Word: phobias
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Researchers are making enormous progress in determining what phobias are, what kinds of neurochemical storms they trigger in the brain and for what evolutionary purpose the potential for such psychic squalls was encoded into us in the first place. With this understanding has come a magic bag of treatments: exposure therapy that can stomp out a lifetime phobia in a single six-hour session; virtual-reality programs that can safely simulate the thing the phobic most fears, slowly stripping it of its power to terrorize; new medications that can snuff the brain's phobic spark before it can catch...
...something that can cause as much suffering as a phobia, it's remarkable how many people lay claim to having one--and how many of them are wrong. Self-described computer phobics are probably nothing of the kind. They may not care for the infernal machines and may occasionally want to throw one out the window, but that's not the same as a full-fledged phobia. Self-described claustrophobics often misdiagnose as well. The middle seat on a transatlantic flight may be something you approach with dismay, but unless you also experience a racing heart and ragged breath...
...however, parlay that ancient history into a modern-day phobia. It may be our distant ancestors who predispose us to phobias, but it's our immediate ancestors--specifically our parents--who seal the deal. As many as 40% of all people suffering from a specific phobia have at least one phobic parent, seemingly a clue that phobias could be genetically influenced. In recent years, a number of scientists have claimed to have found the phobia gene, but none of those claims have held up to scrutiny. If phobias are genetically based at all, they almost certainly require a whole tangle...
...many cases, the brain may think it's doing the child's psyche a favor by developing a phobia. The world is a scary place, and young kids are inherently fearful until they start to figure it out. If you are living with a generalized sense of danger, it can be profoundly therapeutic to find a single object on which to deposit all that unformed fear--a snake, a spider, a rat. A specific phobia becomes a sort of backfire for fear, a controlled blaze that prevents other blazes from catching. "The thinking mind seeks out a rationale...
...condition that is so easy to pick up is becoming almost as easy to shake, usually without resort to drugs. What turns up the wattage of a phobia the most is the strategy the phobics rely on to ease their discomfort: avoidance. The harder phobics work to avoid the things they fear, the more the brain grows convinced that the threat is real. "The things you do to reduce anxiety just make it worse," says Barlow. "We have to strip those things away...