"I'm terrified of spiders. I don't go hiking or take my daughter to the park any more. It makes me too anxious."

What is specific phobia?

Specific phobia is an excessive or unreasonable fear triggered by the presence or anticipation of a particular object or situation. A person with a specific phobia:

• experiences anxiety, which may take the form of a panic attack, when he or she is exposed to the feared object or situation,
• is aware that the fear is irrational or excessive,
• avoids the feared object or situation or endures it with intense anxiety or distress,
• experiences anxiety, anxious anticipation, or avoidance that significantly interferes with his or her life or causes great distress.

• animal phobias (animals, birds, insects, spiders)
• natural environment phobias (heights, the dark, water, storms)
• situational phobias (airplanes, elevators, tunnels, trains)
• blood, injection, and injury phobias (sight of blood, receiving injections, or any bodily damage).
• other phobias (foods, sounds, vomiting, clowns)

Cognitive-behavioral model of specific phobia
The cognitive-behavioral model of specific phobia stresses the role that cognitions (such as, "If a spider bites me I will die") and behaviors (such as escape and avoidance) play in causing and maintaining the phobia. People who have specific phobias typically overestimate the danger of the feared situation and underestimate their ability to handle the situation. Because they usually avoid the situation, they do not have the opportunity to learn, at a visceral level, that their beliefs about it are unrealistic.

Specific phobias may also have a built-in biological or even evolutionary basis. Certain objects or situations tend to be feared more than others because they do in fact present some danger (snakes are more dangerous than flowers, and snake phobias are more common than flower phobias). The evolutionary hypothesis provides an elegant account of the fact that blood, injection, and injury phobias sometimes lead to fainting; it proposes that an evolutionary advantage was conferred to those of our early ancestors who, in response to the sight of blood or a bodily injury, experienced a drop in blood pressure.

Cognitive-behavior therapy for specific phobia

• Monitoring: Learn about the physiological, cognitive, and behavioral components of your phobia.
• Cognitive: Identify your beliefs about the phobic object or situation, challenge them, and correct your misperceptions.
• Behavioral: You and your therapist will devise a plan to gradually and systematically expose you to your feared object or situation. This can be done in real life or in imagination or both. With repeated practice, you will challenge and change your negative expectations, gain confidence in your ability to cope with the feared situation, no longer associate the situation with anxiety and fear, and decrease your anxiety and physiological arousal in feared situations. If you fear certain sensations (for example, increased heart rate), exposure treatment will involve gradually and systematically bringing on and experiencing those situations in order to overcome your fear of them.

Web links:
The Anxiety Disorders Association of America
The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies
Freedom from Fear

Books:
For links to purchase these books and others, please go to Self-Help Books for Adults

Antony, M.M., Craske, M.G., & Barlow, D.H. (1995). Mastery of your specific phobia: client workbook. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc. (Copyright by Graywind Publications Incorporated).

Antony, M.M. & McCabe, R.E. (2005). Overcoming animal and insect phobias: How to conquer fear of dogs, snakes, rodents, bees, spiders, and more. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Bourne, E.J. (1999) Overcoming specific phobia: client manual: A hierarchy and exposure-based protocol for the treatment of all specific phobias. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.