Track 16

Unit 3

psychology

phobias

pages 26 and 27

Listen for main ideas and listen for details.

Hello everyone.

Today were going to set an interesting topic and psychology.

Phobias

The first learn about types of phobias and then the causes of phobias and the treatment of phobias.

The first definition clear. A phobia is a fear, yes, but a phobia is an un-normal fear is an extreme fear, is basically a very strong, very focused fear.

There are two main kinds of phobias.

One is a specific phobia like the fear of a dog and the second type is a situational phobia like the fear of public speaking and important thing to remember we all have some fears spots natural, but phobia is much stronger came.

Sometimes it can be so constant, or it can be so serious that it interferes with a person’s life

and some kind of treatment may be necessary. For example, one of my clients, I’ll call her Maria. She is to have a phobia of elevators so situational phobia.

She could ride an elevator without being terrified. Sometimes you panic and start breathing fast, as soon as she got into an elevator.

After a while she refused to ride in any elevators at all, even if she had to walk up 20 flights of stairs.

She would do just that in order to avoid being in an elevator. Her life was changed by the phobia.

Alright so we have a basic definition of a phobia in extreme fear and one that interferes with the person’s life.

Okay, let’s go a little deeper into our definition of phobia here. Psychologists have come up with three characteristics of a phobia.

These characteristics help us to understand the difference between a phobia and a normal fear.

First, a phobia is a rational response. It’s a very strong reaction too strong for the situation.

For my patient Maria who was afraid of elevators. This meant she had a very strong physical reaction, if someone even asked her to get onto an elevator.

She stopped sweating and shaking, not a rational response. This characteristic is this the duration is long a phobia often lasts for a long time.

It may last several years, or even a person’s whole life. And third, the reaction is too strong for the person to control.

For example, for Maria, even though what you told yourself not to be afraid to ride in the elevator?

It didn’t help. She still felt very scared. No matter what she did. Her fear was controllable.

Okay, so those are the three characteristics of the phobia. It’s in a rational response. It’s long-lasting and it’s uncontrollable.

Now, spend a minute going over some types of common phobias. It’s important to understand that phobias are classified by the thing or situation that the person fears.

Greek or Latin names are usually used to describe the fear. So, here are some examples have no HYP and O means sleep so fear of sleep is phobia.

sign no see why and O means dog, so a fear of dogs is Seinfeld.

Maria’s phobia is known as claustrophobia fear being enclosed places that CL a you STRO very common phobia, I might add.

Now to the causes of phobias.

One theory is that a phobia is learned.

This means that something happens that causes somebody to feel afraid.

for example, someone would have learned to be afraid of dogs. If he were attacked and injured by a dog as a child.

This is an example of direct learning. People can also might have phobias indirectly by watching how other people react.

For example, let’s imagine a young man will call him David.

David’s mother had always been afraid of dogs. Whenever David and his mother were together and I saw a dog.

His mother would get very scared even panicked when David saw how his mother reacted, he became very scared too.

He developed the same phobia.

phobia from watching his mother. In fact, psychologists find that phobias tend to run in families. That is, they tend to be learned in the same way among family members.

The second theory about how phobias develop is the Association theory. The theory says that a phobia is usually the result of a trauma or difficult experience that occurred in childhood.

In other words, an adult associates a particular object or situation with the past trauma.

For example, one of my patients was very afraid of the dark. After some therapy sessions, we discovered that his father used to put him in a closet as punishment when he was young.

Now this man associates being in the job with this terrible childhood experience.

So those of the two theories:

1) phobia can be learned and

2) that a phobia is caused by an association with an unpleasant memory or event from our past.

But there’s hope here we have treatments for phobias.

What you think these treatments are?

first psychologists know that if a phobia has been learned can usually be unlearned. In other words, a person can learn how to change a certain behavior.

This unlearning is usually done step-by-step so that a person will gradually lose their deep fear.

Second, if the phone is a sign of a deeper psychological problem than the psychologist can help the patient to become aware of this deeper problem. that awareness can lead to getting rid of the phobia for good.

Enough for now.

Are there any questions; any questions set off.