Phobias

What are phobias?

Phobias or phobic anxiety disorders are characterised by feelings of fear or anxiety triggered by well-defined situations or objects. These situations do not cause anxiety to everyone, but it is no help to sufferers to realise that others do not regard the situation as being dangerous or threatening. The extremes of reactions to phobias will often lead to avoidance of the feared situation, which can be quite severe and range from being conscious at first to becoming second nature without the person necessarily realising the extent to which they have changed their life. The feared situation may not be avoided entirely, but will trigger anticipatory anxiety, even before the situation is encountered and a sense of enduring it with discomfort.

What kind of phobias are there?

There are a number of different types of phobias. Specific phobias are restricted to clearly identified specific situations, such as proximity to particular animals, such as dogs or spiders, heights, extreme weather conditions, flying, close spaces such as lifts, visiting the dentist, needles or the sight of blood or injury. Although the situation is discrete, contact with it can evoke significant anxiety or even panic attacks, which are so unpleasant that a fear of this occurring can last for a lifetime if it remains untreated.

Agoraphobia

Is not a fear of open spaces, as is often said, but it usually encompasses a variety of different situations, usually very busy situations, complicated by the difficulties of rapid escape. Some people are easily triggered by queuing situations, such as coming out of a supermarket, which has the added complication of being a very public scenario. Symptoms can, therefore, be overlapping and can include fears of leaving home, fear of entering shops, of crowds and of public places, or of travelling in buses and planes. In severe versions, individuals can avoid even leaving the house and become very isolated. Agoraphobia can often be complicated by the fear of something bad happening in public and with its strong link to panic attacks, can often include the fear of fainting or collapsing in public and being helpless and embarrassed.

Social phobias

Social phobias often start in early adulthood. They characteristically involve thoughts of being looked at negatively by others or fear of embarrassment in public. It can be very common to have anxiety before public speaking, which is often present to a mild degree in all of us, but can become increasingly more severe and leading to avoidance, becoming then more of a significant problem and a type of phobia. Suffers often find it difficult to relate to others and make friendships, they tend to play over conversations with others, excessively, and wonder after an event how they performed and came across and what people thought of them and this can leave them struggling socially outside immediate family with these difficulties impairing the formation of friendships and relationships, but also even limiting career development.

Many phobias are known as phobic anxiety disorders and in all cases involve symptoms of anxiety, but at times more severe symptoms known as panic attacks. Symptoms of anxiety include a racing heart, fluttering in the chest known as palpitations, increased sweating or blushing. Breathing can become more rapid, or shallow and this can lead to hyperventilation symptoms such as tingling or numbness. Anxiety symptoms can at times have a profound effect on the whole body, feeding the system into feelings of nausea, but even experiences of diarrhoea. Panic attacks are severe forms of attacks of anxiety in an acute stage, which is so unpleasant that a sufferer can believe that their life is at risk and that something terrible and threatening is happening to them. These can be so unpleasant that sufferers often vividly remember their first panic attack and the degree of the reaction certainly then lead to a fear of it happening again and avoidance of potentially provoking situations.

How can it be treated?

Most treatment for phobic anxiety disorders involve a variation on the theme of "graded exposure". This involves trying to tackle the fear of the situation by starting to look at how it could be approached, even at first using imagination, before trying to tackle the feared situation. It involves carefully and systematically learning to face the fear in a gradual and controlled way, thereby reducing avoidance, which can perpetuate the situation and maintain the problem. These techniques may even at first involve exposure to the feared situation in imagination rather than in real world situations and even before that can be undertaken, it is often necessary to be able to learn techniques for managing anxiety symptoms and improving coping before the procedure gets under way. Some people believe that they can help themselves using self help manuals and CDs etc, but it is often necessary to enlist the help of a proper trained professional in order to maximise the response to treatment and to undertake it safely.

How Priory can help

The Priory can offer specific treatments, such as cognitive behaviour therapy and other evidence-based treatments in order to help sufferers deal with an overcome phobic situations. It is also very important to properly assess a phobia as they can be part of a larger picture of difficulties with anxiety and depression, or can be made worse by these co-existing conditions.

For more information or to request an initial assessment, please call 0845 2 PRIORY (0845 2 774 679) or email info@priorygroup.com

To view a list of the Priory hospitals that can help with phobias please click here.

For more support

If you feel you may be affected by phobias and would like help or more information, you can ask your GP or contact any of the following organisations:

Triumph over Phobia
www.triumphoverphobia.com
0845 600 9601

Anxiety UK
www.anxietyuk.org.uk
08444 775 774

The Samaritans
www.samaritans.co.uk
08457 909090

Priory
www.priorygroup.com
0845 2 774 679

If you are interested in receiving treatment from us, your GP will be able to refer you.