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Fear or Phobia?

Fear is an innate built-in fight-or-flight response designed to keep us safe. It is ingrained and essential for our survival by alerting us to situations that might be potentially dangerous and prompting us to fight or escape to safety. Sometimes, we can be intensely fearful of situations or objects that are not directly threatening our safety or health. Those situations and objects lead to marked fear and symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, pounding heart, and breathlessness. In response to the intense fear, people with phobias avoid perceived danger irrationally.

Specific phobias can be categorized according to the situations or objects that trigger the fear response. Most commonly, it involves animals, medical procedures, environment, and certain situations.

Common Phobias

The world is a dangerous place and here is the A-Z list of phobias. While some people find the specific situations or objects to be ridiculous to trigger phobias, a lot of people may find those triggers annoying and disturbing to their day-to-day life. The most common phobias include:

• fears of animals: spiders, dogs, snakes, other insects
• fear of medical procedures: needles, blood, doctors
• fear of natural environment: thunder, water
• fear of certain situations: height, flying, driving, confined spaces or being alone/trapped

Treatment

Exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can effectively address specific phobias. It teaches your body to re-learn the triggers as not dangerous.

Dr. Hu is featured on Chronicle, WCVB channel 5, showcasing a successful treatment for Steven’s aerophobia. Hear what people said about the experience working with Dr. Hu and learn more about how to beat the fear of flying on BBC Future.

Fear of Animal

(spiders, dogs, snakes, mice, etc.)

Fear of Medical Procedures and Certain Situations

(needles, injections, blood, medical appointments, height etc.)