Fear versus Phobia

We all fear something...a phobia is essentially a deeply rooted fear that has no basis in fact. A fear becomes a phobia when one, confronted with the object of fear, enters into a panic state. This panic state can be anything from hysterics to 'freezing'. A phobia can also be contributed to by paranoia...a certainty that if such and such happened the result will be disasterous to the person experiencing the phobia. Phobias can be incapactitating, simple fears over come. Phobics can be 'healed' and become functional in the area of the phobia, but they will rarely completely over come the fear.

my mother has fear from caterpillars,especially the brown one oftenly found in guava tree we call it here in the philippines as (dadangkal), i do not know why she is afraid of that thing, everytime we show caterpillars to her, she scream and shout, and almost catch her breath,,,until now she is afraid of it, she is almost 60 yrs old, we dont know how she will overcome that fear...

I think fear becomes a phobia, when you have a panic response to whatever it is that you're afraid of. I have claustrophobia, and my husband has arachnophobia. We don't have any poisonous spiders (or even spiders that bite) where we live, but he starts sweating, hopping up on furniture and screaming at me to get spiders out of the house when he sees them. I feel the same way in elevators; I can force myself into them using reason if I have to, but the second the doors seem to be taking too long to open, I feel the adrenaline coursing through my body and my throat constricting.

Yeah no kidding! I am emetophobic (phobic of puking) and it gets to me when others say "well no one likes to puke" or "no one wants to be around anyone that is sick like that"... it's much more than that for me! I wish people would get it through their thick skulls that what I suffer from is WORSE than just not like being around anyone who is puking! It freaks me out and I play the whole damn event over and over again! I admit I even resent the person who was sick because it just feels like to me they committed the worst crime in the world! And I KNOW it's irrational but I can't help it! I really don't see any way of overcoming this phobia because I have tried everything! I am doomed with it for life I am afraid.

Im only scared of two kinds of spiders the Black Widow & the brown recluse, because they are the only ones that can hurt you around here, A few weeks ago I had fixed myself something to drink I sat my drink down then picked it up agian a few minutes later put it up to my mouth and there was a giant spider in it... it must have drop from the ceiling...It was brown, I never actually seen a brown recluse, so i looked it up on the internet... and to my horror i seen that it was a brown recluse... Other than that im insanely afriad of hieghts...roller coasters(that go upside down)oh and flying

i have agoraphobia(fear of the public) i am 30 years old, married and have 3 kids. it is so hard to deal with. i am on meds but they dont help much. i would really like to talk to someone who has had this and has gotten over it. alot of people say it is all in my head. well i am very out going and i dont understand why when i got into a car accident ( i was 2 months preg.) neither of us got hurt, but sense then it has gotten alot worse. my husbad is my safe person and i have to be able to get a hold of him 24 7. i dont like that i want to be able to do for myself and my kids. i love my hubby but i dont want to have to need him.

I have heard that the only two "natural fears" that humans have are of heights and loud noises. I forgot where I heard this but I always took it to heart.My irrational fear is flooding,lol, I guess you could say, i always think i hear water running when it isn't.

I think fears is just something you're afraid of, but some people have phobias where I swear, they'd collapse or have a cardiac arrest. Like I'm scared of snakes and stuff, but I wouldn't just lose all my marbles because of it. I have a friend who is closterphobic and she seriously freaks out when she's surrounded by crowds of people. She has to be by herself for a while, and she seriously starts shaking.

I am arachnophobic. I couldn't even look at your entire post, i had to hide the picture of the spider!!! I can't look at them, can't kill them, can't certainly not touch them, and when one is on me, i'm close to fainting. I cry and become dizzy until it's off of me, and even then, i'm shaking all over and have the cold sweats. I don't know why, but it's just like that. Once, there was one in my bedroom, i must've been around 15 yrs old, and my parents were out at a wedding. I waited, sitting on the edge of my bed, not to lose sight of it, for about 3 hours, until they got back ,and then asked my dad to kill it. Once, my worse fear came true; i was taking a shower, and there was one in the tub!!! I literally freaked, my husband came running, and i was stuck in the corner, crying. He killed it, and i stayed in the corner for about 5 minutes, to let the shakes pass me by... it's really bad. I'd want to post a spider pic in this reply, but can't bring myself to look at them, so forget it!

i have a fear... i know.. its not a fear of failure or rejection... i fear that i might be misunderstood. i choose my words cautiously and think several times before saying anything for fear that the other person may misunderstand me. i dont know what phobia it is but then.. i am no longer worried about it. i dont know how i overcome it. but i think its better said and discussed rather than not said at all.

I have a real phobia of dogs. If I see one on the side of the street I'm walking on, I'll cross the street or I'll just turn back if that's not possible. It's absolutely not possible for me to be in the same room as a dog and I panic when I see one. It's possible they're not going to harm me, but I'm afraid of them. I sometimes start to hyperventilate too, which is really horrible. The dogs sense it and that's even worse, because they are getting restless and that bothers me too. Best for me just not to get in contact with dogs.

phobia is one type of desease, which is caused because of some previous incident, fear is some thing we might have faced or heard about it, we will get fear even if you hear some thing unusual, inorder to overcome a phobia we need to undergo proper training, we need to face the problem efficiently, then we can overcome the fear or phobia

I have a small phobia against spiders (unless they are the size of ants...) and centipedes. I paralyze almost completely and start sweating (only a bit) when they come close to me. And I can't kill them! I can control myself enough to not show my phobia. For spiders I've gain this fear since I've learned there's poisonous spiders. That's silly, here in Portugal there are no poisonous spiders, but I was paranoid about it when I was, like 4 or 5. And I've stayed the same way. As for centipedes, I've gained the fear when I was around 10. My house (and particular my room) is always full of centipedes. I have to kill almost one every night. One day I was sleeping and a centipede fall from above to my face. That was enough to paralyze me completely when I watch one in the ceiling. When I was young I remember watching two centipedes crawling around my ceiling the whole night, in order to prevent from a fall in my face. That's silly! Now I drag the bed a little away from the wall :P

I have a phobia of flying. It came from a bad experience from a flight I had two years ago. I had flown many times before that and had loved it. After the bad flight however I became petrified. It was on the way to spain two years ago and we flew through an electric storm over the alps. It was terrrifying. What I remember the most was that one of the air stewardesses was crying she was that scared. We were up and down like a yo-yo and there were many shrieks of fear and terror every time we dropped. The captain had to talk to us for most of the flight to reassure us. Whilst going through it I realised there was nothing I could do about it and there was no way out of the situation. I missed the flight on the way home as I had a panic attack and had to catch a flight the next day. The only reason I got on the plane back was because my sister went into labour and I knew I had to get back to be there for her. For a while I had a phobia of travelling full stop, trains, cars, buses - I think it was being in a enclosed space with no control over your surroundings. I have since conquered my fear of travelling by road, am still worried about trains and have not conquered my phobia of flying and haven't flown since. Any tips?

I have horror the cockroachs. I believe that I am as one imã for them. Therefore they always come to me as if I was I feed or similar thing. I have I do not have fear of cockroachs, but yes mourning, horror, terror. I believe that it is something well stronger than only fear.

I have also fear from spiders and cockroaches..if I get to know that there is one in the room of mine then the whole night will get spoiled for me.I can't sleep ,every time there is a feeling that there is something on my feet.I can't do anything to get out of that fear even I know that it can't get to me..

i fear snakes.i will not walk or hike in the woods an going fishing scares me im always looking for snakes to come out of the water.ill never overcome this.

if you give too much importance to fear it becomes phobia.it becomes an obsession.your mind gets 100% engaged in the thoughts of the things that maked you feel weird.i have no fear for spider.infact its very interesting if you carefully observe it.they are very shy in nature and are harmless unless you dont harm them.most of them dont even contain poison.in order to overcome fear there is only one way,that is to face it.gather strength stand in front of spider and watch it carefully.keep safe distance so that it dont gets nervous seeing you.first experiment with the common spiders,and i rather advice you to stay away from poisonous spiders cause they fear you more than you fear them and they can be dangerous if you get too much near to them because they may bite you for self-defence.i have only one fear and that is of height,but now i dont have because i spent 4 hours standing on the top corner of a 15-storied builing and i was continiously looking down.now i dont fear height that much.the secret to remove fear is to face the fear safely.all the best.

i do not overcome it.. it just stays there.. i am always afraid of my fears specifically insects such as cockroach and spiders...

I think fear is only related to the mind... for example , when some one says that they are afraid of the dark, it means that they are not actually afraid of the dark, but the things they can encounter in the dark!!! thats is the base for their fears... i think that any fear can be cured...