Do Phobias Arise from Traumatic Experiences?

Needles, blood, heights, bugs and sinister clowns. These events or objects are common protagonists of many people's phobias. A phobia is not merely feeling a deep displeasure in the real or hypothetical presence of a stimulus in particular, but it implies that the person experiences excessive levels of anxiety regarding the danger posed by the object.

On the other hand, those who suffer from this disorder execute avoidance behaviors with the aim of away at all costs from situations where the object could appear, which is colloquially called calls I can't even see it. This could lead him to shape his life around avoiding his fear, bringing negative consequences at work, studies or interpersonal relationships.

Now, why is it that a person has a phobia of something? Common sense could suggest that the cause lies in a history of traumatic experiences that perhaps accompanies the phobic, but there are many cases in which these historical events are not so easy to record, or that the past is not capable of explaining the phobia. Perhaps you know someone yourself. In fact, different groups of researchers seem to have realized that finding an unequivocal cause underlying the appearance of this disorder is not an easy task. For this reason, in this article we will delve into the possible factors involved in the development of a phobia.

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How is the cause of a phobia determined?

The discipline that tries to account for the causes that sustain diseases, which includes psychological disorders, is known as etiology. At first hand, the purpose of etiology seems complex; but when we refer specifically to the search for the origins of a mental disorder, things get even more difficult.

Psychology has always encountered the problem that the psychological processes that occur in the human mind cause difficulties for its study, since they are imperceptible for the observation public. Although it seems obvious, we are particularly interested in highlighting this because it means that the processes that cause a phobia are not directly observable. The way to determine the reason for a psychopathology is by making inferences according to its manifestations, for example, according to the behaviors that a person carries out or the symptoms that experiment. So, if we want to find the cause of a phobia, we must keep in mind that determining A → B is almost impossible, and if it could be achieved, it is very difficult. That claim is likely to be subject to multiple challenges, reformulations, and refutations, a dynamic that occurs constantly in the field. scientist.

• You may be interested in: "The 5 types of psychological trauma (and their treatment)"

Beyond traumatic experiences: three possible causes of a phobia

In psychology there are many schools that use their own epistemological principles and constructs. theoretical to account for the causes and reasons for the maintenance of psychological illnesses such as phobias. An interesting theory to study the origins of phobias is the three pathways theory —also called the tripartite or three-path theory—, proposed by Rachman in the late 1970s. Despite being several years old, there are recent studies that provide some empirical support for the theory. In it, it is hypothesized that the acquisition of an excessive fear with respect to a specific object or situation can not be due exclusively to a traumatic experience, but rather its origin could lie in one of these three Causes. Let's see them below.

1. Due to direct experience

The first possible cause for the development of a phobia is, for Rachman, direct experience. It is the first cause that comes to mind when we think about why someone feels an irrational fear of something that could be harmless. It means having experienced a traumatic experience in the past (many of them occur in childhood, but they could happen in adulthood as well) that justify the terror towards an object. For example, it is common for many people to be phobic to domestic animals -which in their extensive most do not pose any real danger—since in the past they have been scratched by a cat or bitten by a dog. From this experience, the person learns that this stimulus implies a threat and directs him to make decisions whose ultimate goal is to avoid proximity to the feared object.

• Related article: "Mental health: definition and characteristics according to psychology"

2. due to imitation

However, traumatic experiences are not enough to explain the causes of all phobias. For Rachman, another of the possible ways to develop this disorder is by taking close people as models -parents, siblings, uncles- who have had specific behaviors that show fear because of certain objects. This would imply that a possible origin of the phobia is that we learn to be afraid of certain objects or events by imitating referents (what in English is known as modeling).

3. Due to cultural representations

Finally, Rachman suggests that the development of an intense fear of an object might come not from own experiences, but from exposure to certain implicit messages of the cultural milieu in which we are immersed. That is to say, the cause of this fear would be for information or instruction. It is for this reason that there are certain phobias more frequent than others in Western societies, that the cultural representation of some objects tends to associate them with negative qualities or aversive

In line with the last possible cause for phobias, very interesting research carried out by the University of South Wales indicates that the fact that The fact that fear of clowns is so recurrent is due, in part, to the historical representation that they have been given as perverse or erratic.

The researchers point out that this portrayal of clowns began towards the end of the 19th century with the opera pagliacci as a milestone (in which the main character murders his mistress and his wife dressed as a clown) and which persists today, as Stephen King's work clearly illustrates, Item. The information we receive about clowns, whether verbal or through images, characterizes them under a terrifying image: they have an inhuman appearance —a effect that is aggravated by makeup, which completely covers their skin and exaggerates certain facial features, behaves unpredictably, which implies a danger imminent—and the preponderance of pale and reddish colors in their faces lead us to associate them with negative abstract concepts such as contagion and disease. We could even think of other examples, like spiders. Might not part of our fear of them come from cultural products rather than the actual harm they might cause us?

The importance of psychotherapy to treat phobias

In short, we can conclude with the following idea: although many phobias originate due to traumatic experiences of a person, this is not the only reason by which a phobia can arise. In any of the cases, consultation with a mental health professional can be useful to overcome this disorder, carrying out interventions and proposing activities so that the patient or consultant is gradually exposed to that feared object, always taking into account the particularities of each case.