Fear Not!
For millions of sufferers of
phobias, science is offering new treatments - and new hope
BY JEFFREY KLUGER
It's not
easy moving through the world when you're terrified of electricity.
"Donna," 45, a writer, knows that better than most. Get her
in the vicinity of an appliance or a light switch or - all
but unthinkable - a thunderstorm, and she is overcome by a
terror so blinding she can think of nothing but fleeing. That,
of course, is not always possible, so over time, Donna has
come up with other answers. When she opens the refrigerator
door, rubber-soled shoes are a must. If a light bulb blows,
she will tolerate the dark until someone else changes it for
her. Clothes shopping is done only when necessary, lest static
on garments send her running from the store. And swimming
at night is absolutely out of the question, lest underwater
lights electrocute her. When there's a possibility that lightning
may strike, she simply shuts off everything in her house and
sits alone in a darkened room until the danger passes.
There is
a word - a decidedly straightforward one - for Donna's very
extreme condition: electrophobia, or a morbid fear of electricity.
You will find it listed right below eisoptrophobia (fear of
mirrors) and not far above enetophobia, eosophobia and ereuthrophobia
(fear of pins, daylight and blushing, respectively). And those
are just some of the Es.
For every
phobia the infinitely inventive - and infinitely fearful -
human mind can create, there is a word that has been coined
to describe it. There's nephophobia, or fear of clouds, and
coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. There's kathisophobia, fear
of sitting, and kyphophobia, fear of stooping. There are xanthophobia,
leukophobia and chromophobia, fear of yellow, white and colors
in general. There are alektorophobia and apiphobia, fear of
chickens and bees. And deep in the list, lost in the Ls, there's
lutraphobia, or fear of otters - a fear that's useful, it
would seem, only if you happen to be a mollusk.
The list
of identified phobias is expanding every day and is now, of
course, collected online (phobialist.com),
where more than 500 increasingly quirky human fears are labeled,
sometimes tongue-in-cheek, and cataloged alphabetically. Some
have more to do with neology than psychology. (It's one thing
to invent a word like arachibutyrophobia, another thing to
find someone who's really afraid of peanut butter sticking
to the roof of the mouth.) Other phobias, however - like acrophobia
(fear of heights), claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces)
and agoraphobia (a crushing, paralyzing terror of anything
outside the safety of the home) - can be deadly serious business.
If the names
of phobias can be found online, the people who actually suffer
from at least one of them at some point in their life - about
50 million in the U.S. by some estimates - are everywhere.
They may be like "Beth," a pseudonym, a middle school student
in Boston whose hemophobia, or fear of blood, was so severe
that even a figure of speech like "cut it out" could make
her faint. Or they may be like "Jean," 38, an executive assistant
in New Jersey who is so terrified of balloons that just walking
into a birthday party can make her break out in a sweat.
For most
people, the treatment of phobias has been a cope-as-you-go
business: preflight cocktails for the fearful flyer, stairways
instead of elevators for the claustrophobe. But such home-brew
tactics are usually only stopgaps at best. Happily, safe and
lasting phobia treatments are now at hand. In an era in which
more and more emotional disorders are falling before the scythe
of science, phobias are among the disorders falling fastest.
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. In the past year, the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug - an
existing antidepressant called Paxil - specifically for the
treatment of social phobias. And just last week the Anxiety
Disorders Association of America held a four-day seminar in
Atlanta on a wide range of topics, including how to recognize
and overcome social phobias, how to spot phobia and anxiety
disorders in children and how to help patients maintain gains
achieved in treatment.
"There's
been nothing like this in the field of mental health," says
psychologist David H. Barlow, director of the Center for Anxiety
and Related Disorders at Boston University. "In the past few
years, we've had a complete turnaround in the treatment of
phobic disorders."
For 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, you are probably not phobic. Drawing the distinction
between distaste and the singular terror of a phobia is not
always easy - and it's made all the harder by the fact that
fear in some circumstances is perfectly appropriate. If flying
into a storm or easing into weaving traffic isn't the right
time to go a little white knuckled, what is? MORE>>
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April 2, 2001 | No.
13
COVER
STORIES
Dread
Heads
Scared? You're not alone-millions of people suffer from debilitating fears.
But science is devising cures for every anxiety, from ablutophobia (fear
of bathing) to zoophobia (fear of animals).
THE
ARTS
CINEMA: In the Mood for Love delights and
mystifies
A gender-bending Thai film takes on the
world
BOOKS:
Calling from Carverland
TRAVELERS
ADVISORY
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