Phobia and fear are both psychologically linked with our emotions and make us human. However, a phobia is a type of anxiety disorder that causes fear in things that are unlikely to cause harm.
Seeing certain situations can make us feel uncomfortable or even scared… the amygdala is the part of the brain that drives our fight or flight instinct and creates the stress in the body due to certain situations we may have experienced and turned them into fear.
How many types of phobia are there?
Although there are many kinds of phobia, there are three main categories; agoraphobia, social phobia, and specific phobia. Agoraphobia is the fear of open space and failing to reach safety.
Social phobia, also known as social anxiety is the fear of judgment from others and is often triggered but anticipating the worst scenario in a social situation before it even happens. Many of us have probably experienced this at some point in our lives and is quite difficult to overcome how we portray other people's lives on social media. The idea of not fitting in scares us to the point we are scared to socialize and meet new people. Specific phobia is an intense and persistent fear of a situation or object (whether you’ve already experienced it or heard about it).
Is there a difference between phobia and fear?
In my previous blog post, I elaborated more deeply on what fear is and why it’s a natural instinct we have. Fear is an instinct triggered by the fight or flight sensation in our brain, but phobia is an excessive amount of fear that can have an impact on how we live on a daily basis.
Let's say you have melissophobia (fear of bees) which is a common phobia as no one wants to be stung by a bee. Spring is coming up and you realize they’ll be bees everywhere. You’re so afraid you decide you can’t go out all spring season as you think you’ll be attacked by bees even though you’ve never been attacked by them before. You may have viewed someone else’s traumatic experience to a point you invasion you already experienced it and it’s affecting your life and possible relationships.
A way we can overcome phobias we develop without even having been in the situation is by overcoming it. If you’re afraid of heights you could start slow until you adjust to the surroundings and take full control of your mind. Phobias are just manifestations our mind creates as it is also scientifically proven that some phobias could be genetic hence why some people have a hard time overcoming them.
