We all have fears in this life. It is natural for people to have fears. People must feel fear in order to escape dangerous situations. But if these fears are felt when they are not in danger, they can impair quality of life. This type of fear that is felt for no apparent reason and while being safe is called phobia. People may be afraid of certain things for no reason because of some of their phobias. In this article, we will learn how to overcome phobia which negatively affects our lives.
What Is Phobia
A phobia is an unreasonable fear of something. In addition, phobias negatively affect people’s daily lives. The word phobia comes from the Greek word Phobos. Phobos is the god of fear in Greek mythology. Phobias can occur at any time in our lives. In fact, sometimes people do not discover their phobias because they have not encountered situations where they have phobias. Some phobias are acquired in childhood. Examples of these are animal phobias and phobias against objects. The severity of such phobias usually decreases over time and may disappear in adulthood. But there are more complex phobias than these.
Symptoms of Phobias
The symptoms of phobias are very similar to the symptoms felt in anxiety disorder. Sometimes more severe symptoms may occur in addition to anxiety in phobias. In the moment of fear triggered by phobias, symptoms such as heart palpitations, sweating and shortness of breath may occur.
Having phobias in daily life can also exhaust people psychologically. The presence of phobias in social environments is an obstacle to people in many activities. People with a fear of heights may have a hard time traveling. For people who are afraid of animals, walking in a park is quite difficult. For someone who is afraid of the dark, the fear of being without light at night can be very frustrating. Such baseless fears make life very difficult. Therefore, it would be helpful to learn how to overcome the phobia.
Ways to Overcome Phobia
Excessive emotions are not helpful. Too much or too little fear can negatively affect your life. Therefore, all emotions must be experienced in balance. But people can develop unreasonable fears at times. Sometimes these fears can be very deep-rooted. In such cases, it would be useful to get support from an expert.
Medication and Psychotherapy
In clinical cases, medication or psychotherapy may be required. At this stage, it is wisest to apply the method recommended by your specialist. There are many psychotherapy methods besides the drug treatment provided by your psychiatrist. Many methods can be used, such as desensitization or exposure.
Exposure Method
You can try to gradually accustom yourself to the subject that you feel phobia. If you are afraid of taking the elevator, as a first step, get more detailed information about the elevator. Read about safety systems, problems you may encounter in case of an accident.
People are often afraid of things they don’t know. If you do a thorough research, you can see how safe the elevators are. As a second step, spend a few minutes in the elevator without moving it and repeat this several times. Finally, try to take the elevator at a very short distance, such as 1 floor. In this way, you can try to overcome your phobias by exposing yourself step by step.
Desensitize Method
Another method is to desensitize yourself. Let’s try to explain this with an example. For example, let’s consider someone with nomophobia. As you know, nomophobia is the fear of being away from the phone. People with this phobia think that something bad will happen to them when they stay away from their phones. As such, they often check the batteries of their phones. This experience negatively affects their lives.
In order to overcome this, you must first place the thought in your mind that you can live without a phone. As a second step, try doing some of the things you do using your phone in daily life without a phone. Over time, you will find that you feel less tempted to use the phone while doing your work.
Not hearing from our loved ones scares us all. But before the invention of the telephone, people were deprived of such communication for many years. But this deprivation did not make them unhappy. Being available all the time is a good thing. But do not reduce your quality of life by making this your life purpose. Try to overcome such phobias by desensitizing yourself step by step.
Try to Keep Calm When You Are Scared
When you encounter a situation that will trigger your phobia, try to give yourself some time. For example, let’s say you have a phobia of dogs. Try to stay calm and breathe deeply when facing a dog. We are aware that this is very difficult to say. But for a calm dog that doesn’t attack people, it’s workable. If you try to calm your reactions, you will feel less fear.
In these situations, remind yourself that your fear is not actually caused by danger. You cannot expect instant success. But as with the exposure method, you can overcome your phobia by taking one step at a time. Congratulate yourself for your courage after every step you take. Look for ways to motivate yourself in this way.
Bottomline
There are many phobias that people experience today. These unreasonable fear attacks, which can be very diverse such as love phobia, nomophobia, height phobia, reduce people’s quality of life. People who have had a negative relationship may think that they will never fall in love with anyone again. But this is not actually the case. The dynamic of every relationship is different. It is very wrong to assume that everyone is bad after a bad relationship.
The things you think you can’t do for the rest of your life are actually not that hard work. There is nothing we cannot achieve after some effort. So look for ways to overcome your fears step by step. Sometimes these situations can become so difficult that you cannot handle them. In such cases, you can also choose to get support from an expert.
So do you have any phobias? What do you do to overcome your phobias? If you have any further questions or comments, feel free to contact us in the comments section.
