What Is A Phobia?

A phobia is a very strong fear of someone, something or a situation.  It creates an exaggerated reaction to the stimulus.
Phobias are considered to be mental illnesses and are part of what are termed anxiety disorders.

Phobias can be triggered by real events, ie being attacked by a dog or being stabbed by a needle or from complex internal reasons.  Phobias are often irrational, which makes them difficult to treat.

There are three types of phobia, general social phobia, specific social phobia (an inability to eat in public for instance) and specific phobias, such as spiders, needles etc.

Phobias can be treated with psychiatric help such as CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) or with medication in the short term.  A common cure is gradual desensitization, first using imagery, then a virtual environment before confrontation with the real object, person or situation.

The opposite of a phobia is a philia, which is an often irrational attraction to an object, situation or person.

A phobia refers to a very strong, irrational fear of things, people or circumstances. It is unrelenting in nature, when one has a phobia of something he or she has an extreme and illogical need to keep away from the feared object. When the fear becomes too much for a person to handle, so much so that it goes beyond one's control, the person can be diagnosed.

Clinically speaking, a phobia is basically the most widely found form of an anxiety disorder. It is normally believed that the phobias are caused due to a blend of one's experiences and one's dispositions. There are numerous types of phobias, some very narrow in their definition. For example, arachnophobia is the fear of spiders while claustrophobia is the fear of closed spaces.