phobias

A phobia is defined as an irrational fear; although if you are the one experiencing this fear, it is a very strong and serious issue. Classical conditioning occurs when a person associates a neutral object with something more meaningful. In the text, our example was a baby who got stung by a bee that was near a pink flower, the next time the baby saw a pink flower he began to cry. The flower being a neutral stimulus in the experiment, and for the more meaningful one, the bee sting. Now that the same two objects have the ability to create the same response the classical conditioning is completed (1). Many phobias are caused by classical conditioning. It is easy to see that the baby acquired the fear for pink flowers due to associating it to the bee sting, even though to fear flowers is high irrational(1). Another example would be my phobia, I have a huge phobia and it is silly I know, but I am terrified of fog. You know the mist that hangs just above the road in the mornings. Yeah well, after reading the section about classical conditioning I have understood now why I have learned this fear. When I was younger every time someone I knew died it happened when there was fog, and every time I found out about their death I was around fog. I soon began to associate fog with death. Still to this day, I know this fear is irrational but I still have a hard time driving through fog. In my phobia the likely UCS would be death, and the UCR would be me shaking and freaking out or becoming upset this is an unlearned response. The CS would be the fog; it was previously neutral and now is associated with the fear of death the UCS. The CR is again me not being able to drive though fog, and freaking out when around it (1). I believe that the most effective way to treat my phobia would be systematic desensitization. This method that has been proven many times to be effective in the treatment of phobias. In this procedure, events which cause anxiety or phobias are restated in imagination, and then a relaxation technique is used to dissipate the fears. With enough repetition through this practice, the imagined event loses its phobia-provoking power. After the training, when you actually face the real event, you will find that it too, just like the imagined event, has lost its power to make you scared (2). One way I know I could not handle would be flooding; it would probably cause me to have a panic attack. In this procedure the patient would be exposed to the phobic stimulus as part of the therapeutic process, in my case fog. The more simple form of exposure treatment is flooding, where the person is immersed in the fear reflex until the fear itself fades away. Although some phobic reactions are so strong, such as mine, that flooding must be done through the patient's imagination of the phobic stimulus, rather than being submerged in the phobic stimulus itself (3).Works Cited:1). Textbook2). http://www.guidetopsychology.com/sysden.htm3). http://www.phobialist.com/treat.html