Essay About Phobias

Strange Phobias and Why People Have Them What is it about the smaller things in life that makes humans terrified? Why are some people afraid of something that will obviously never happen to them, while others are oblivious to the problems around them? The people who are afraid of things that pose little to no danger to them have some type of phobia. A phobia can range from sociophobia, which is the fear of being judged by society, to sesquipedalophobia, which is the fear of long words. Phobias come in wide varieties, and can seriously affect the victim of said phobia. Some people say that phobias are just strange, random fears that “crazy” people develop, but studies have shown that phobias often have thorough reasoning behind their cause.

In an ABC news article written by Lauren Cox, these cases are some of the most extreme. Sophie Waller had a deadly fear of the dentist. The girl developed the phobia at the young age of four, when a dentist accidentally cut her tongue. At eight years old, she was still afraid of the dentist. When she was told that she was going to the dentist’s for a cracked tooth, she refused to eat for three days. During the procedure, the dentists decided to pull out her remaining baby teeth. This turned out to be a grave mistake, as she then refused to open her mouth and had to fed with a tube. She continually refused to open her mouth after her release, and died of starvation and dehydration two weeks later. There are children who are afraid to go to school, often because of a specific incident which occured at school. One young girl couldn’t even be on the same block as her school without hyperventilating. After much questioning, it was found out that the fear started from a bully in her class, then quickly generalized to a fear of the entire school. However, when the girl was transferred to a new school, the phobia gradually went away. Two boys who had a fear of dogs, one who was bit and one who saw the incident happen, were too afraid to even go outside, which is what made the difference between a general fear and a phobia. Child phobias are much more dangerous and harder to treat because “...a phobia in a child can pose special challenges that make them harder to detect and perhaps more detrimental.” (ABC News). Not only is it more difficult to treat in children, but it is harder to diagnose. Children are much more susceptible to irrational fear, and often those fears don’t carry out through a lifetime. However, to tell the difference between a childish fear and a phobia, the actions of a child with a serious phobia are likely to be far more extreme.