When people think of fears, they typically think of young children being scared of monsters under their bed or of spiders. The thing that some don’t realise is that fears exist in adults too and that having a fear doesn’t immediately mean somebody has a phobia. 

Phobias, which are a type of anxiety disorder, are fears present a significant amount of the time which are ‘excessive or unreasonable’. Phobias can be anything from claustrophobia, a fear of closed spaces, heights, darkness or the colour red, to name a few examples. 

Phobias lead to excessive anxiety. With the example of having a phobia of heights, if someone leaves the house and is going an unfamiliar route, the anxiety of the possibility of having to cross a bridge may consume them from the second they get out of bed that morning. For someone who has a fear, on the other hand, the anxiety typically only arises when they are in that situation.

I have irrational fears. I have frozen when trying to cross a bridge, I have walked half a mile around a bridge to avoid crossing it and I have spent many minutes building up the courage before crossing other bridges. At the age of twenty seven years old, I love walking the streets at 3am yet I have an irrational fear of the dark when indoors, where I won’t walk into a room without having a light on and I sleep with the light on every night. Despite how irrational these are, these are fears as opposed to phobias. Even if I know I’m going to be crossing a specific bridge I’m scared of, it doesn’t occupy my mind until I am in that situation. Despite the irrationalness of being unable to walk into a room without the light on, even if I was only in that room 5 seconds prior, the minor anxiety it causes doesn’t warrant it being a phobia. 

The issue with fears and phobias is that people often get dismissed if these fears are deemed to be ‘irrational’ by those around them. Despite being an adult and one that loves being out at 3am, my fear of the dark when indoors is still prevalent. To get to my bathroom I need to walk 1 metre across the hall and a few metres across a storage room before reaching the bathroom. Despite the short walk, I always turn on the hall light and the storage room light before turning on the bathroom light. When I sleep at night, I always have a lamp on, with the exception of a few specific periods in my life. Whenever I am in bed and hear a noise, for example my neighbour closing their back door, I question if it was my back door closing. The irrationality of my fear of the dark, doesn’t make the fear go away. 

When you think of people being unkind regarding others fears, the first thing that springs to mind is children being unkind to other children. Sadly, time and time again, these unkind words can come from adults too. 

Fears still exist even if the risk isn’t there. The issue is, so does stigma. The expressions ‘grow up’ ‘man up’ or ‘stop being such a child’ are common phrases when someone vocalises a fear or phobia they are experiencing. If they were as easy to overcome as being told to ‘grow up’, the fears wouldn’t exist.

It doesn’t matter how irrational a fear or phobia is, it doesn’t matter how old the person is and it doesn’t matter if the task or object poses a risk; the fear and anxiety somebody experiences is still real. 

Treatments, such as exposure therapy, do exist to overcome fears or phobias, but not everybody has access to them, knows they exist, or the stigmas surrounding mental illness prevent them from seeking support.  

Follow my journey

X: @B2BMarchester

Instagram: @B2BMarchester

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/B2BMarchester

Website: http://www.Borough2BoroMarchester.com

Share my posts on your channels to help raise awareness

Donate today

Stripe (no minimum): https://donate.stripe.com/6oE17595Id16fgA5kK

Go Fund Me (minimum £5): http://gofundme.com/borough-2-boro-marchester