What makes you fear things?

Question

how do you get a phobia, what triggers the fear.
if you have not got a phobia can you catch it from someone else.

for example my sister have a phobia of spiders and lately i have been scared of them as well is it that im seeing her anxiety and taking the fear on.

Answer 1

Colin, these are great questions. Here's your answer...

Fear is a survival instinct response to potential harm or loss. When we perceive something with that kind of danger, to protect us our brain causes the whole body reaction that we recognize as fear.

A phobia is a behavior pattern based on fear. For example, you see a spider, believe it could harm or kill you, and you react with fear. This may be based on misinformation. The spider may be harmless, even beneficial as it traps and eats other pest insects. Regardless, if you react with fear enough times, your cerebral cortex will create a physical neural pathway to make the reaction more automatic and efficient. At that point you have established a relatively permanent fear of spiders reaction...a phobia.

Because of the neural pathway, these are very hard to undo. It takes courage and a lot of experimentation and constant reinforcement to relearn about spiders, establishing a new neural pathway. If you don't learn a new behavior reaction pattern, you'll continue to have the phobia.

My advice is, get some good information about spiders ASAP, before you ingrain the same pattern that your sister did. Maybe the new knowledge will start to help her, too. I hope this answer helps.

Answer 2

I used to be terrified of spiders - triggered from when I was a kid and a spider I thought was dead suddenly jumped up and ran across my foot. I got over the phobia by watching that horror film about spiders ironically... by watching it I realised what exactly it was that I didn't like (spiders suddenly being there) and learnt to deal with it, such as now I expect to see a spider in the bathtub... that way when it's there, it doesn't bother me at all, hence the fear has totally gone. Phobia is an irrational trigger from something... find out what it is, the fear goes.

Answer 3

For the most part our imaginations, the anticipation of all the worst-case scenarios. We easily psych ourselves out, ignoring facts and truth's. There are healthy fears but they're probably less than 2% of what we actually fear. "Most of our adult fears are like the childhood's "boogieman", merely a conglomeration of sinister shadows void of reality". Our imaginations are perhaps our greatest gift but it can definitely be our worst enemy if we don't respect and guide it's potential.

Answer 4

Its the 'unknown'

Not knowing about the thing that you are afraid of....