride them less often. Then, after a while, he got stuck again and after that he saw on the news how an elevator cable broke in some house in his city, as a result of which people died in the fallen elevator.
Such a sequence of events may be sufficient to form a phobia, provided that the person initially had a high level of anxiety.
For a person with a normal level of anxiety, in order to form a stable avoidance of something, more extensive statistics must accumulate.
Formation of a high level of anxiety
As can be seen from the previous chapter, a high level of anxiety is required to form a phobia. But how does it happen that an excess of anxiety is formed in a person?
Like most other psychological traits, anxiety begins in childhood. Let's say a child lived in a family in which the father could at any moment burst into sudden screams, the reason for which was not clear to this child. And it was unknown how the father’s screams would end: either he would calm down and cool down, or it would come to assault and which of the family members would suffer.
The child lived in a state of constant readiness for danger. He always remained on guard, and this created excessive anxiety in him.
The reason why a person becomes anxious and tense may be different, but the essence will always be that as a child, he was always in anticipation of some specific danger and this emotional state became familiar to him. And when such a person matured, this emotional state, entrenched in the psyche, remained with him.
Phobia: symptoms, main forms of the disease
The clinical manifestations of the disease primarily depend on its type.
There are several types of phobias:
- Simple. The patient develops an uncontrollable and clearly inadequate fear at the sight of a certain object, animal (insect), or before any situation (flying, going up to a height, changing weather, etc.). Due to a strong feeling of anxiety, a person diligently avoids such “irritants.” Some live in almost constant stress, often limiting themselves (for example, in travel, tourism, entertainment), without turning to a specialist.
- Social phobias. A person is afraid of situations when other people are watching him because of fear of discussions behind his back, criticism, ridicule. He tries to avoid public places (restaurants, cinemas, entertainment venues), avoids various meetings, conferences, lectures. This has an extremely negative impact on the patient’s quality of life, since fear often pushes them to use alcohol and drugs.
- Agoraphobia. A patient suffering from this form of disorder experiences extreme anxiety when he finds himself outside the home, among crowds, in places that he cannot quickly and independently leave. Agoraphobia is much more often accompanied by anxiety and depressive disorders, and depersonalization.
- Hypochondriacal phobias are fear of an existing concomitant pathology or fear of possible diseases. As a rule, they are afraid of oncology, infections (tuberculosis, tick-borne encephalitis, viral diseases, etc.). The patient constantly undergoes tests, undergoes examinations, turns to various specialists, but even a negative result relieves him of fear only for a short time. The patient listens to himself so much that the possibility of psychosomatic hypertension and autonomic dysfunction cannot be ruled out. And a banal slight deterioration in well-being, which many simply do not notice, can cause a panic attack.
Typical signs
The most common manifestation of a severe illness is a panic attack, for which the following symptoms are typical:
- heartbeat;
- tightness, feeling of heaviness in the chest;
- feeling of suffocation and lack of air;
- sweating;
- dizziness;
- a distinct fear of death or impending serious illness (heart attack or stroke, insanity, loss of consciousness, etc.);
- numbness in the body;
- convulsions (not common).
Clinical manifestations increase quickly; in general, an attack usually lasts about 30 minutes, less often - several hours.
According to the mechanism of manifestation, panic attacks are divided into:
- spontaneous, developing unpredictably;
- attributive, arising under the influence of certain circumstances or situations.
Without appropriate treatment, episodes of panic attacks and fear can develop into a chronic disorder. At the same time, in the intervals between attacks, an anxious and restless mood remains - the patient all the time subconsciously expects and experiences fear of certain objects.
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Formation of a phobia based on an increased level of anxiety
When a person is constantly tense and anxious, he subconsciously wants to somehow realize his anxiety. And if a convenient moment comes up, anxiety, being, as we found out, pointless, becomes objectified, choosing as an object, for example, trips on the subway or flights on an airplane. The person immediately finds many pseudological justifications for why it is dangerous to ride the subway or fly on an airplane and will sincerely believe in them.
It is worth noting that a phobia can form either as a result of some incident or almost out of the blue. But one thing will be unconditional - the level of anxiety of the owner of the phobia will be high.
Obsessive-phobic disorder: risk group
People with certain qualities are predisposed to anxiety-phobic disorder: anxiety, low self-esteem, pedantry. At risk are perfectionists who constantly evaluate their activities and accompany them with a detailed mental algorithm, as well as psychasthenics who are prone to suspiciousness and excessive introspection.
It is extremely rare that anxiety-phobic disorder is found in people who tend to shift responsibility for what is happening to others, who do not spare others in order to achieve their goals, or who are aggressive.
The gender of a person does not matter for the statistics of the disease, but a certain age (teenagers and young adults, as well as the age preceding menopause) increases the risk of its development.
Phobias and their formation as a result of a traumatic event
It is also important to note that the level of anxiety can increase, either as a result of long-term adaptation to traumatic circumstances, as in the case of a child and his unbalanced father, as described above, or sharply. A person may become anxious as a result of a high-intensity traumatic event. And then a phobia may immediately arise if the event had a bright semantic connotation.
Let's look at another example. Let's say there was a holiday - a teenager's birthday. And for even more fun, the parents invited a clown to perform. Everything went well, everyone had fun. But suddenly one of the relatives became ill and as a result he died right during the holiday.
As a result of such circumstances, a teenager will develop an increased level of anxiety after understanding the situation. And also, as an addition to this, a phobia associated with clowns or, even worse, holidays will appear.
Of course, much will depend on what the adults who are significant to the child, in this case the parents, say and what they do. With a competent approach, if you have a certain calming conversation with the child, which will teach him to have a more philosophical attitude towards life and failures, phobias can be avoided. But working with anxiety will take much longer.
Treatment of fears and phobias
There is no universal method for getting rid of fears and phobias. Treatment tactics are selected individually, taking into account the severity of symptoms and the frequency of episodes of panic excesses. Not least important is how much the disease affects everyday life. Since even the most modern medications can cause adverse reactions, the specialists of the Cordia clinic, for uncomplicated fears and phobias, prefer psychotherapy. Behavioral methods of psychological influence are widely practiced, in which a situation that is alarming for the patient is artificially simulated (a similar method is called the exposure technique) and taught to cope with panic attacks. This approach to treatment gives good results, including correction of behavior to avoid provoking circumstances. At the same time, our clinic offers a phobia psychologist visiting the patient’s home.
Principles of drug treatment
Medicines are prescribed for severe cases of the disease, which are characterized by regularly recurring panic attacks.
Prescribed:
- antidepressants (a strict indication for their use is the presence of a depressive component in the phobia picture);
- anxiolytics;
- MAO inhibitors.
With the right medication, panic episodes stop within 2–4 weeks. But improving your health is not a reason to stop treatment. The prescribed medications should be taken for another 6–12 months. During this period, the doctor monitors the patient’s condition and, depending on the dynamics of changes, determines how to treat the phobic disorder further. In the vast majority of cases, it is possible to achieve a positive result and stable remission.
Many people simply don’t know if symptoms of a phobia appear, what to do? We will help you cope with the disease! Call us on +7 . Our consultant will answer all your questions, make an appointment or arrange for a psychologist to be called to your home in Moscow and the region.
Getting rid of a phobia
In order to rid a person of a phobia, you need to reduce his anxiety. If you do not work with anxiety, but work only directly with the phobia, then with a certain degree of probability you will still be able to cure it, but after a while another phobia will appear in its place, since the anxiety that has not gone away will look for a way out.
First of all, you need to direct all efforts to reduce anxiety. In order for this to happen, a person must first come to terms with the fact that he will never be able to control all aspects of his life. There will always be an element of unpredictability in life. And this fact should be viewed not from the point of view of doom, but from the point of view of infinity of possibilities. The world is beautiful precisely because of its unpredictability.
The following also have a beneficial effect on the emotional sphere: sports, yoga, regular and moderate physical activity, walks in the fresh air, proper nutrition, and breathing exercises.
Factors that aggravate phobic disorders include: smoking, alcohol, constant stress, poor nutrition, and sleep disturbances.
If you pay close attention to factors that favor getting rid of anxiety and minimize the influence of aggravating factors, then the likelihood of getting rid of phobias on your own becomes quite high.
Each person is capable, within certain limits, of independently stabilizing his emotional state. But if your own efforts are not enough, you should contact a specialist knowledgeable in these matters.
In psychotherapy, there are many methods that help, coming from different angles, to rid a person of the phobias that torment him.
Author: Dmitry Malin - clinical psychologist
Causes of phobias
The exact etiology is not fully known. Many experts believe that such a mental disorder in an adult is a consequence of various severe childhood fears. Usually by adolescence they go away on their own, without the intervention of a psychotherapist, but in some cases they persist, sometimes taking on a bizarre form. It is assumed that the cause of anxiety at an early age does not disappear as one grows up, but is “replaced” by another object. Certain forms of pathology arise already in adulthood as a consequence of strong stress factors (for example, fear of horses after a fall and injury, etc.). A phobic disorder of the social type (fear of public attention, criticism) develops with a special mindset and character. The disease manifests itself in adolescence (at the end of puberty), when boys and girls actively make new friends and attach great importance to how others perceive them. Doctors do not exclude that the cause of the disease is also damage to the central nervous system - certain areas in the brain that “control” the development and maintenance of anxiety.
