Fear And Phobias What is your greatest fear? Do you know the answer? A lot of people don’t. We just know that we sometimes feel fear and most people don’t like it. Sometimes, people like the feeling of fear. Have you ever heard the term “adrenaline junkie”? That’s those people that like fear. In this article, I will tell you everything you need to know about fear and phobias. Fear The Origin and Reasons of Fear The sensation of fear is related to 2 parts of the brain, the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. The prefrontal cortex is the body’s “hub of safety” if you will.
It receives stimuli and determines whether it’s potentially dangerous, and sends signals to different parts of the brain to release adrenaline, hence the term “adrenaline junkie”. This release of adrenaline is called the “fight or flight response”. The amygdala, part of the limbic system, controls all strong emotions. It is what stores strong points of fear, causing us to have a phobia of that situation. It automatically sends a signal to the prefrontal cortex , which causes the prefrontal cortex to invoke the fight-or-flight response.
This happens when the phobic gets near, sees, or, in severe cases, thinks about the thing they are phobic towards. Picture of the limbic system. http://download. videohelp. com/vitualis/med/stria_terminalis. gif Death by Fear Yes, it is possible to die of fear. Usually, people who die of fear are old or have an underlying heart condition. What happens is you get scared enough to release a lot of adrenaline, causing your heart to overload on adrenaline, causing a heart attack. To Fear or Not To Fear
Fearlessness has been achieved. It was found in a study of rats that stimulating the prefrontal cortex caused the rats to not feel afraid. They did this by making a bell tone, followed by an electric shock to the feet. This conditioned the rats to tense at the sound of a bell. They then put the rats in two groups. One of the groups they rang a bell without the shock, and some of the rats no longer tensed. In the other group, they stimulated the prefrontal cortex, and the rats acted like they had never been shocked.
They have not tried it on humans but in the future it might be possible to be totally fearless. Phobias Causes of Phobias Phobias can be caused by an experience that caused you some form of harm, or was very traumatising. The amygdala stores this experience and causes you to be afraid in situations like it. For example, getting attacked by a dog can cause you to have a phobia towards dogs. Kinds of Phobias and Top 10 Phobias There are more than 625 phobias in the world. We are not positive how many phobias there are because people can fear anything.
There are many of them, but these 12 are the ones that really stuck in my mind: Achluophobia- fear of darkness, Agateophobia- fear of insanity, Barophobia- fear of gravity, Chronophobia- fear of time, Coulrophobia-fear of clowns, Daemonophobia- fear of demons, Didoskaleinophobia- fear going to school, Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalio- fear of long words, Necrophobia- fear of deaths, Phobophobia- fear of phobias, Xanthophobia- fear of the color yellow, Zeusophobia- fear of god.
The top 10 phobias are in order as follows: Arachnophobia- fear of spiders Social Phobias- fear of negative evaluated negatively in social situations Aerophobia- fear of flying Agoraphobia- fear of leaving home because of frequent panic attacks Claustrophobia- fear of being in enclosed spaces Acrophobia- fear of heights Emetophobia- fear of vomit Carcinophobia- fear of cancer Brontophobia- fear of thunderstorms Necrophobia- fear of death Origin of the Word Phobia
The word phobia originated from the Greek god of fear, Phobos. So I bet you know a lot about fear and phobias, right? I hope so, because I have just given you a combination of information from a few sites. However, if you want to learn more, here are a few sites to help you: Fredd Culbertson “The Phobia List” 1995 (23 Sept. 2009) Jan Heering “Top Ten Most Common Phobias” Phobia Fear Release 2009 (25 Sept. 2009) D’Arcy Lyness “Fears and Phobias” 2007 (2 Oct. 2009)
