It might be an inexplicable fear of wide open spaces, or dreading being stuffed in a closet. It could be the dark, or heights, or something more unconventional like balloons. Chances are, you’ve experienced some sort of irrational fear at least once in your life. But what happens when that fear goes too far?
“The movie James and the Giant Peach ruined my life,” said third-year art history student Leona Nikolic. She said she was terrified of the character Miss Spider when she saw the film at age three and, she cried every time she saw spider.
“If there was a spider in the house, my mom would have to come home to kill it for me,” Nikolic said. To this day, she avoids the creatures as much as possible.
Identifying phobias
Many people are scared of spiders, but what makes Nikolic’s fear different from a phobia? “It affects her life. That’s what makes a difference,” said Karinna Nájera, a clinical hypnotherapist who has treated patients with phobias. Nájera, who has worked in counselling for over 13 years, is part of the Focus on Change hypnotherapy clinic in Ottawa.
“We all have fears,” Nájera said. “The difference between a fear and a phobia is [a phobia] is out of control.” Phobias can stop people from entering certain rooms of their home, or even from leaving their home at all, Nájera said. Patients with phobias often have anxiety as well, she said. Nájera said this was especially common in clients with a fear of vomiting.
Nájera herself used to have a phobia of snakes. She couldn’t even look at cartoon pictures of snakes as a child, she said. As an adult, her fear stopped her from taking her kids to the park or on camping trips.
Most people try to rationalize their fear and don’t think about treating it, Nájera said. However, some phobias can have drastic consequences and require treatment. One of Nájera’s clients had both a terrible fear of needles and a tumor in her spinal cord.
“She was willing to die,” Nájera said. “She said she’d rather die than have blood tests and intravenous [procedures] done.”
Eventually, with Nájera’s help, the client was able to face her fear and undergo treatment for the tumor. Nájera uses hypnotherapy as a tool against phobias. She usually only needs to see clients two or three times before they are ready to face their phobia. The treatment has a 90 per cent success rate said Nájera.
“Most of us have something that we fear,” said Connie Dalton, a clinical psychologist at the Ottawa Institute of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. “But if it doesn’t affect someone’s life, it doesn’t really make a difference.” A phobia is really just a fear that has become a disorder, Dalton said.
Evolving to fear
A recent survey in the U.S. found that 60 percent of people feared a specific situation or animal, Dalton said. In her experience, the most common phobias are of bugs, mice, bats, heights, and closed-in spaces.
There are theories that some types of phobias occur because of evolution, Dalton said. We have an instinctual sensitivity to certain dangerous things, she explained.
“If you think about this from a prehistoric, or evolutionary perspective, some of the things we’re afraid of make a lot of sense to be afraid of,” she said. These are usually fears of animals that may be poisonous, like Nikolic’s fear of spiders. Other phobias can be learned as a child, Dalton said. If a parent obviously fears something, their child likely will too.
Phobias can also be the result of misinformation, and get worse as people avoid what they fear, Dalton said. Most people she sees have a reason they need to overcome their fear, she said. For example, if a businessperson with a fear of flying just got a promotion that involves a lot of travel, their phobia would clearly be interfering with their work life.
Treatment
Treatments for phobias are very well-developed, Dalton said. Another option is simply exposure to whatever it is the person fears. This is the most effective type of treatment, she said. People with phobias have a 75 to 90 percent chance of improving after exposure treatment, she said. Exposure treatment means a therapist helps the client slowly get more and more comfortable facing their fear, she said.
For example, consider someone with arachnophobia, a phobia of spiders. A therapist would start the patient’s therapy by making them look at pictures of spiders. Next, they’d be made to sit in a room with a spider in a jar. Ideally, by the end of their treatment, the patient would be comfortable having a spider crawl on them.
This happened naturally for Nikolic last summer when she worked painting houses. She had to swat spiders away from the houses all the time, so she’s gotten better at dealing with them, she said. But that doesn’t mean she ever wants to go to therapy and have one crawl on her.
“I wouldn’t be cool with that,” she said. Her fear of spiders does not affect her life enough to make her want to change it, she said.
“I would rather be afraid of spiders than have to be exposed to them,” she said.
