--“Your heart starts beating so fast…it feels like it’s going to explode. Your throat closes—you can’t breathe. You start to choke. Your hands [are dripping with sweat]. You’re so dizzy that you have to hold on to the furniture or wall to keep from falling or fainting. You know you are going to die. You want to run—but you don’t know where to go.” This anonymous quote taken from the American Psychiatric Association website tells the story of a very unlucky person with the illness I’m about to describe to you today: an illness called Phobias.

-- According to the American Psychiatric Association website, 12.5% of the U.S. population has some sort of phobia. That means that about three of you in this class either suffers or will suffer from this incredible illness throughout your lives.

--From my recent research and 15 years of personal experience with Acrophobia—the fear of heights, I’m going to first explain to you a little about what a phobia is, what causes phobias, the three main categories of this illness and the possible treatments

--The Daily Review of Hayward, CA. Reported in July that a woman by the name of Vera Karlson has been a victim of a phobia her whole life.

--There are two main types of this kind of treatment.

--The onset of this phobia may be sudden or gradual over many weeks, months or even years—meaning any one of you may be working on becoming Agoraphobic even as I speak.

**The first category of phobias according to the American Psychiatric Association website is Agoraphobia, which simply means the fear of being alone when escape is difficult.

--Dr. Thomas later in his article further defines pre-programming as “people developing a phobia not because that something harmed them but because that something was around when they had a negative experience.”

--This is the weakest for of phobia treatment because not all people allow themselves to be treated according to the Health Newswire Consumer website

** The second category of this illness is called the Social Phobias.

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