Blogpost 4: Differentiating Fear from Phobia

VS.

Okay, so many of you may think that fear and phobias are the same but I am here to tell you that they are not. I, for one, thought that they are the same but by the time I've done my research I figure out that they are dissimilar. I'm sure that all of us experience fear during our childhood, right? Fear is just an impermanent feeling or emotion when you encounter something that makes you scared. It is rational and goes away for just a small amount of time while phobia is something that is serious. Phobia is an uncontrollable feeling that a person may have and a phobic person may have a hard time overcoming it. 

While I was searching in Google for articles that may be related in this matter, I have read an article in WebMD, entitled, "The Fear Factor: Phobias" by Heather Hatfield. The author said that a person suffering from phobia is living with grave fear and anxiety. 

"Phobias involve the experience of persistent fear that is excessive and unreasonable," says Mr. R. Reid Wilson, PhD. (also a spokesman for the American Psychological Association)

According to the article, to say that someone has a phobia, his fear must instigate a different level of damage. Someone experiencing phobia is that they get so scared that makes them do something irrational. For instance, a woman who was afraid of spiders and it got to the point that she don't even wanna go outside at night. It's irrational, right? What does a spider got to do with going outside at night? In addition, phobia is considered as a mental illness by Kathy Hoganbruen, PhD, National Mental Health Association spokesperson. A person might had a bad experience or they become traumatize that's related to the origin of their phobia. 

Knowing and considering the source of fear is important because if you only have a small and simple fear of something, you don't need to over-think about it. You may also begin to transform your daily ritual to avoid any possible triggers.  Psychologically, if you are have a phobia, you are prone to develop the fear of fear itself. You'll become paranoid and will constantly think of it. You don't have to, because thinking about it will greatly affect you when you are forced to confront it and there is no way out. An example of it is when you are supposed to go on a trip abroad and you really need to board a plane, but you over-think your fear of riding a plane. Then, that's a time that it will become a problem.

A person with phobia may have trouble in sleeping and focusing on certain tasks as the dreaded day of confrontation draws closer. To overcome phobia, there are certain procedures that may be followed. There is behavior therapy, a process in which you'll be exposing yourself to the things that causes your excessive fear. For instance, you are afraid of heights, imagine the things that can be seen beautifully when you are in a high place. When you are in a hanging bridge, do not look down because you might get scared and just fall down and consequently die. Instead, look straight ahead and think as if you are just walking on the ground.

Undergoing behavior therapy may cure your irrational and excessive fear of a certain thing. Not curing phobias may become a hindrance to one's success. For example, your offered a lucrative job and you just turn it down because you are afraid of riding an elevator in the office, or you will avoid certain medications such as getting vaccines for flu/whatever diseases because you are afraid of needles/injection. As you can observe, negative outcome can come from your phobia so do your best to lessen your fear.

See? Phobias can affect your life. Now, let us go to fear. Fear is pretty simple. It serves as our "survival instinct". Our nervous system is responsible for our responsible for initial reaction that we will execute when we encounter something scary and horrible. So, being scared is not really a bad thing. Fears can make us stronger because once we overcome it we may become a brave and a tougher person. Although fear and phobia are two different ideas, they may intersect at some point. For example, you just fear speaking in front and you later developed an excessive fear of it that you don't even want to talk to a large number of people.

Reading a number of articles fed my ignorance. I came to realize that fear is different from phobia in some aspects. Fear is rational while phobia is not. Phobia affects great opportunities for people. On the other hand, fear is an initial reaction that our body feels when there is something scary. Phobia is rooted to fear. In fact, phobia is excessive fear and traumatic experience can contribute to the development of phobia.