What gives you the willies?
Are your phobias controlling your life?
By Deepa Sampat
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
My friend Ashleigh’s hands were clutching the arm rests of her airplane seat, her head was resting on the seat’s back, her eyes were closed and her face was pale. While I was counting down the minutes until we arrived in Las Vegas for spring break, Ashleigh was counting down the minutes until the plane landed so the flight would be over with. The only other time she had flown, her flight was so turbulent she developed a phobia to flying.
She’s not alone. Aerophobia, or a fear of flying, affects about 25 million Americans, and, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 9 percent of Americans suffer from some kind of phobia. Phobias are the most common psychological disorder in women of all age groups, and the second-most common psychological disorder in men over age 25.
Here’s a further examination of the causes and consequences of some of our fears.
What’s the difference?
Though the terms are commonly used interchangeably, fears and phobias are different things. Thompson Davis, clinical psychologist and assistant professor at Louisiana State University specializing in the treatment of anxiety disorders and specific phobias, says the difference between the two has to do with the degree of fear. Phobias are intense fears associated with psychological arousal, distress and avoidance. “Phobias are not like when you watch a scary movie and get scared,” Davis says. “A person who has a fear of dogs will see a dog and get scared and walk quickly past it. But someone who has a phobia is going to go to great lengths to avoid dogs, like turn around and walk another way.”
Many people have fears, but phobias are characterized as being irrational fears that are persistent and excessive, directed at something considered relatively harmless. “Fear is healthy. Fear is what protects us. It’s why people don’t run out in front of cars on the street,” Davis says. “What becomes an issue is when fears become too intense and debilitating.”
Phobias can be put into three groups. People with social phobias have an intense fear of being embarrassed in social settings. Public speaking is the most common social phobia, but it also includes things such as going to parties, going on dates or talking to authority figures.
Megan King, Omaha, Neb., sophomore, says she has a phobia of talking to strangers. She says this most commonly happens when she goes to a party with one friend and then they get separated. “I feel really awkward and nervous. I always get really flushed and really hot. I feel like my face is beet red. It also makes me nervous when I do talk to someone, and so I’ll stutter or mess up what I’m saying,” King says.
Specific phobias are intense and irrational fears toward a particular object or situation. These phobias include things and situations such as heights or spiders. Furthermore, specific phobias are divided into five groups: animal phobias, natural environment phobias, blood/injection/injury phobias, such as a fear of needles or getting hurt, situational phobias, like a fear of flying or claustrophobia, and other phobias.
Alex Rarick, Gardner freshman, has a specific situational phobia. She says her phobia is of someone breaking into her house at night. “When I am going to bed, I get scared someone is walking around my house, going to murder my family. If I hear any noises I can’t go to bed,” she says.
Agoraphobia is a fear of being someplace in which getting help or escaping would be difficult if a panic attack were to occur. People with agoraphobia generally avoid crowded places, being in traffic or flying.
Where they come from
The specific causes of phobias are largely unknown. Todd Bowman, a counseling psychology intern at the University’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), says many times people with phobias will attribute them to a bad experience they had during childhood. “When you ask people why they have a fear of something, a lot of them will say that they’ve just never liked it,” Bowman says.
This is true for Gillian Armstrong, Manhattan junior. Armstrong has a fear of heights and can’t describe the root of her fear, but says she has been afraid of heights ever since she was a young child.
Generally, people acquire phobias in four different ways. Davis says phobias do have some genetic basis. The other three ways phobias develop are through associative methods. First is when someone has a bad experience with an object or a situation, also called classical conditioning. For example, if a dog runs up to you and bites you, Davis says a special kind of learning happens, and you can develop a phobia of dogs.
Second, phobias can develop though modeling, or observational learning. If you see something bad happen to someone, you can develop a phobia to it. After seeing her friend get bitten by a brown recluse spider when she was in the second grade, Carly McPeak, Montrose, Colo., senior, says she developed a phobia of spiders. “His skin was eaten away. Now whenever I kill a spider it feels like they are crawling all over me,” McPeak says.
Last, you can acquire a phobia to something by simply hearing negative things about it. Davis says a phobia usually develops through a combination of all four methods.
Living day to day
Living with a phobia can be extremely debilitating. Symptoms of phobias include a racing heart beat, shortness of breath, numbness or tingling in one’s extremities, dizziness and uncontrollable crying.
Rarick remembers the time she heard her dad running up the stairs and thought it was a stranger in her house. “I was shaking really badly. My heart was racing and I was really scared. I didn’t want to move. I thought my family was in trouble but I couldn’t move. I was frozen,” Rarick says.
Because avoidance is a characterization of phobias, people who have phobias will go out of their way to accommodate their phobia, often rationalizing it. “If you have a fear of social settings and rationalize not going out by saying you like to stay at home, it is interfering with your life, and that’s unhealthy,” says Vincent Berger, clinical psychologist and founder of the Web site Psychologist Anywhere Anytime (www.psychologistanywhereanytime.com).
To accommodate her fear, Armstrong says she refuses to escalate to the top of any tall buildings. “I wouldn’t go to the top of the Sears Tower when I was in Chicago,” she says.
“I didn’t get too nervous because I knew I wasn’t forced to go up, but I did feel a little left out because all my friends did.”
It is especially problematic when other people, such as parents or friends, help to accommodate someone’s phobia, Davis says. He says he knew a couple whose child was afraid of the dark and would have a panic attack if he heard any noises when it was dark. To accommodate his fear, the whole family would go to bed at 7 p.m. when it was dark outside so they wouldn’t make any noise.
Though phobias to specific objects or situations might be easier to avoid, those who suffer from social phobias have a much harder time, especially those in a college setting, Bowman says. “Everything students do in school is associated with people: going to class, living in the dorms. It is different from someone who has a phobia of tornados that only happen once a year.”
In addition to her spider phobia, McPeak says she also suffers from a phobia of clowns that developed after watching the movie It with her sister. Because of her phobia, McPeak simply avoids anything that has to do with clowns. Once while babysitting, she was reading a book and had to stop when she turned the page and an illustration of a clown stared back at her.
“I’ve never listened to the Insane Clown Posse. It’s my worst nightmare. It freaks me out. Just seeing a picture of clowns gives me the shivers,” she says.
Face your fears
Seeing a licensed psychologist is the best way to conquer your phobia, Davis, Bowman and Berger agree. Davis says it is unfortunate that many people who suffer from phobias do not seek help, because it is one of the easiest disorders to treat. He says he sees improvement rates as high as 80 to 90 percent, and therapy can last as short as three hours in mild cases.
The most common way to rid yourself of fears and phobias is through exposure therapy. Exposure therapy works by slowly getting a person used to the idea of the thing or situation he or she is fearful of. “If you have a phobia of snakes, we would first talk about snakes, then talk about being close to one, then have one in the room, and eventually hold one,” Bowman says.
Using exposure techniques without the supervision of a licensed psychologist can be dangerous if performed improperly, Davis warns. “When you’re talking about something that’s entrenched in someone, you have to be really careful with how you do the exposure.”
Armstrong says her family has helped her with her phobia when they used to visit Colorado and go hiking in the mountains. “My mom was always really good about getting me to the top, so I’ve had to face my fear,” she says. “It was a good feeling knowing that I could get through it.”
If you think you have a phobia and would like to get treatment, you can call CAPS at (785) 864-2277 to set up an appointment with a psychologist. Bowman says all the psychologists who work at CAPS are trained to treat phobia disorders.
After some time in the air, Ashleigh started to relax. Every time we hit some turbulence, she would unconsciously grab either her armrests or my hand. “People aren’t supposed to fly. They aren’t. You people are crazy,” she repeated over and over again. But after each instance, it only took her a few minutes to calm down and unclench my hand. Now the thought of flying doesn’t provoke as much anxiety as it once did, and she says she’ll be less scared doing it again.
Davis offers one chief piece of advice to help people combat their phobias: “I hate to use the old adage, but you have to face your fears.”
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