Irrational Fears: A Survival Guide

When you get to know someone, the conversation often turns to fears and phobias. Most of those fears may seem like they are completely irrational and come out of the blue. A phobia, by definition, is an intense fear of something that poses little-to-no actual danger. These are easily avoidable, or something you will never have to worry about. You can develop a phobia to anything to be honest. Usually, your phobias will appear when you are a child, but there are plenty of adults that develop phobias later in life. Common phobias are small places, heights, flying, snakes, needles, and clowns.

The hardest part of having a phobia is realizing that it is completely irrational, yet there is nothing that you can do about your fear. Sometimes, all it takes is to think about your phobia to cause your anxiety to rise. When faced with your fear, you will be terrified and that feeling will quickly become overwhelming, even after you take yourself out of the situation. This will lead you to try an avoid your fear at any length, even going as far as to change the way that you live your life. This can lead to losing a job because of an elevator ride that cannot be avoided or finding other means of transportation when you need to travel.

There are 14 different common symptoms of a phobia. Some of the physical reactions are difficulty breathing, trembling or shaking, a churning stomach, and sweating. Some of the emotional symptoms are feeling overwhelming anxiety or panic, fear of losing control or going crazy, and knowing that you are overreacting, but feeling powerless to control your fear.

How do you know when you need help with your phobia? How do you know when your fear has reached a point where it is controlling you, instead of the other way around? There are several signs that you may need help controlling your fear. Some of those signs are that it is causing debilitating fear or anxiety, you find yourself avoiding certain situation and places that no one else seems to have a problem with, or when the phobia had lasted for at least six months.

The best thing to help you get over a phobia is through self-help. As this has a higher chance of helping you because you have the power, this is usually the preferred method for treating a fear or phobia. If you find yourself making the fear worse, or the anxiety from the fear is worse, then it is always best to seek therapy from someone else.

When you are trying to do self-help, there are several tips tat can help you along the way. The first step is to face your fears. The key to this is to slowly introduce the fear into your life and work on how to handle the anxiety before you put yourself into the situation again. The second tip is to learn to calm yourself down quickly. This can be anything from doing deep breathing exercises to engaging one of your other senses. The third tip is to challenge any negative thought. This means to analyze the thought and find any evidence of the contrary. The final tip is to seek help if you need it. This is the hardest step for some people because they feel as though their fear is not worth the help, or that the other person may find their fear to be something that isn’t worth the help. For example, someone who has a fear of heights may think that someone is going to laugh at them when they say that they are afraid to drive over a bridge because it is too high off the ground.