Donna Birtwistle was at a business luncheon when she suddenly began to feel warm and light-headed. Within seconds, her heart was throbbing and her hands were trembling. Overwhelmed by ambiguous terror, she bolted from the room. Over the next few years, these "panic attacks" struck with increasing frequency, forcing her to flee from stores, banks, and other public places. Birtwistle found that just worrying about an attack would cause it to happen, so she began avoiding public places altogether. "My world kept shrinking," she recalls, "until all I could do was go to work and come home. And eventually I had to take a leave of absence."
Doreen Powell's fear was focused on a specific situation: riding in elevators. Usually she could take the stairs, but sometimes she had no choice; that's when fear took over her senses. "As I approached an elevator," she recalls, "I would think, 'This is the time it's going to get stuck between floors.' And when I was in them I would tense up so much that when I got out my legs would be wobbly."
Like many people, Mark Hadley initially denied having any fears. With a little probing, however, he grudgingly recalled being a little nervous giving oral reports in grade school. He admitted he had rarely answered questions in his college classes because his hands would sweat and his throat would go dry. Finally, he confessed to refusing several job offers because they had involved giving speeches; his fear of public speaking had affected his career path.
Fears: when it's unhealthy
Fear can control our lives in a variety of ways. In some situations, fear is natural and needed to ensure our survival. However, according to the Phobia Society of America (PSA), fear becomes an unhealthy phobia when it is "irrational, involuntary and inappropriate [and] is so intense that it causes a person to do everything possible to avoid the source of distress."
How common are phobias? In 1984, a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) study found that phobias--not depression, as previously believed--are the No. 1 mental health problem in the United States. Indeed, the NIMH estimates that about 12.5 percent of Americans (19 million people) have phobias at some time in their lives.
While it seems phobias can take as many forms as there are objects and situations in the world, the cases above illustrate three broad categories defined by the American Psychiatric Association.
Birtwistle showed a classic case of "panic disorder with or without agoraphobia." Those suffering from panic disorder have had four or more panic attacks within a month. The disorder, as in Birtwistle's case, can develop into agoraphobia; victims associate their panic with being in public places and therefore react by avoiding them. The NIMH estimates that about 9 million Americans may have agoraphobia at some point in their lives.
A simple phobia, like Powell's fear of elevators, is the fear of a specific object or situation--for example, elevators, driving, flying, snakes, bridges, heights, or thunderstorms. An estimated 17 million Americans have simple phobias. And Hadley's problem was social phobia, the fear of being judged by others in a way
...
Read Full Article
|
