Phobias

My friends and I were having a discussion about fears and phobias. The discussion involved many aspects of the issue but mainly surrounded the wonder about how someone, such as myself, could have so many phobias.

When fear takes over a life it can lead to bigger problems. Phobia’s are insanely irrational fears that tend to drive a person into a fight or flight response when confronted with the stimulus.  The fear response often is uncontrollable and could even become problematic with the actions of the afflicted in ever day life. 

The easiest example of this would be bugs. In life there are large numbers of people with heavy aversions to any sort of crawling creature. They run about when a bug comes near, yell, scream in a general over reaction. On average though, their lives are not overtly effected by the existence of the insects. I would consider that a low level phobia, if at all.

The onset of pure terror and a fierce reaction to the bugs would be more along the lines of the true phobia sufferer. If the bug of choice, or all bugs it really depends on the person, evokes terror then a phobia would be the psychological disorder of choice.

And on top of having all the issues that go along with phobias then there is also the chance of phobias compounding and piling on top of one another. For example, a fear of a bug that spawned in a child who was playing in a public sand box, then becomes associated with the play ground. Now the child no longer wants to join his or her friends in their outdoor activity of choice. It could go even further and begin to grow into a fear of going outside, where the child would have the chance to encountered a bug. So the kid now wants to do nothing more than stay at home. He/She has gone from being just Entomophobic to having Agoraphobia as well.