Fear is one of the most powerful human feelings. And it's good when he can save you from a big trouble, turning on the body's defenses in time. But what if he uses these forces where there is no real danger?
Is there a reason for fear
When, in addition to desire, fear appears in a person, which is not associated with the instinct of self-preservation, this means that he has become a victim of a phobia. Such fear is usually devoid of valid reasons. In fact, it is a pathological condition and is expressed in an inadequate response to the source of concern.
No matter how clearly a person is aware that his fear is in vain, he will not be able to cope with it on his own. It is the preservation of consciousness and the absence of delusions and visions that make it possible to separate phobias from more serious disorders such as paranoia or schizophrenia.
The mechanics of the occurrence of phobias in our days has not yet been sufficiently studied, however, people at risk are already known to science. The harsh truth is that more than 80% of people subject to unreasonable fear acquired this trait by inheritance.
Their parents were distinguished by their tendency to be afraid of everything in the world and involuntarily instilled in their children the idea that the world was extremely dangerous for them. Also, the cause of the appearance of a phobia can be an injury received in childhood or even in adulthood - the death of a relative, an attack, a car accident.
Doctors do not recommend using drugs to treat phobias. The risk of dependence on special drugs in patients is too great. The best way to influence those who are prone to phobias, psychotherapy sessions are recognized. After they are carried out, patients gain confidence in the safety of frightening situations and develop ways of behavior during moments of phobic attacks.
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To achieve these goals, patients are treated with a method of immersion in a phobia that torments them: when faced with danger, patients learn to regain a sense of reality, reduce stress levels and respond more naturally to the source of fear.
What can you be scared of
Numerous phobias afflict a noticeable part of people living on the globe. In total, 10% of the world's population is exposed to them. Moreover, women get sick much more often than men - in any case, they are four times more likely to turn to doctors for help.
The variety of human fears is very extensive: today psychiatrists know more than 300 types of them. It would be impossible to understand so many phobias without dividing them into groups. The most famous classification includes eight main types of phobic disorders.
The first type is social phobia - people who are afraid of any action in public life, from public speaking to the need to go to the toilet in front of others.
Representatives of another type are panicked not by people, but by space: agoraphobes are horrified by large open areas, and claustrophobes, on the contrary, from a closed small room, such as an elevator.
Another type includes those who in every possible way avoid sexual manifestations of any kind. An example of such a disorder is coitophobia, in other words, the fear of sexual intercourse, which mainly affects women.
During periods of mass epidemics, all kinds of fears associated with diseases are exacerbated - the most famous is nosophobia, the fear of becoming a victim of any ailment. Next to this is another group - thanatophobes, people who fear death and everything connected with it.
A separate type of fear is the fear of people to harm their loved ones or themselves.
There is also a group of phobias called contrast phobias - they combine fears of inappropriateness, for example, the fear of a well-mannered person to do something indecent in public. The last type - phobophobia (there are some) - includes the actual fear of experiencing fear.
It is curious that phobic disorders will bypass the elderly: in the absence of treatment, the phobia continues to torment the patient until about 50 years of age, after which it gradually fades away.
The strangest and funniest
In the list of phobias, in addition to common ones (fear of heights, darkness, airplanes, snakes and dogs), one can also find those that seem to be invented specifically for the entertainment of a healthy part of humanity. However, as strange as the phobia may seem, it causes a lot of inconvenience to those suffering from it.
For example, trypophobia can confuse a cluster of small holes in one place. People suffering from this phobia are deprived of the pleasure of eating honeycomb or cheese. Sponges for washing cause no less disgust. These innocent objects can cause nausea, itching all over the body, and even suffocation.
Probably, pediophobia - the fear of dolls - grew out of children's fears. Those who are exposed to it are not afraid of scary doll monsters at all - their fear extends to cute dolls and graceful Barbies.
The whole trouble is due to the fact that, in fact, pediophobes are afraid of any artificial model of a person, and therefore robots, and even store mannequins, terrify them.
The scientific name for the fear of long words speaks for itself - hippopotomistroseskippedalophobia. Anyone suffering from this fear tries in any way to avoid meeting with polysyllabic, intricate words.
Sometimes among phobic disorders one comes across completely absurd, in the opinion of an ordinary person, fears. Omphalophobes are capable of being afraid of one type of human navel. They cannot stand someone else's touch to their own navel and they themselves will never touch this part of the body of others.
In extreme form, the patient is panicked even by the thought of navels.
Those who in childhood often listened to the fairy tale "Wild Swans", where the wicked witch made the princes into birds, may well acquire avidsophobia - the fear of turning into a bird.
But the first place in the rating of absurd disorders, of course, is occupied by luposlipaphobia - the fear of attack by wolves at the very moment when the patient walks in socks around the table on waxed parquet. The causes of this mysterious phobia to this day remain unknown to psychiatrists around the world.
Celebrities are afraid too
Many historical figures suffered from phobias - probably because people with an extraordinary psyche are more susceptible to various neurotic states. In some cases, even those who were reputed to be experts in mental disorders were afflicted with the disease.
Phobias did not pass and the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud: he possessed a whole bunch of various fears. Freud, for example, was terrified of traveling by train - he invented all sorts of ways of getting around, just not to get into a railway carriage.
In addition, the classic of psychoanalysis was terrified of any kind of weapon. And the strangest of his phobias was the fear of ferns - the scientist's biographers believe that he acquired it as a result of some childhood experiences.
Hollywood master Alfred Hitchcock, who so skillfully immersed the viewer in his movie nightmares, suffered from ovophobia all his life - a hatred of oval objects that seemed repulsive to him. The "thriller father" had a particular dislike for chicken eggs because of their oval shape. In his entire life, the director did not eat a single egg, since their appearance inspired him with disgust.
The inventor Nikola Tesla felt free in his scientific laboratory, but, leaving it, he succumbed to bouts of germophobia - fear of germs, also called cleanliness disease. The physicist in every possible way avoided touching other people and objects, each of which, in his opinion, was teeming with dangerous microorganisms.
Like everyone susceptible to this disorder, the scientist often washed his hands, but this did not help - the world for him still remained full of dirt.
The "disease of false fear" has not escaped modern celebrities. Johnny Depp suffers from a fear of clowns and other painted faces. By his own admission, it seems to him that under the bright make-up there is no face, and if there is, it is the face of Satan.
It's amazing how the actor for several years in a row played the flaunting Jack Sparrow with a painted face in the films "Pirates of the Caribbean".
Football star David Beckham absolutely hates mess. A thing lying out of place can cause him a state of panic, and so strong that a football player immediately rushes to put it in place.
And actress Nicole Kidman suffers from lepidopterophobia - a fear of butterflies. It is not known how these adorable creatures cause her fear, but Nicole cannot even bring herself to enter the house if a fragile and adorable insect crouched at the entrance.
Of course, no matter how funny phobias may look, it should be remembered that this is a neurotic disorder that requires treatment by a psychiatrist.
Ekaterina Kravtsova, "Secrets of the XX century" magazine, October 2016