What are you afraid of? We can be afraid of many things, including that general fear of uncertainty in which we live. That fear can generate an anxiety disorder and can also cause more than one phobia . Anxiety, fear and phobia are closely related but they are not the same. As anxiety is already an old acquaintance, we are going to focus on the differences between phobia and fear , do you suffer from anxiety or a basic emotion? Let’s see it!
What is fear
Fear is an emotion. A basic and primary emotion, very useful and adaptive. It is the response of our body to a dangerous situation that allows us to react with the two most common tools: either fight or flee.
It is true that sometimes we have an unmotivated fear, sometimes we acquire it by learning or by the social context. It is also true that other times fear responds to adaptive mechanisms that nowadays are of little use to us. But above all fear makes you react. Fear activates you, like that positive anxiety when it has not yet gotten out of hand .
Fear or fears can also be overcome. You yourself can propose to overcome some of your fears and achieve it. Let’s say for example that you are afraid of flying or, rather, of traveling by plane . But you want to overcome your fear because you like to travel and see new places so, with fear and all, you get on that plane.
Maybe you need to take a pill, maybe you need to practice relaxation techniques or breathing exercises. You may have to hold your companion’s hand tightly because you are afraid. But fear doesn’t stop you from getting on that plane .
The differences between fear and phobia
And with this example you can begin to understand the differences between fear and phobia. Because if you have gotten on that plane, you are afraid. However, if you cancel the trip, if you avoid going through the experience of flying, it is because you suffer from a phobia.
A phobia is not an emotion, like fear . It is also not an adaptive and helpful response, but rather a psychological disorder . The phobia derives from fear, but here you have already reached several more degrees on the scale of fear until it becomes irrational and excessive. You no longer debate between the reactions of fighting or fleeing, with the phobia there is only the flight, the avoidance.
If fear can be useful because it warns you of danger and predisposes you to face it, the phobia is completely useless because it blocks you . In addition, there is no real danger, it is a danger formed by a distorted thought that can become obsessive. And here we find ourselves again with anxiety, an anxiety that has already run amok and that is no longer a natural response to become your true enemy.
Fear is a strategy to protect yourself, the phobia destroys you. Because although when you are afraid you try to overcome it, when you suffer from a phobia you end up avoiding everything related to that stimulus. We have already seen in our dictionary of phobias how some of them can isolate you socially.
Phobia is limiting, while fear, if you manage it well, makes you great, it shows you that you are braver than you think, that you are more capable. A fear is a challenge, a phobia is a self-imposed limit . Hence, we always insist on the need to treat phobias through psychological therapy , because by yourself you are not going to achieve it.