A phobia is an intense, unrealistic fear, which can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, that is brought on by an object, event or situation.
Some people defined phobia as the unrelenting fear of a situation, activity, or thing that causes one to want to avoid it. A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder. Unlike the brief anxiety most people feel when they give a speech or take a test, a phobia is long-lasting, causes intense physical and psychological distress, and can affect your ability to function normally at work or in social settings.
Phobias are largely underreported, probably because many phobia sufferers find ways to avoid the situations to which they are phobic. Therefore, statistics that estimate how many people suffer from phobias vary widely, but at minimum, phobias afflict more than 6 million people in the United States. It is a strong, irrational fear of something that poses little or no actual danger. There are many specific phobias. Acrophobia is a fear of heights. You may be able to ski the world's tallest mountains but be unable to go above the 5th floor of an office building. Agoraphobia is a fear of public places, and claustrophobia is a fear of closed-in places. If you become anxious and extremely self-conscious in everyday social situations, you could have a social phobia. Other common phobias involve tunnels, highway driving, water, flying, animals and blood.
People with phobias try to avoid what they are afraid of. If they cannot, they may experience
• Panic and fear
• Rapid heartbeat
• Shortness of breath
• Trembling
• A strong desire to get away
The three kinds of phobias are social phobia (fear of public speaking, meeting new people or other social situations), agoraphobia (fear of being outside), and specific phobias (fear of particular items or situations). Some of the most common kinds of phobias include fears of public speaking or other social situations (social phobia or social anxiety disorder), open spaces (agoraphobia), closed-in spaces (claustrophobia), clowns (coulrophobia), flying (aerophobia), blood, animals (zoophobia), commitment (commitment phobia), driving, spiders (arachnophobia), needles (aichmophobia), snakes (ophidiophobia), math, heights (acrophobia or altophobia), germs (mysophobia), and having dental work done (dentophobia). Fears of midgets, haunted houses, helmets, pickles, and feet are just a few of the less common phobias and may be considered strange by some but can be just as debilitating as those phobias that are more common. Agoraphobia often coexists with panic disorder.
No matter what type of phobia you have, it's likely to produce the following reactions:
• A feeling of uncontrollable anxiety when you're exposed to the source of your fear sitting on an airplane, for instance, or walking into a large party
• The feeling that you must do everything possible to avoid what you fear
• The inability to function normally because of your anxiety
• Often, the knowledge that your fears are unreasonable or exaggerated but feeling powerless to control them
• Physical as well as psychological reactions, including sweating, rapid heartbeat, difficulty breathing, a feeling of panic and intense anxiety
• In some cases, anxiety just thinking about what you fear

Other facts about phobias include that these illnesses have been thought to affect up to 28 out of every 100 people, and in all western countries, phobias strike 7%-13% of the population. Women tend to be twice as likely to suffer from a phobia compared to men.
The most effect of Phobia such as :
1. If left untreated, a phobia may worsen to the point in which the person's life is seriously affected, both by the phobia itself and/or by attempts to avoid or conceal it.
2. In fact, some people have had problems with friends and family, failed in school, and/or lost jobs while struggling to cope with a severe phobia. There may be periods of spontaneous improvement, but a phobia does not usually go away unless the person receives treatments designed specifically to help phobia sufferers.
3. Alcoholics can be up to 10 times more likely to suffer from a phobia than those who are not alcoholics, and phobic individuals can be twice as likely to be addicted to alcohol than those who have never been phobic.
Much is still unknown about the actual cause of phobias. Studies seem to show a strong correlation between your own phobias and the phobias of your parents, however. Children may learn phobias by observing a family member's phobic reaction to an object or a situation — for example, a fear of snakes or spiders.
Brain chemicals, genetics and traumatic experiences also appear to influence the development of phobias.
Symptoms of phobias often involve having a panic attack -- in that they include feelings of panic, dread, or terror, despite recognition that those feelings are excessive in relationship to any real danger -- as well as physical symptoms like shaking, rapid heart beat, trouble breathing, and an overwhelming desire to escape the situation that is causing the phobic reaction. Also, extreme measures are sometimes taken to escape the situation.

Treatments and drugs
Your doctor or a mental health provider may suggest medications or behavior therapy or both to treat phobias. Most adults don't get better on their own and may require some type of treatment. The goal of phobia treatment is to reduce your anxiety and fear and to help you better manage your reactions to the object or situation that causes them.

Medications
• Beta blockers. These medications work by blocking the stimulating effects of adrenaline on your body, such as increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, pounding heart, and shaking voice and limbs. Beta blockers can be very effective for people who have severe stage fright.
• Antidepressants. The most commonly used antidepressants are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). These medications act on the chemical serotonin, a neurotransmitter in your brain that's believed to influence mood. SSRIs include citalopram (Celexa), escitalopram (Lexapro), fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Paxil) and sertraline (Zoloft). If SSRIs aren't effective or cause intolerable side effects, your doctor may prescribe another type of antidepressant, such as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI).
• Sedatives. Medications called benzodiazepines help you relax by reducing the amount of anxiety that you feel. They include lorazepam (Ativan), diazepam (Valium), alprazolam (Xanax) and chlordiazepoxide (Librium). Sedatives need to be used with caution because they can be addictive, and should be avoided if you have a history of alcohol or drug dependence.

Newer antidepressants are being specifically designed to target mechanisms that elevate serotonin and other neurotransmitters in the brain; some showing promise for anxiety are venlafaxine (Effexor) and nefazodone (Serzone). (Well-Connected) The antidepressant drugs known as tricyclic antidepressants (TCA) have also been effective in treating panic and obsessive-compulsive disorders (Well-Connected). The most common TCA used for the treatment of panic disorder is imipramine (Tofranil, Janimine); it is also effective in treating agoraphobia (Well-Connected). But with proper treatment, the vast majority of phobia patients can completely overcome their fears and be symptom free for years, if not for life (American).

Behavior therapy
Desensitization or exposure therapy focuses on changing your response to the object or situation that you fear. Gradual, repeated exposure to the cause of your phobia may help you learn to conquer your anxiety. For example, if you're afraid of flying, your therapy may progress from simply thinking about flying to looking at pictures of airplanes, to going to an airport, to sitting in an airplane, and finally to taking a flight.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is a more comprehensive form of therapy. It involves working with a therapist to learn ways to view and cope with the feared object or situation differently. You learn alternative beliefs about your fears and the impact they have on your life. There's special emphasis on learning to develop a sense of mastery and control of your thoughts and feelings.

Treatment choices
Specific phobias usually are treated with behavioral therapy. Social phobias may be treated with antidepressants or beta blockers, along with behavior therapy. Agoraphobia, especially when it's accompanied by a panic disorder, is usually treated with SSRIs and behavior therapy.
If you have unreasonable fears, consider getting psychological help. By dealing with your own fears, you won't pass them on to your children. In desensitization, three steps are involved:
1. Training the patient to physically relax
2. Establish an anxiety hierarchy of the stimuli involved
3. Counter-conditioning relaxation as a response to each feared stimulus beginning first with the least anxiety provoking stimulus and moving then to the next least anxiety provoking stimulus until all of the items listed in the anxiety hierarchy have been dealt with successfully (Phobia).
Also, systematic desensitization can be paired with modeling, and application suggested by social learning theorists (Phobia). In modeling, the patient observes others (the “model(s)”) in the presence of the phobic stimulus who are responding with relaxation rather that fear (Phobia). In this way, the patient is encouraged to imitate the model(s) and thereby relieve their phobia (Phobia). However relaxation therapy is not the only treatment used in curing phobias.
Hypnosis can also set you free of fears and phobias. In mild cases, where a person recognizes the triggers but would like help controlling their reaction, posthypnotic suggestions can help them control their breathing, slow their heart rate, and achieve a relaxed state of mind. This permits them to deal with the problem in a calm and rational manner. More severe cases are often the result of a traumatic childhood event. Most of the time the event can no longer be recalled by the conscious mind