by Ashok A

Created on: April 06, 2009

Did you ever know anybody who was afraid of high places, nights, speaking, laughing, or someone who was afraid of closed places? There are people who are afraid of crowds, or being touched by others. There is a name for behaving this way: it is called a "phobic reaction", and we say the person has a "phobia."

Is something "wrong" with such people or something going wild or crazy going in them? Are they "sick" in some way? No but we might say they are suffering from some emotional disturbance. Something upsets them or has upset them in the past very strongly. And such a person is trying to deal with this emotional disturbance it is called "emotional pain" just as you would try to deal with physical pain. Their habits and feelings differ normally from others in such a situation.

We all react to emotional upsets. We cry, we lush, and we might break out in a sweat. But some people, who feel this emotional stress more strongly or whose power of resistance is weaker, try to deal with this emotional pain in an unnatural, unusual way. This kind of reaction is sometimes called "neurotic".

One such way of reducing is to develop a phobia, which is unreasonable fear of a specific thing, such as fear of high places, or closed-in places. An interesting thing about a phobia is that the thing the person is afraid of is usually a thing or situation he can avoid. After all, nobody forces people to climb to high places or get into closed places. And as long as a person can avoid these things, he feels fine. He doesn't have what is called "anxiety". This convictions confuses such people a bit.

But why should a particular person have a fear of high places, to take an example? The truth is, he is really of something else, or perhaps felt afraid of something else when he was a child. It might have been his father whom he loved and feared at the same time. He didn't want to admit he was afraid of his father. So he substituted a fear of high places, which is a symbol of his father. And since he can avoid high places, he can avoid facing the fact that he is afraid of his father. All of this seems very complicated, doesn't it? But then the human being and how he behaves is a very complicated matter!

It is also really obvious that everyone is always afraid or feared of something or the other. From a small child to a clever person, nobody cannot live without these phobias. It includes fear of cats, dogs, reptiles, women, number 13, nights, screams, chocolates, women, computers, men, haunted nights, books, teachers and this an never ending list. It all depends upon the person's mentality to a particular object or to given situation. Such phobia changes the mindset of the people and causes mental disturbances in them. Nothing is impossible in this given world. However, one can overcome these phobias through a thorough mental revolution, which change the mindset of the people.

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