Phobias are related to an irrational fear, for example of insects, animals, blood, elevators, airplanes, tunnels, thunderbolts etc. People realize that their fear is excessive, but they can’t handle it. They usually avoid what causes them this irrational fear.
Phobias occur at different ages depending on their type. Specifically phobias for insects appear at the age of 7 years, phobias for blood appear at the age of 9 years, claustrophobia appear before the age of 20 years and phobia for airplanes appear at the age of 30-40 years.
The symptoms of these fears can be either physical, cognitive and behavioral. The physical symptoms include rapid heartbeat, weakness, nausea, sweating, dizziness, rapid breathing. The behavioral symptoms include avoidance of specific situations or no reaction at all. The cognitive symptoms include distorted thoughts.
All those phobias are kept when people avoid the situation that causes the specific fear. These people don’t try to face their fear in order to check whether their thoughts correspond to reality. So anxiety remains as they believe that they can’t cope with their fear something which reinforces the avoidance behavior.
One can overcome his phobias if he recognizes his thoughts, sees if they correspond to reality in order to change them. Then he needs to be exposed to the phobic situation gradually where relaxation techniques enable him to deal with the physical symptoms.
In this way can anyone be liberated from his phobias.