Strong, paralyzing fear can overwhelm you at the sight of a spider or a dog. If you are scared at the thought of leaving your home or having sex, it makes you feel anxious. When it develops into a phobia, it can ruin your life. Take up the fight against unjustified fear!

A 50-year-old man has a strange movement: he tries to put his feet only in the middle of the pavement tile. Sometimes he jumps up comically so as not to step on their edge. When he finally does the route, he tries to enter the restaurant. But she stands at her door for a good few minutes (lets everyone away so as not to touch anyone). With disgust, he takes the first table on the edge (after all, many bar customers were sitting here before - disgusting!), Takes out plastic cutlery, plastic gloves, and a disposable plate. He is waiting for the waitress, and when she comes, the man acts like a bastard, insults her. Upon returning home, she washes her hands with hypoallergenic soap and immediately throws them into the rubbish bin. He uses a new cube every time. This man suffers from a range of obsessive behaviors andphobias , including the most difficult-to-treat social phobia. Although he is only the protagonist of the well-known movie "It Can't Be Better" (Jack Nicholson played the main role, and his behavior evokes laughter in the cinema room), in fact, this kind offearsprevents sick people to function normally on phobias. - The more that some people are not aware of the disease at all. They learn to live with it and avoid situations in which they might be afraid. However, this is not always the case. And untreated phobias lead to strongdepression , neuroses and serious mental ailments - explains Dr. Dariusz Maciej Myszka, psychiatrist of the Psychiatric Clinic of the Medical University of Warsaw.

Anxiety accompanies most mental disorders

In common sense, to describe the simplest unpleasant emotions we use the terms "fear" and "fear" interchangeably. However, they have a different meaning. - Fear is perfectly normal in he althy people. It is a protective signal, an innate reaction of the body to a threatening stimulus, explains Dr. Magdalena Prentka, a psychologist from Bydgoszcz. - We deal with it when the threat is real, e.g. loss of a loved one, job, social position, property, or a direct threat to he alth orlife. It appears when a dog attacks us, during a plane take-off, at the sight of a dentist's chair, before an exam or a public speech. Sometimes we also react with fear to some noise. This reaction is cleverly used by the authors of bad horror films. Fear is a positive emotion because it mobilizes the organism to fight, protect and acquire something. On the other hand, fear is not objectified - man is unable to locate its cause. Anxiety accompanies most personality disorders, depression, psychoses, and neuroses (when we are broken down or undergo severe stress). This is information that something is wrong with the body, because anxiety should not occur in he althy people. Although I don't know a person who has never felt it. Existential anxiety is the most common nowadays - we feel it when we have lost the meaning of life - adds the psychologist.

Important

Not everyone is afraid of concrete things. Some people are unable to explain their fears, although they know very well what is happening to their body then. For example, in Poland there are no poisonous spiders, and many people scream and run when they see these animals. Others are afraid of mice, cats, birds - they panic and scream when they see them, although animals are more scared. There are also people who don't take the elevator or fly. They try to live in such a way as to prevent a situation in which fear would paralyze them.

Avoiding anxiety situations doesn't solve the problem

- The unexplained fear of something is not yet a phobia - argues Dr. Małgorzata Kostecka, psychologist at the Psychiatric Clinic of the Medical University in Warsaw. - Only when we avoid something and lead a lifestyle in such a way that we do not encounter the source of fear on our way, we can talk about its occurrence. 40-year-old Anna is afraid of birds. - When I was little, I used to go on vacation to my grandmother in Podlasie. One day I woke up to a hen sitting on my pillow and staring at me. I remember her eyes, flapping wings, and clawed paws. I was terribly terrified. Since then, I have avoided birds, I am disgusted and afraid of them - he reproaches himself. As an adult woman, she tried not to be in places where birds could be close to her. But not everything can be avoided. Sometimes the situations themselves attack the phobic sufferer. Suddenly a pigeon flew into our apartment. My reaction was swift: I hid behind the refrigerator and screamed. I couldn't move. I only left there when my husband opened the window and the pigeon flew out - recalls Anna. Barbara, on the other hand, doesn't have a single button-up garment. They can only have zippers, hooks and cords. - I'm disgusted with buttons, I can'tdon't look, the 27-year-old confides. - Even if they are somewhere in the house, they are hidden in boxes so as not to annoy me. The girl remembers a certain situation from her childhood (she was about 5 years old): She was playing with a friend who was wearing pink clothes, buttoned up to the neck. She was stubbornly chewing on one of them, as if she were about to swallow it. At that moment, my mother entered the room where we were sitting and informed me of my cousin's death. Since then, the buttons have grossed me out, confesses the 27-year-old. There is no intention of being treated for this; he simply avoids any contact with… buttons. Agnieszka, in turn, suffers from gelophobia. Try not to come into contact with things, dishes or substances with the consistency of a gel. You think this is stupid? Mistake, nothing could be more wrong. - Everyone seems to be a small problem. And jellies attack me almost at every step. In fact, it is only when you have a phobia against a background that you can see how many frightening and disgusting (dragging!) Substances are around: food, glue, creams … They attack me at every step, she adds.

Where do fears come from?

Psychologists and psychiatrists explain the emergence of phobias with two concepts: behavioral (for some reason we learn the anxiety response and duplicate it, just as Anna associated the bird with childhood anxiety) and psychoanalytical (fear arises in a situation of internal, unconscious conflict, we carry it is in ourselves, we cannot solve it, so in adulthood we find an outlet for it - we objectify it in the form of a specific fear of, for example, horses. It is easier for us to admit (even to ourselves) that we are afraid of horses or dogs than of an intimate problem.

- These two concepts can complement each other - says Dr. Małgorzata Kostecka. Depending on how the phobia arose, this is how it should be treated. Much more complicated is the treatment of phobias with the psychodynamic method (derived from psychoanalysis), because you need to get to the real cause of anxiety. Treatment may last from several months to several years. - We then go back to the past, to childhood. By the way, in such therapy other problems of the patient may "emerge". A specialist should be selected very carefully - warns Dr. Małgorzata Kostecka. Meanwhile, treatment with the behavioral method (the most common) is desensitization of anxiety situations: gradually approaching the source of anxiety and learning to relax and unwind. Magdalena Winiarska-Day underwent a special therapy in the USA because she was terrified of spiders. First, she was used to seeing an animal on a computer screen. Then she approached the cage with the spiders. At the end of therapy, she couldto hold even a tarantula without fear. Aneta ran away from every dog ​​she met. She could not walk down the street without checking if there was an animal lurking somewhere, visiting friends who had dogs. The mother remembered that when the girl was a child and a half, she was scared by a rottweiler. As Aneta grew older, the fear of dogs grew worse. The therapy consisted in talking about the advantages of guide dogs, rescuers and shepherd dogs. At the same time, the therapist and the girl were watching pictures of dogs. After several visits to the clinic, Aneta allowed a small, gentle dog to sit at the other end of the office - in a muzzle and on a leash. The idea was for the patient to get used to the thought that this dog was here and nothing bad was happening. Finally she agreed to pet him. Finally, his muzzle was removed and he was allowed to run freely around the office. The girl no longer reacted with fear. - I had a patient with fear of heights - says Dr. Małgorzata Kostecka. - At the beginning, we used relaxation techniques. Then the woman listened to the stories about heights recorded on cassette tape. And at the end of the training, we drove to the top floor of the Palace of Culture and Science. She managed to overcome this phobia.

The tendency to anxiety and phobias is hereditary

The most difficult to treat are social phobias. Usually pharmacology is helpful in fighting them, explains Dr. Myszka. - This type of fear comes close to diseases such as obsessive compulsive disorder, depression. It happens that a patient suffers from several ailments at the same time, e.g. schizophrenia and social phobia. The sick are afraid of public appearances, dating, talking to the boss, and even visiting a doctor. Paulina M. started to be treated a year ago because the phobia disturbed her normal functioning and disturbed her mother. At the university, she often had to give a lecture or make a public statement. - I was so afraid of it that I had an upset stomach a few days earlier. A similar overwhelming fear appeared in all the situations when I was judged - she confesses. - As a result, I stopped my studies. She also had a huge problem with passing the driving test. And when she got a job, out of nerves on the first day, she poured coffee on her boss. Everything was very frustrating for her. Depression developed over time. Already after the first meetings of the therapeutic group, she began to notice changes. After the end of therapy, she learned to tell people what she thought and spoke up in discussions. - Today I don't deal with every little detail anymore, I'm more open - she is glad. Now she is planning a trip to the USA - she is to go alone. - A genetic factor plays an important role in the tendency to develop phobias. It can even be said that a phobia is hereditary- explains Dr. Dariusz Maciej Myszka. Each of us carries its veins - a certain area of ​​tension, internal fear. It could be anything: jealousy of the father, lack of sufficient maternal care, lack of love, parental separation. But not everyone does it. - Some people are good at dealing with anxiety. They are aware of it and do not look for alternative justifications - adds Dr. Małgorzata Kostecka.

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Psychiatry