Anxiety Disorders Phobia Essay Sample

The reading informs us about the types of anxiety disorders, and an explanation of how to detect simple anxiety from the certain state when it transfers into a disorder. One of anxiety disorders is phobia, this is a permanent state when a person has a strong fear of other people, objects, or actions.
Many people can live with their phobias, or better say learned how to live with them, so they would not face much inconveniences. Others, incapable to accept or fight their fears may turn the situation into much worse state. It is extremely difficult to control your emotions if you are trapped in the situation when something terrible in your own opinion is happening, but you have to calm down and take the control over yourself. As an example the author supports this idea with the story of Maryling, young healthy woman whose fear of thunderstorm is so strong, that she feels anxiety even if she finds out about the possibility of the forthcoming storm.
Some of the phobias are specific, like the fear of insects, blood, dark, height and so on. The author provides the results of quite an interesting survey, the respondents had to choose what their biggest fear is from such selection: being alone, storms, water, close spaces, flying, blood, height or animals. "Being alone" got fewer results, the most popular answer was "animals", which is quite surprising for me, because of the popular opinion that people love animals. On the contrary, what they do not want to face more than anything is to be left alone, without a family, or even worse - to die alone. This idea leads us to social phobia, which is usually comes out as the fear of public performances, overcrowded places, eating out alone, or another one that was presented in the popular TV series The Big Bang Theory, the fear of talking to females.
Phobias cause panic attacks, and in my opinion, may be related to other types of anxiety disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder. As an example I would like to mention The Witches of Eastvick movie, when Daryl, the lead character, asked the ladies about their phobias, which where the fear of snakes, fear of getting old and the fear of excruciating pain. In a certain period of time Daryl uses his powers in order to remind them about their fears. One of the women watches the video where she tells what her biggest fear is, and right after that she has the illusion of her being 40 years older. The other lady who has Ophidiophobia wakes up in the bed full of snakes, it is difficult to tell whether it was only a dream, but this illusion causes a panic attack, hallucinations, she starts running and screaming, until her friend calms her down.
According to the text, the more anxious we feel about a subject, the more chances we have to turn our phobia into the worse state, which will cause panic attacks only if we think about the situation that is related to panic in our own perception. Such actions, or better say inactions against this mental state may lead to agoraphobia, fear of having a panic attack in public, and this often leads to reclusion.
After reading this article I am convinced that it is really important to fight your fears, and to help others doing the same.