Op-ed: Ahhhhh! Ways of phobias

You are sitting outside on a nice Fall day watching all the clouds in the sky, sounds pretty nice, right? Wrong. All of a sudden you feel little drops of rain running down your face, some might ignore them but others get quite frightened by this. “Why?” you ask, the answer is simple.

Phobias are types of anxiety disorders that are defined by a persistent fear of an object or situation. If you look up “phobias” you would come across hundreds of them, all of which were reported to psychologists. It is known that most fears are learned other than the few that make sense such as falling or loud noises. A person who has a phobia would go out of their way just to avoid it.

The phobias split into categories one, specific or simple phobias which involve a fear about specific objects. The next, social phobia where the person will find being in social situations is difficult and the last, agoraphobia where the person is frightened of being in a situation where you can not get out. Causes of these phobias remain unknown, some may come from traumatic experiences while others are less clear.

Having a phobia myself causes me to view the topic differently than others, having astraphobia (frightened by thunder and lightning) causes me to see phobias as a real thing that multiple people have. Phobias occur in real life, many if not all people have them. Not only do they affect you by causing you to stay away from the fear but that could also cause problems when it comes to important opportunities for school or for a job.

People see phobias as ways that people use to get out of a situation they do not like or so they can exaggerate to others even if they do not actually have the phobia. Many other people say that phobias can easily be cured if the people would just go to doctors, the problem with that is phobias can not get treated or cured with medicine. 

Fears will have to mentally go away before the person can physically surround himself with the fear. The only option to lose the fear would be to see a therapist so that they could help to try to control it without making it too stressful on the person.

Knowing that people out there in the world view phobias as weird or think that they are not real upsets me. All people are scared of something, it could be as simple as bugs to as big as thunder it still counts and it is very hard to overcome.

This op-ed represents the opinion of its listed author. It does not necessarily reflect the position of the Lampeter-Strasburg School District, the LSNews.org editorial board, or its advisor. Questions or concerns can be directed to lspioneernews@gmail.com.

--Kaitlyn Fisher, Special to LSNews.org
Edited: JM

Popular posts from this blog

Rumble Fish Book Review

Advice: How to get straight As

Book Review: Read the story of 14-year-old 'Tex' an aimless, trouble-prone youth