What’s the difference between phobia and fear?
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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.
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