It is human nature to be afraid of something. Even the most courageous and courageous ones feel a sense of fear to one degree or another, especially when it comes not about themselves, but close and dear people. So this feeling is completely normal, it can appear in anyone. Unfortunately, sometimes there is an excessive manifestation of fears for one reason or another, and it is completely unreasonable. Most often, such feelings of fear are called phobias. At the same time, there are a huge number of their most diverse varieties. So what is a phobia?
Today, the term "phobia" is usually understood as an excessive irrational fear of any phenomenon, situation or object. From this definition, we can conclude about an extremely wide range of possible provoking factors of this state.
There are several classifications that can complement the understanding of what a phobia is. The greatest practical value is the division of such unreasonable fears into the following groups:
1) Social.
2) agoraphobia.
3) Specific.
The first group included those irrational fears that relate primarily to any social situations. For example, the fear of the scene and the like. It’s not so simple with what a phobia of a specific nature is. The fact is that almost anything can be the provoking factor of such fear.
Today, scientists divide specific phobias into 4 varieties: the natural environment (fear of a wide variety of natural phenomena, as well as water and the like), animals (especially often fear of rodents and spiders), certain situations (passing bridges, driving cars, etc. ) and medical manipulations or their results (injections, blood, doctors).
The concept of what a phobia will be incomplete if you do not touch on the topic of agoraphobia. This kind of unreasonable fears implies an irrational fear of being trapped when you get to a certain place or situation.
Scientists from the United States estimated that about 10% of the population of their country have phobias. At the same time, only one out of ten such fears persist for life. This state of affairs is due to the fact that in most cases, people recognize that they have a phobia. As a result, many are ready to undergo a course of special therapy.
In the event that a person has certain phobias, treatment may be the most diverse. There are many techniques. The most common were 2 of them:
1) Contrast object of fear. The essence of the technique is that the patient is taught a rational reaction to the appearance of that object or the development of the situation, which are the objects of irrational fear.
2) Prolonged contact with the object of fear. This method involves the formation of such conditions when the patient must be in the immediate vicinity of the subject of fear for a sufficiently long time or be constantly in the situation that causes him fear.
Both of these methods are quite effective, in many cases they allow you to get rid of unreasonable fear, regardless of what the phobia is called - agarophobia, bacteriophobia, dentophobia or otherwise.