Phobias

            --Churches, beautiful women, fog, vegetables, flutes, string, clouds, bald people, looking up, stars, and of course: baked beans. PAUSE!!!.
             --"Your heart starts beating so fast it feels like it's going to explode. Your throat closes "you can't breathe. You start to choke. Your hands [are dripping with sweat]. You're so dizzy that you have to hold on to the furniture or wall to keep from falling or fainting. You know you are going to die. You want to run "but you don't know where to go."" This anonymous quote taken from the American Psychiatric Association website tells the story of a very unlucky person with the illness I'm about to describe to you today: an illness called Phobias.
             -- According to the American Psychiatric Association website, 12.5% of the U.S. population has some sort of phobia. That means that about three of you in this class either suffers or will suffer from this incredible illness throughout your lives.
             --From my recent research and 15 years of personal experience with Acrophobia "the fear of heights, I'm going to first explain to you a little about what a phobia is, what causes phobias, the three main categories of this illness and the possible treatments.
             **To begin with, let's take a look at what a phobia is.
             -- Many of you may not know what exactly the word "phobia- means. The term "phobia- comes from the Greek word "phobas- meaning flight, panic "fear, and terror.
             --Greeks first used the word Phobia in 1801. The Greek people "Phobos- are the people who inspired the use of the word because they provoked fear into their enemies.
             --A phobia refers to a specific kind of fear. A standard dictionary defines a phobia as "Nearly always excessive fear of some particular type of object or situation; behavior deemed irrational by the viewer. .
             --Phobic people have a much greater anxiety level than the non-phobic individual in a fear situation. Phobic people also have a much greater desire to avoid their "feared- situation than that of the non-phobic.