The psychology concept I’ve chosen to talk about for my second post is the ideas of Phobias. According to the text book, a phobia “is a specific fear of a certain object, situation, or activity”. The expression of this fear can manifest in various forms, ranging from general anxiety or discomfort to the occurrence of intense panic attacks. The fear of the object is defined as being irrational yet persistent. Common phobias include a fear of heights, a:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/most-common-phobias-4136563_final2-5b32adb946e0fb003726204e.png)
fear of dogs, a fear of enclosed spaces and many more. Some psychologists say that certain fears, like the fear of snakes, could be connected to our evolutionary past; our ancestors were much more likely to interact with snakes than us, but they passed down that fear. Phobias can either be a minor inconvenience or a genuinely debilitating aspect of someone’s life. In some cases, it’s easy to avoid your phobias; don’t go into the elevator, don’t go to the amphibian section of the zoo etc., but others, it’s based on situations that are not able to be gauged or predicted. Agoraphobia is an example of this; it’s “anxiety about being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing, or in which help may not be available”. It’s like a more intense version of social anxiety. People who have this fear tend to be recluse and avoid leaving the house because they’re terrified of the unpredictability of human interaction. This is not healthy, and leads to other mental illness.
Phobias are something to be taken seriously. I have seen content before on YouTube or TikTok where these content creators use their friends phobias to get a big reaction out of them and use them for more views and such. I think this type of content making is really gross. If someone has a serious, genuine phobia, no matter how ridiculous it may seem to you, you have to respect that. One video I remember in particular was where this girl was afraid of butterflies, and the people in the video, who were her friends, blindfolded her and led her inside of one of those butterfly houses at the zoo. Then, they made her take her blindfold off and she realized that she was in an enclosed space with something she was terrified of. She was rightfully upset, screaming and wanting to leave, and the other people there were comforting her, but also being slightly passive aggressive by being like “they’re not going to hurt you”, “see, you’re fine” and letting the butterfly land on their finger and putting it up to her face and such. I just find this type of exploitation for entertainment to be very odd. Why would I want to watch a girl be terrified for 12 minutes? Even if I thought that being afraid of butterflies was stupid and funny (which I don’t, by the way. That SpongeBob episode with the realistic butterfly terrified me), I think it’s weird to force this girl into a horrific situation for other people to laugh at. It would be different if it was a “watch me face my fears” situation, but who knows, maybe it was all fake, just for the views…
Wow, I was shocked when reading the part of your blog post where the girl afraid of butterflies was led into a butterfly cage at the zoo. That is such a horrible thing to do for someone, I feel like some phobias are way more serious than some people may realize. I have a fear of the dark, maybe not as severe as a phobia but to help myself I avoid being in the pitch black, as you said, some phobias you can avoid. I always sleep with some source of light in my room, and when I am somewhere that is pitch black I turn on my phone flashlight. I don’t know why I am so scared of being in the dark, I don’t think this fear was biologically passed down from our ancestors I think it is just something that gives me anxiety, being in the dark is a big fear of mine. Your blog post was very descriptive, you explained the concept of phobias very well and gave lots of good examples along with good pictures. It helped me understand more in-depth what phobias are, examples, and why we might have them!!