What You Can Change; The Treatments for Phobias

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             To understand the different techniques used to treat phobias, one must first understand the basic meaning of the word phobia. A phobia is defined in many ways. The core element of a phobia is fear. It is not a natural, normal fear or one based on a realistic threat to life. In 1980 Harry Milt expressed, "It is irrational, wildly exaggerated, and bizarre" (p. 1). In this definition of a phobia, fear is the key word associated with the disorder. To further understand the word phobia in the above example, I will define the word fear. The fear that Milt is talking about is defined as nature's device for protecting its creatures from threats to their survival (1980). L.N. Robins and D.A. Regier define another definition of a phobia in a 1997 study. The study states that the word phobia comes from a Greek word meaning fear or terror, and is derived from the god Phobos. Phobos was thought to provoke fear and terror in the Greek's enemies. The term phobia has come to cover a wide variety of fears and anxieties. It is used in clinical practice to explain inappropriate fears to specific types of stimuli or events (Robins & Regier, 1997). Phobias can refer to many different types of fears, which gives us almost indefinite numbers of specific phobias. .
             Phobias can be categorized into many different groups. Phobias can cover broad generalizations, such as all animals, all hospitals, all cars, or all elevators. They can also break down into specific types of fears. Some examples of specific fears and rare phobias are kneebophobia, which is a fear of the knees suddenly bending the wrong way or triskaidekaphobia, which is the fear of thirteen people around the table (Melville, 1977). There are hundreds if not thousands of phobias. According to a study in 1978 by Silvano Arieti, any fear can develop into a phobia, but not every fear or even abnormal fear is a phobia. The question is, "How do we stop these fears from becoming phobias, or how can we treat the phobia that we have already obtained?".