A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder and is defined as an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal. Left untreated, phobias can have a significant impact on people’s day-to-day functioning as they often try to avoid the source of their fear as much as possible.
A phobia is a specific type of anxiety disorder involving an extreme or severe fear of a particular object or situation. Often even thinking about the source of a phobia is enough to make the person feel anxious, or bring on a feeling of panic.
People who experience phobias will often try to avoid the situation or object that their phobia relates to, which can become detrimental to their functioning and day-to-day lives. Sometimes avoiding the object of their phobia can become almost all-consuming, and they may base decisions around this avoidance.
The impact that a person’s phobia has on their life often depends somewhat on what the source of their phobia is, and how often they will come into contact with it.
It is estimated that up to 10 million people in the UK have a phobia, with some of the most common sources of fear being heights, spiders, snakes, and flying. Most of us will know somebody with a phobia. They can affect anyone regardless of age, sex or social background.
It can be difficult to know where to draw the line between what is a phobia and what is a fear. In general, phobias are far more pronounced than most people’s fears.
Many of us are fearful about certain things, for example, we may not like a particular type of insect and may experience some anxiety or feelings of disgust when we encounter one. However, the level of anxiety and fear associated with a phobia is exaggerated and excessive compared to everyday fear. It is also generally irrational in the sense that usually, no real danger is present.
As with most mental health difficulties, it is believed that both our genetics and our environment can contribute to the likelihood that we will develop a phobia.
Stressful or traumatic experiences are one potential cause of phobias. If we go through a traumatic experience, it is usual to experience an anxiety response to a similar situation in the future.
For example, if somebody has a car accident and gets injured then they may well develop a phobia of driving. This could then lead them to avoid driving, which increases the anxiety associated with it, and also has a significant negative impact on their quality of life and independence.
A further possible environmental cause of phobias is learned behaviour. Research suggests that children are more likely to develop a phobia if their parents have phobias. This could be explained by genetics (see below) but it is also possible that they ‘learn’ the phobia from their parents.
People with a close family member who has a phobia or a different type of anxiety disorder may be more likely to develop a phobia themselves. It may be that some people are born with a predisposition to develop an anxiety disorder, that is ‘triggered’ by an experience like those mentioned above.
When most of us think of phobias, we think of what we might call specific or simple phobias. These tend to centre around a particular animal, situation, activity or object. For example:
There are also more complex phobias that can tend to have a more debilitating impact on day-to-day life than simple, specific phobias. There are two common types of complex phobias which you can find out more about below.
Agoraphobia is often thought of as a fear of open spaces, but it is a lot more complex than that. It is perhaps more helpful to think of it as a phobia of places or situations that it would be difficult to escape from if something went wrong.
For example, somebody with agoraphobia may be fearful of travelling on public transport or visiting a supermarket. This may cause them to avoid these situations. Instead of travelling on the bus to visit a supermarket and get their groceries, they might order their shopping online so that they can avoid both the bus travel and going inside the supermarket.
Agoraphobia is often associated with panic attacks, and part of the fear of certain places or situations can be because there is a fear of having a panic attack in that place or situation.
Social phobia is a disorder that causes people to feel an overwhelming sense of anxiety in everyday interactions with other people. It is also sometimes referred to as Social Anxiety Disorder.
People who experience social anxiety, often feel very self-conscious in social situations and may worry that they are being judged, scrutinised or criticised by others. This often leads them to avoid social situations altogether and therefore can cause significant distress and disruption to people’s lives.
Although the source of a phobia will differ from person to person, there are some common symptoms that people tend to experience regardless of what their phobia is. These can include:
The most common type of therapy offered for phobias is CBT. This type of therapy focuses heavily on our thoughts and how they impact our behaviour. In the case of phobias, people often have quite irrational thought processes concerning assessing the amount of danger that they are in. CBT can help people to re-evaluate their thoughts, and provide some alternative, more realistic ones. CBT will usually involve some form of gradual exposure to the source of your phobia. See below for more information about this.
Graded Exposure
Avoiding things that make us feel anxious can ultimately maintain our anxiety and lead to it becoming stronger. Safely reducing this avoidance can allow people to gain more control over their phobia.
One of the safest ways of doing this is to gradually expose somebody to the source of their fear, first in a way that doesn’t feel too overwhelming, and then in situations that previously might have been deemed impossible.
EMDR therapy can be particularly helpful for phobias that have their roots in a traumatic experience or memory. It can be used to help process these memories. A therapist may ask their client to identify the first time they encountered the source of their fear, as well as the worst encounter and the most recent encounter. They will then work through each of these experiences or memories until the client feels that they have been resolved.
At Turning Tides, our team of Psychologists are highly trained and have many years of experience working with common mental health conditions such as phobias.
Our psychologists can help you to understand where your phobia has stemmed from, exploring some of the different factors that are contributing to how you are currently feeling. They will teach you strategies to effectively manage your phobia and help you to stop avoiding the source of your phobia so that you feel more in control.
We offer regular face-to-face appointments at our modern and comfortable clinic in Hoult’s Yard, Newcastle or we can offer online therapy via Zoom if you live further afield or have a preference for online sessions.
We have tried to keep our pricing as simple as possible. We charge £120 for a 60-minute appointment, regardless of whether this is an assessment or therapy session. Our fees are the same for face-to-face appointments and online appointments as you will receive the same high standard of care from our psychologists, regardless of how it is delivered.
A psychologist will then be in touch to arrange a free 15-minute no-obligation call, where we can discuss your requirements in more detail and you can get a feel for whether Turning Tides is the right psychology practice for you.
If we’re not right for you, we’ll try and signpost you to somewhere that is.
Please note – Turning Tides is not a crisis service, and if you feel you need urgent support or are experiencing a mental health crisis then it is important that you contact your GP if they are available, or attend A&E.