How to manage your phobia? – Advantages Magazine

2023-10-07 13:09:13

According to the World Health Organization, 12% of the population suffers from phobia.

What is a phobia?

Phobias are a form of anxiety disorders where anxiety focuses on a specific object, situation or activity that does not justify it. The phobia becomes serious when it forces the affected person to restrict their activities and their quality of life suffers.¹. We can distinguish 3 main types of phobias:

• simple phobia is the abnormal, excessive and unjustified fear of an object or situation,
• agoraphobia it is the fear that some people feel at the idea of ​​going to a public place from which they think they will not be able to escape,
• social phobia is characterized by the fear of being observed and judged by others, or of being embarrassed or humiliated by one’s own actions¹.

Here, we are interested in the first type of phobia: simple phobia.

What are the most common phobias?

Where do you think that simple phobias affect 10% to 20% of the population and affect twice as many women as men¹. If quantifying phobias is not easy, a study sought to determine which ones were the most widespread². What comes out:

• Fear of heights: acrophobia,
• Fear of flying: aerophobia,
• Fear of spiders: arachnophobia
• Fear of lightning and storm: astraphobie
• Fear of being alone: ​​autophobia,
• Fear of confined spaces: claustrophobia
• Fear of blood: hematophobia,
• Fear of water and drowning: aquaphobia,
• Fear of snakes: ophiophobia,
• Fear of animals: zoophobia.

Obviously there are many others and some phobias even have rather crazy names: do you know ailurophobia?

Most often, it is early treatment of this disorder that will help fight once morest the phobia. Then it all depends on the intensity of the fear and how it impacts our daily lives. To see more clearly, In his book “365 days at the top”³Laury Thilleman advises asking yourself a series of questions to try to see things more clearly:

• How scared am I?
• When am I most afraid? (periods, times of day, particular context, etc.)
• What emotions exactly do I feel?
• What am I fundamentally afraid of behind this phobia? (to be attacked, to get lost, to be in pain, to die…)
• What are my physical reactions? (breathing, sweating, heart rate, tight throat, sweaty hands… your body can communicate information to you.)
• What might reassure me? (person, voice, sound, place…)
• Can I find some diversionary tips to deal with it? (change my thoughts, listen to music, close my eyes and breathe…)

… In the case of a phobia that is not too disabling, you can manage to cure yourself. The success rate would be 20 to 30%. To face your fear and, above all, live better with it, it is worth trying to:

• Learn to manage your breathing and in particular to master breathing techniques that allow you to relax, to refocus… like the breathing of yogis,
• Practice better management by regularly confronting your phobia, for example by looking at the image of the creature that terrifies us, by trying to stay alone for a certain time…

Phobia: is there a treatment to cure it?

If you cannot overcome the phobia alone, it is entirely possible to get help. For this, it is advisable to turn to a specialized therapist who can help us better understand the mechanisms at the origin of this phobia.

• Cognitive behavioral therapy

It allows the patient to be exposed to their phobia, gradually (through images, sounds, etc.) to help them react better and gain confidence when confronted with their fear. This therapy can also be implemented via virtual reality which will allow an even more realistic confrontation.

She seeks to understand the origin of the phobia by delving into the past and experiences.

Hypnosis allows you to disarm fear quickly and – normally – permanently. However, the effectiveness of the method depends largely on the patient’s receptivity to hypnosis and the results are therefore not assured. A study carried out on 21 patients demonstrated the effectiveness of hypnosis in combating flying phobia.⁴.

• Drug treatment

The use of medication is quite rare but can be considered on an ad hoc basis. THE anxiolytic drugs (or sometimes antidepressants) will then help relieve the symptoms of anxiety.

1. Phobia, santé.fr

2. Specific fears and phobias. Epidemiology and classification, G C Curtis, W J Magee, W W Eaton, H U Wittchen, R C Kessler.

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Read also

• Do you suffer from dysmorphophobia?

• 4 ways to overcome children’s fears

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