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Exposure Therapy
This type of treatment helps patients by giving them exposure to the thing they fear. They continue to give more and more exposure to their fear until the fear no longer shows or scares the patient. The Exposure Therapy can help by "imaginal exposure" which is giving the patient and image of the fear and by "in vivo exposure" which is confronting the fear by going through it in real life. This type of exposure helps make anxiety less of an issue in a person. -
Cognitive Therapy
This type of therapy helps people identify their fear and thoughts that cause them to become anxious. These thought are changed and replaced by more realistic thoughts which in turn help the anxiety in the patient. This is not usually a good choice for people with only one certain type of phobia. Most people know that the fears they fear are unreasonable. Some things they will do is give them scenarios in which there fears are not as bad as they thought and the fear becomes more realistic. -
Relaxation
This is a simple treatment that many of the therapies talked about before this end up undergoing. Relaxation such as breathing exercises and other things help with anxiety and calming your mind and body due to a persons fears. Relaxation will also help with stress and the reactions to the fears one has. -
Medication
Not much is known about wether certain medications will work to help daily life and the fears someone has. Many medications are made for anxiety and depression which are symptoms of specific phobias. Many who take medicine for their phobias will take them before they are faced with their fear. -
Diagnosis
People will have to have a fear of something that normally isn't considered dangerous which will cause them to want to get help especially those whose fears interfere with their daily life. This causes you to function differently and definitely not normally. Many specific phobias are related to animals, objects, injury, heights, water, and situational types such as flying, driving, or transportation. -
Phobias Growing Over Time
Phobias are realized to be anything. Anyone can be scared of anything and everything existing in the world and even outside of the world. Now there are so many phobias that they can now be grouped together. Groups like animal phobias, situation, injury, natural environment, or other phobias. All phobias leading into one another by similar symptoms like anxiety and depression as well as sweating when faced with our fears. -
Self Help Strategies
What you can do to get over your fears and start living a normal life without worries. You can work one fear at a time by trying to overcome the fair. You can use this strategy and others like the breathing techniques and by learning to calm down by using your senses. You can also help by relaxation. Challenging your negative thinking will help you over come your fears and reading and learning more about your fear and others going through it. -
When to consider treatment for your phobia?
You should consider treatment when it causes problems with your daily life and routine. If it begins to cause issues with increasing anxiety and fear then you should consider asking a doctor about treatments available. Another thing to be aware of is if you are avoid situations or places due to a fear and if the fear is excessive, if it causes stress, and and if you have had the phobia for at least six months. -
Normal Fear vs. Phobia
Normal fears are being afraid of something where as a phobia is avoiding something because of your fear. For example a normal fear would be feeling anxious when in an airplane or flying in the air or maybe being scared of heights and being a plane you are up really high. Having a phobia however would be not going to a family reunion in Hawaii because of your fear of either heights or flying in a plane so you would want to avoid it. -
Fear Ladder
First try making a list of the situations that scare you. Such as packing for a trip to Hawaii because of your fear of flying. Next build your "fear ladder" by taking the things in the list from least scary to most scary. Work your way up the ladder by starting with the least scary and continue to do it until you aren't scared anymore. If you continue to practice then you will continue to feel more confident and be less scared of this action. Which in turn will help you to calm down.
