Phobia: Extreme Fear

I just read a Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phobia&oldid=480906300

I liked this article because I learned a lot of new things from it. I have always been interested in phobias. I always wanted to know how a phobia started and how you can overcome it. I personally don’t have a phobia so I don’t know these things.

One sentence from this article that stands out for me is: “ Most individuals understand that they are suffering from an irrational fear, but they are powerless to override their initial panic reaction.” I think this is interesting because I never knew that the people with the phobia actually were aware of the situation. I thought that they were always having panic attacks without having any thoughts of their actions.

I’m pretty sure this is accurate, because there are treatments for these phobias. Which means that the person knows their phobia and so they go to treat it. If the person didn’t know then they would of never went to treat it (Source: http://psychologists.org/help_fears.html).

Another sentence that I agree with was: “Others suffer full-fledged panic attacks with all the associated disabling symptoms.” I know that when people have phobias they usually act differently. When they encounter their phobias they start shaking and having panic attacks.

I double-checked this fact through http://psychologists.org/help_fears.html, which makes me feel pretty sure that it is true.

There’s something in this article that I think might not be accurate. It says, “Some individuals can simply avoid the subject of their fear and suffer relatively mild anxiety over that fear.” I think that this is not accurate because from what I have read so far I know that phobias are extreme fear. If a person can just ignore their fear then it is not a phobia.

What I learned from this article is that a phobia varies in how it affects people. Some people have common phobias but others not so much. I learned that phobias come from child experiences or from within.