Phobias

Behavioural Characteristic: Panic

Person may panic in the presence of the phobic stimulus. This can involve a range of behaviours: crying, screaming, running away, etc. Children may react by freezing or having a tantrum.

Behavioural Characteristic: Avoidance

A person will usually go through a lot of effort to avoid a phobic stimulus, making it hard to go about daily life in some cases. Fear of public toilets → not using a public toilet → making it harder for them to stay out in public for too long.

Behavioural Characteristic: Endurance

A person chooses to remain around phobic stimulus. E.g. a person with arachnophobia choosing to stay by a spider and watch it as opposed to leaving.

Emotional Characteristic: Anxiety

Phobias = anxiety disorders. The anxiety prevents a person from relaxing and makes it hard to experience positive emotions. The anxiety can be long term.

Emotional Characteristic: Fear

The extremely unpleasant & immediate response to the phobic stimulus that one experiences when they think about/encounter the phobic stimulus. It’s more intense, but for a less long period, than anxiety

Emotional Response = Unreasonable

The anxiety/fear is worse than ‘normal’ and is disproportionate to the situation. E.g. a person with arachnophobia will have a stronger response to a tiny spider than the usual person would.

Cognitive Characteristic: Selective Attention to PS

Hard to look away from phobic stimulus. Keeping attention on a threat would be helpful, if it were not disproportionate. E.g. a person with arachnophobia won’t be able to concentrate if there’s a spider in the room.

Cognitive Characteristic: Irrational Beliefs

A person may have unfounded thoughts surrounding PS that have no factual basis/explanation. E.g. Social phobias: ‘if i blush people will think I’m weak.’ → increases pressure in social situations.

Cognitive Characteristics: Cognitive Distortions

Their perceptions may be distorted, such as a person with mycophobia seeing mushrooms as disgusting.