FEAR OR PHOBIA

So, what is the difference between fear and phobia? For starters, feelings of fear are very common, diagnosable phobias are not.

Almost all of us experience fear at some point in our lives. It is very common to feel a lile anxious the evening before a flight or feel a lile dizzy when looking down from a great height. For most of us, these feelings are temporary and manageable.

However, when these feelings are not temporary and starts to impact your quality of life a fear becomes a phobia. Phobias are a form of anxiety disorder and are characterised by intense excessive and persistent worry and fear about everyday situaons. Oen, anxiety disorders involve repeated episodes of sudden feelings of intense anxiety and fear or terror that reach a peak within minutes (panic aacks).

These feelings of anxiety and panic interfere with daily acvies, are difficult to control, are out of proporon to the actual danger and can last a long me. You may avoid places or situaons to prevent these feelings. Symptoms may start during childhood or the teen years and connue into adulthood.

Examples of anxiety disorders include generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder (social phobia), specific phobias and separaon anxiety disorder. You can have more than one anxiety disorder. Somemes anxiety results from a medical condion that needs treatment. Phobias come in three different forms:

1. Specific phobias, known as simple phobias. These are the most common type of phobias. These phobias can be of animals (such as dogs and cats), people (such as clownsand healthcare providers), enviroments (such as dark or high places), and situaons (such as flying or taking a train).

2. Social Phobia, now called social anxiety disorder, is where people unreasonably fear being humiliated, embarrassed, or judged by others in social situaons.

Unfamiliar people and groups can be parcularly distressing.

3. Agoraphobia refers to an intense and debilitang fear of public places and situaons where it is difficult to escape or embarrassing to exit. This may include enclosed and/or open spaces. Many people with agoraphobia also have panic symptoms or panic disorder, which involves intense fear plus uncomfortable physical symptoms, such as trembling, heart

palpitaons, and sweang

These phobias go further than general fear, causing phobic people to constantly worry that they will encounter the object/situaon that they fear. Time and energy are oen used to acvely avoid the object of fear and if they do come across it, they endure high levels of distress, experiencing nausea, shortness of breath which in some cases lead to panic aacks. Being diagnosed with a phobia can lead the way for treatment. There are several approaches that can help, including hypnotherapy, psychotherapy and medicaon.

Hypnotherapy uses the power of suggeson to encourage posive change using relaxaon techniques to help you reach a state where the conscious part of your mind is relaxed and your subconscious part is more open to suggeson, a suggesve technique of talking to your subconscious to help encourage the change you're looking for.

Kim Holloway www.total-therapy.co.uk