Most people get the heebie-jeebies about something. Nevertheless, there are times when this worry becomes an intense, irrational fear when they face a particular situation, activity, or an object and it is called a phobia.

However, there are three types of phobia recognised by the American Psychiatric Association.

These include:

Specific phobia: This is an intense, irrational fear of a specific trigger.

Specific phobias are known as simple phobias as they can be linked to an identifiable cause that may not frequently occur in the everyday life of an individual, such as snakes. 

These are, therefore not likely to affect day-to-day living in a significant way.

The other two most common types are:

Agoraphobia - the fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult or help wouldn't be available if things went wrong.

Social phobia - which can be an overwhelming fear of social situations.

A phobia can impact all areas of your life. 

Phobias cause people to change how they live in order to avoid the object of their fear.

Nevertheless, their life is also affected by their attempts to conceal the phobia from others. 

Although phobias can be influenced by culture and triggered by life events, they tend to run in families. 

Treatments available

Desensitisation is a process of gradually exposing someone with a phobia to circumstances that resemble what they fear.

Over time, the fear lessens as the person builds confidence.

This is often accompanied by cognitive therapy (talking therapy) to help the person change how she or he thinks.

You may also had Mindfulness based cognitive therapy to this treatment.

It is developing new patterns of response to situations that might trigger the emotions associated with your phobia.

The good news is treatment helps 90% of people who follow through.

Medication

Medication is not usually recommended for treating phobias because talking therapies are usually more effective and do not have any nasty side effects.

If you have any concerns, please contact your GP

More information in https://mentalhealthtraining.info/course/lets-talk-about-phobias

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