Phobias: know the self-care tips and get rid of the irrational fears

This article is focused on explaining the meaning of Phobia, its types, symptoms, causes, treatment, and relevant tips to follow for easing the symptoms.

Meaning of Phobia

Phobia is a type of mental disorder that makes a person fear excessively and terror of a particular situation, or a person, they start imagining the threat linked with the particular object, and this imagined threat is sometimes far different than the actuality.

These phobias can put a huge impact on lives if left untreated, by hampering your work, studies, and relationships. Panic attacks are also common in people with phobias. But inverse to this, there are many patients of phobia who state that only limited sections of their lives are impacted due to the disease.

It all depends on the severity of this illness.

Types of Phobias

Some major types of phobias are — Agoraphobia, Specific phobias, and Social phobia.

Agoraphobia — people with this type of disorder often feel fear of public places, especially in crowded streets or if standing in a long queue. They start feeling trapped and helpless at outside and sometimes start feeling uncomfortable even before entering the situation of which they are scared of. Their anxious feelings don’t let them be normal in public areas. Most of the time this occurs with the people suffering from chronic health conditions, their medical condition triggers anxiety and fear of the upcoming emergency situation in the public area, where they feel no help will be available for them. People with Agoraphobia often suffer from panic attacks, which makes them more anxious in public places because of the thought of being unable to escape from the place where they may have a panic attack.

Specific Phobia — specific phobia is known as a deep fear of a specific object or a situation. These phobias cause excessive fear of the things which are linked with very little or no danger in reality. Unlike all those normal fears and anxiety, which come and go away by own whenever the stressful situation ends, specific phobia may last for longer.

People with this anxiety disorder are also aware of their condition and their irrational behavior, but they have nothing to do with it, they feel themselves unable to control this fear.

Social Phobia — social phobia is known as a fear of being criticized and judged by the people in social situations. This fear rises at its peak whenever a person is surrounded by new people. This results in self-isolation from people outside your family and makes it difficult for them to interact and meet with new people. If you are surrounded by so many people and asked to give a presentation or speech, then its quite normal to be anxious a bit. But the severe form of social phobia won’t even let people eat in front of others and even make them unable to involve in general interaction with others.

Causes of Phobias

There is no single cause for phobia, there are multiple factors in a person’s life which create situations of being phobic. Some of the most common causes are –

Genetics — people with a close relative suffering from phobias are most likely to experience the same illness than others.

Panic Attack — if you often react panicky in stressful or fearful situations and experience panic attacks, this causes fear of being embarrassed in front of others. And this fear develops in a wide form and causes extreme anxiety and phobia in people of that particular stressful situation.

Long term stress — long term stress often turns into depression and anxiety, this can result in making you more anxious about the situation which you are scared of.

Influence of family — sometimes people don’t even get to know how they have started learning “the way of reacting to stressful situations” from their elders. This learning phase starts from the childhood of people where they notice how their parents or siblings are reacting anxiously about the particular object or situation, this hugely impacts their capability of handling the fearful situation later on and sometimes makes people phobic.

Experience of a frightening event — when people went through with any terrifying event in their life, this sometimes creates a huge impact and remembrance of that trauma in their mind which turns into intense fear and anxiety whenever they find themselves in the same situation again.

Symptoms

Symptoms always vary from person to person, the most severe symptoms include the feeling of excessive fear even before entering the fearful situation. During the phobia attack, the both body and mind of a person suffer with multiple symptoms.

Physical Symptoms

• Nausea
• Trembling
• Sweating
• Sensation
• Dry mouth
• Pain in chest
• Shortness of breath
• Numbness
• Urge for urination
• Ringing in the ears
• Sensation in stomach

Psychological Symptoms

• Fear of dying
• Fear of losing control
• A feeling of detachment from your body

Treatment & Care

The need for treatment for phobia also varies, some people find it a suitable option to simply avoid the situation which creates their phobia. So, they are often able to manage their anxiety and phobia without any need for treatment. But some cases majorly need treatment, especially in the severe ones, you are highly required to take medical help.

You may be recommended for behavioral therapy or medications, or both of these. Your treatment for phobia is all about reducing your anxiety and fear of specific situations and helping you in controlling your reactions to fear.

Tips to follow for reducing the impact of phobia on your life

There are many self care tips you can follow to find a better way to cope up with your phobia. Phobic patients usually think that their illness has overpowered their life, but it’s not true, it all depends on the way you think. By just thinking that your phobia is the only thing that describes your life, then it will obviously seem bigger and puts a huge impact on your life too.

By changing your way of thinking and by throwing some light on reality you will get to know that phobia is not as big as we have made it in our life. It’s a treatable disorder and manageable condition on your own as well.

Below i am listing some of the best self care tips to follow, have a look –

Join an online support group — if you are living an isolated life due to your phobia, then try to join any support group of phobic patients, trust me, it will surely help you in easing your symptoms by discussing your issues with other people in the group who are also facing the same or even worse symptoms than you, you might get to know some tried tips by them for managing your illness, and you also will be able to solve the issues faced by other people by helping them with your tips, this will also make you feel better by helping others.

Discuss your feelings with others — don’t bound yourself, try to open up your emotions with someone who cares for you, they can surely help you by guiding the best way of coping with the illness. And discuss your issues only with a person who truly understands you, with whom you are comfortable with.

Do Meditation — being anxious whenever people face the situation they are phobic about is natural. To reduce anxiety, try meditation, and breathing control exercises.

Try not to avoid your phobic situation — Running away from your problems can never be a permanent solution. Face the truth and try to manage your anxiety and fear in front of your scary situation. This will help you in a far better way than avoiding the things which are linked with your phobia.

Though I am not recommending this tip to everyone who is experiencing phobia, I know the complexity of the disease can only be understood by the phobic patients who are facing this illness, so if you are not comfortable with the tip, and think that it will never be going to help you in reducing your phobia, then simply ignore it.

But one thing I would suggest, we sometimes need to take risks to prevent ourselves from the problems.

Until you are not learning to face your weaknesses and the situation which you are afraid of, then you will never realize that your phobic situation is not going to cause you any harm which you are assuming for long.

What you can do if your family member or friend is suffering from Phobia

The family has an important influence over the person’s life who is dealing with a phobia, you never know your simple reaction can hurt that person and can even worsen his stress. Families also need to understand what their phobic member expects from them.

Don’t take their illness lightly — the phobia of a person usually seems illogical, because the situation or object by which they are phobic about isn’t linked with any life-threatening danger in reality. So sometimes family not able to understand their state of mind. Things that phobic patients are afraid of seem irrational to others, but the panicking and anxiety they feel in their phobia is actually considerable and something which you should worry about as a family. Maybe your slight mocking to the patient for his fear can hurt him. So try to take it seriously.

Discuss — discuss as much as you can about their phobia and how the person is dealing with it, what challenges they are facing, and how it has impacted their life. This will make them feel, that someone is available for them to support and understand their problem, this will make them feel much better. And the discussion about their feelings can also help you in learning ways to help them.

Try to explore more about the illness — try to know more information about the illness, which will help you to understand the way of helping them. There are many online sources and websites which hold credible information about the disease.

Don’t give them any pressure — we all know that avoiding the situation which a person is phobic about is not a permanent solution, sometimes family members give pressure to the patients to face their phobia, which can be a good solution but only if the patient is comfortable. Don’t force them to do it.