What Are Phobias and Why Do They Happen?

Phobias can be a persistent and intense fear of certain objects or situations, people or places. Specific phobias are related to certain objects and situations.

Human imagination is so creative, that it can conjure a fear of just about anything, fear of dogs, cats, flying, wind, clouds, blushing, relationships and on and on.

Phobias are usually extremely uncomfortable, but effective therapy can allow you to overcome them. According to the World Health Organization, fear and phobia affect more than 20 percent of the population, making them one of the most common psychological difficulties.

Fear essentially runs along a spectrum, from pure fear, that is a phobia or phobic reaction, to fear with some form of control, also known as obsessive-compulsive disorder until finally we have pure control of pure obsession and obsessiveness.

Fearing Our Solutions

There are many possible triggers for fear, some that exist within the person and others that exist outside of them, which makes for varying types of phobias. Some phobias are created in the mind, such as fear of blushing, and others are created by reality, such as a fear of snakes or tigers that do actually have the capacity to hurt or endanger us.

However once created, a phobia can begin to disable people in their lives and block them in their work and personal or intimate relationships. However, as mentioned in my book The 12 Most Common Mental Traps (Gibson, 2021), psychological problems tend to happen in a predictive and redundant manner, often following the same pattern, such as those we observe with panic attacks and agoraphobia.

With these two phobic reactions specifically (which I will cover in this blog in the coming weeks), we commonly observe the use of three dysfunctional attempted solutions by patients: 1) avoidance of any situation that might trigger their fear, 2) the request for help and reassurance of others, only to find they bring to question their own resources, and 3) the attempt to forcefully control their biological response, only to find they trigger the very reaction they are trying to suppress.

These failed attempts at controlling the situation lead to an increasing loss of control of their fears. In terms of time, it only takes several months at which. These combined attempts at solution build a rigid psychological problem and a potentially diagnosable disorder.

This phobic response and how it is created through the failed attempts at trying to solve the problem feeds the problem and the person remains imprisoned.

Be Spontaneous

Another difficulty with these spontaneous attempts at solving problems is that even when we are away from the feared situation, we begin to obsess about it. We make it grow further still, to the point that we do not need to be in the presence of the fear but merely to think of it to create the phobic response.

This is what we call a phobic-obsessive reaction. It should be obvious that any effective treatment targets breaking these redundant cycles the person is caught in. However, this may seem easy and rational to us sitting here reading this article here and now, but every human and living system resists change, even when the change may be advantageous.

Biology and Stability

Stopping a phobic individual from avoiding and seeking reassurance or help and then blocking their obsession with their fear can not be achieved efficiently with therapies based on a rational explanation. Most phobic patients are extremely rational people and understand what is wrong.

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Still, because of our involuntary biological and psychobiological responses and the perception that the person has created, the solution does not appear possible to achieve. At this point, we must approach the problem more strategically and indirectly.

An Unusual Approach

Helping patients change their dysfunctional situations, using effective treatments that are not based on rational logic but non-ordinary logic (Gibson 2021; Nardone 2013). We have been helping guide patients out of their obsessions and phobias, thanks to the laborious study and successful interventions on thousands of cases.

Indeed, in the case of many phobic and obsessive disorders medication can unfortunately become a kind of "chemical crutch" which may well reduce the physical anxiety symptoms initially, but these interventions end up only confirming the persons inability to solve for themselves what seems like a simple problem.

I am reminded of what the poet Fernando Pessoa has said, which may be more effective than any logical scientific explanation. Pessoa noted that "some people bear the wounds of battles never fought, and the wounds of battles never fought are the hardest ones to heal."

Next time you consider avoiding something, consider the possible longer-term consequences and how this spontaneous reaction to avoid in the here and now can rapidly steal your future.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.