Indiana Jones was afraid of snakes, Andre Agassi is afraid of spiders, Steven Spielberg is afraid of insects and Whoopi Goldberg is afraid of flying. If you're afraid of something, you're in good company. In fact, 50 per cent of us have a specific fear and as many as 11 per cent of us will develop a phobia at some point in our lives.
Common fears and phobias include: heights, blood, enclosed spaces, animals, and flying. Regardless of what frightens you, it's important to know that you can overcome your fears.
Understanding fears -- Why are we afraid?
"Fear is a normal emotional expression that everyone has," says Dr. Mitchell Schare, director of Hofstra University's Phobia & Trauma Clinic in New York. "Fears are helpful to us at times. For example, we should have a fear of driving too fast on a rain-slicked highway. That helps keep us alive."
What's the difference between a fear and a phobia?
A phobia, continues Schare, is when the fear becomes too extreme. Appropriate fear is one thing, but when the fear escalates to a point where that fear alters and affects your everyday life, you may be suffering from a phobia.
In the driving scenario Schare mentioned earlier, the fear wouldn't escalate to a phobia unless you started to avoid driving altogether, even when you know there's a low probability of an accident. Similarly, if you were humiliated or embarrassed in a specific social situation, you might find yourself avoiding all social situations, despite the low possibility of another embarrassment.
Phobias can be identified as social phobias (where people are overwhelmingly anxious and excessively self-conscious in social situations) and specific phobias (fear of the dentist, flying, bugs, animals, driving).
It's easy to relate to the fear of public speaking or snakes, but what about phobias that, to most of us, seem completely irrational? These include: coulrophobia (fear of clowns), ergophobia (fear of work), gymnophobia (fear of nudity), and pupaphobia (fear of puppets).
"Probably the most common factor in phobias of all kinds is an event or situation that might not seem, on the face of it, non-threatening," says Dr. Patrick Keelan, a psychologist for the Calgary Counselling Centre. "Something negative happens in the presence of those people or that object and then that neutral stimulus becomes associated with negativity. Suddenly you start to fear the neutral stimulus."
An extremely negative experience with a clown might trigger a fear that eventually blossoms into a full-blown phobia.
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