What Is a Phobia?

Phobias are one of the most common type of anxiety disorders.    A phobia is an obsessive, intense and extreme fear of an object, place, situation or creature. People with phobias have developed an irrational apprehension about something they perceive as a danger.Phobias centre on our normal fear mechanism, so someone who has a phobia is perfectly normal except that they have learnt to get frightened at the wrong times or in the wrong places. The nervous system, which carries messages to and from the brain, is continually telling the brain of a phobia sufferer, that there is something to be frightened of when they are in their ‘trigger’ situations or places, even when there is no real danger present. We logically know there is no actual danger as the danger only feels real to the sufferer and not anyone else.