Zusammenfassung der Ressource
5.2 Phobias- Characteristics
- Behavioural
- Panic
- Person may panic in the presence of the
phobic stimulus, includes a range of
behaviours: crying, freezing, screaming
etc.
- Avoidance
- Unless the person is making a conscious
effort to face their fear, they tend to go to a
lot of stress to prevent coming in contact.
This makes it hard to go by daily life.
- Endurance
- Alternative behaviour response to
avoidance. This occurs when a
person chooses to remain in the
presence of the phobic stimulus.
- Emotional
- Anxiety
- Phobias are classed as anxiety disorders, meaning
they involve and emotional response of anxiety,
which is an unpleasant state of high arousal.
- Fear
- Fear and anxiety may be used
interchangeably, yet are two distinct
things. Fear is the immediate and
extremely unpleasant response when
encountering or thinking about the
phobic stimulus. More intense and last
a shorter period of time than anxiety.
- Unreasonable response
- Anxiety and fear is
much greater than
normal and is
disproportionate to
any threat posed.
- Cognitive
- Selective attention to phobic stimulus
- A person may find it hard to look away from the phobic
stimulus, as keeping our attention on something gives the
best chance of reacting quickly to the threat.
- Irrational beliefs
- A person with a phobia may hold unfounded thoughts in relation to the stimuli.
For example, social phobias can involve beliefs such as always needing to sound
intelligent. These beliefs increase pressure on the person to always perform well.
- Cognitive distortions
- Perceptions made by the person may be inaccurate
and unrealistic, e.g seeing mushrooms as disgusting.