What’s the difference between phobia and fear?

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What’s the difference between phobia and fear?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

A phobia is an excessive, persistent fear of a specific thing. Excessive is important in this.

For example, it’s natural to be weary when you are in a position where you might fall and possibly get hurt. It’s a phobia when you freeze up in fear standing on a chair, because you could fall and hurt yourself.

Another common phobia is spiders, where fear of most spiders is completely unfounded, as the vast majority of spiders can’t actually really hurt humans.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Fear is a defensive response to a dangerous situation.

Phobia is an over energetic response to fear that may occur even when the situation is not dangerous.

Being backed into a corner by a huge tarantula will cause fear in pretty much any human.

An arachnophobe will have the same type of response to any spider regardless of size or situation.

Additionally fear can be fought through phobias are typically such a strong response that there is no fight response it’s either a freeze or flight response

Anonymous 0 Comments

Fear is a local feeling, experienced for a short time, usually with an obvious cause.

Phobia is an irrational pattern that invokes fear every time you see/feel/experience something. It’s usually hard to understand why are you afraid of the subject of your phobia, and it’s extremely hard to suppress it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A phobia is an irrational fear, that is a fear you can’t explain away or get past even though if know better.

You can teach someone with a plain old fear of spiders that “they’re more scared of you than you are them,” and knowledge can help them get past their fear.

However, someone with arachnophobia (spider-phobia) can know that they shouldn’t be afraid of spiders but they can’t help it. They can’t stop being afraid of any and all spiders even though they understand that spiders aren’t really a danger to them.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The main thing about phobias is the degree to which they limit someone’s ability to live their life. People with phobias will do a lot to avoid situations that may trigger their phobia, even if it means not seeing friends or family, not doing an activity they would otherwise enjoy, or even holding down a job. Phobias can make living a “normal” life difficult to impossible.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A phobia is an irrational fear.

Fear of drowning:

– perfectly legitimate when swimming, and a good survival instinct

– irrational to experience while watching Aquaman on TV

Anonymous 0 Comments

All specific phobias are a type of anxiety disorder.

Anxiety and fear are both something every person experiences. Even if you don’t have an anxiety disorder, you do have anxiety.

Specifically, the difference between anxiety and fear is that anxiety is the worry you feel about something in the future or something that could happen, whereas fear is current.

Fear: there is a tiger standing over there

Anxiety: If I go out into the jungle alone, there might be a tiger there

Though in common usage they’re often used very similarly, and the difference isn’t too important.

A specific phobia is unreasonable anxiety triggered by a specific thing. It’s normal to find clowns a bit creepy. It’s less natural to be paralysed by fear of clowns. It becomes a diagnosable phobia when it impacts your life; like, say, if you can’t walk to work because there’s a poster with a picture of a clown on it on the way there.

If you look in a medical manual you’ll find specific phobias listed under anxiety disorders; fundamentally it’s the same kind of thing as social anxiety disorder. Having disproportionate and uncontrollable anxiety around spiders will obviously have less impact on life than having a disproportionate anxiety towards any social situation, but it’s still the same kind of thing going on in the brain.

I think of my own anxiety disorder like a bad smoke alarm. You do want some anxiety–it stops you from saying stupid things in social situations. Just like you don’t want a smoke alarm that never goes off. But just as you also don’t want a smoke alarm that goes off every time you fry an egg, you also don’t want to be paralysed with anxiety when trying to order a coffee.

Similarly, it’s reasonable to be wary around heights. You want your brain to be a little bit cautious so you don’t do something stupid and fall off. But you don’t want to be paralysed with fear when standing in a perfectly secure building near a window.

In casual conversation, if somebody says they have a fear of heights, that could mean they’re just a little bit wary when climbing up ladders, or it could mean they have diagnosed acrophobia and can’t climb a step ladder.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Fear is normal. Phobia is medical. If you have a phobia you are ill. You have a medical condition. Fear protects you. Phobia sets you back.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Phobias, like others explained, are a type of fear that usually doesn’t have a reason. Such as arachnophobia, or the “fear” of spiders. Spiders have a hard time hurting you, but that doesn’t stop me from staying up at night petrified that one might crawl on me.

Phobias can also represent an irrational hatred, or a hatred that doesn’t have a reason. A common, widely misused example is transphobia. Hatred of trans. Homophobia, hatred of homo, or “same.” Etc.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Fear would be being afraid of a snake that’s right in front of you.

Phobia would be still being as afraid and nervous if that snake was locked up in a zoo.