PSY

A phobia is an irrational, persistent fear of certain situations, objects, activities, or persons. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive, unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject. When the fear is beyond one's control, or if the fear is interfering with daily life, then a diagnosis under one of the anxiety disorders can be made.

Phobias (in the clinical meaning of the term) are the most common form of anxiety disorders. An American study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found that between 8.7% and 18.1% of Americans suffer from phobias. Broken down by age and gender, the study found that phobias were the most common mental illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older than 25.

It is generally accepted that phobias arise from a combination of external events and internal predispositions. Some phobias such as arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) however, may arise more easily due to an evolutionary trait that conditioned humans to fear certain creatures that could cause them harm. In a famous experiment, Martin Seligman used classical conditioning to establish phobias of snakes and flowers. The results of the experiment showed that it took far fewer shocks to create an adverse response to a picture of a snake than to a picture of a flower, leading to the conclusion that certain objects may have a genetic predisposition to being associated with fear. Many specific phobias can be traced back to a specific triggering event, usually a traumatic experience at an early age. Social phobias and agoraphobia have more complex causes that are not entirely known at this time. It is believed that heredity, genetics, and brain chemistry combine with life-experiences to play a major role in the development of anxiety disorders and phobias.

Clinical phobias

Most psychologists and psychiatrists classify most phobias into three categories:

1) Social phobias - fears involving other people or social situations such as performance anxiety or fears of embarrassment by scrutiny of others, such as eating in public. Social phobias may be further subdivided into:
* the general social phobia, also known as social anxiety disorder, and
* specific social phobias, which are cases of anxiety triggered only in specific situations. The symptoms may extend to psychosomatic manifestation of physical problems. For example, sufferers of paruresis find it difficult or impossible to urinate in reduced levels of privacy. That goes beyond mere preference. If the condition triggers, the person physically cannot empty their bladder.

2)Specific phobias - fear of a single specific panic trigger such as spiders, dogs, elevators, water, flying, catching a specific illness, etc.

3) Agoraphobia - a generalized fear of leaving home or a small familiar 'safe' area, and of possible panic attacks that might follow. Agoraphobia is the only phobia regularly treated as a medical condition.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), social phobia, specific phobia, and agoraphobia are sub-groups of anxiety disorder.

Many of the specific phobias, such as fear of dogs, heights, spiders and so forth, are extensions of fears that a lot of people have. People with these phobias specifically avoid the entity they fear.

Phobias vary in severity among individuals. Some individuals can simply avoid the subject of their fear and suffer only relatively mild anxiety over that fear. Others suffer fully-fledged panic attacks with all the associated disabling symptoms. Most individuals understand that they are suffering from an irrational fear, but are powerless to override their initial panic reaction.

Source : www.wikipedia.org

Intuition is "the immediate apprehension of an object by the mind without the intervention of any reasoning process" [Oxford English Dictionary].

Intuition is one of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung's four 'psychological types' or ego functions. In this early model of the own psyche, intuition was opposed by sensation on one axis, while feeling was opposed by thinking on any more axis. Jung argued that, in a meticulous individual, one of these four functions was primary — most prominent or developed — in the consciousness. The opposing function would typically be underdeveloped in that individual. The remaining pair (on the other axis) would be consciously active, but to a lesser extent than the primary function. This schema is perhaps most familiar today as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

In psychology, intuition can include the capacity to know valid solutions to problems and result making. For example, the recognition primed decision (RPD) model was described by Gary Klein in order to explain how people can make relatively fast decisions without having to compare options. Klein found that under time pressure, high stakes, and changing parameters, experts used their base of experience to identify similar situations and intuitively choose feasible solutions. Thus, the RPD model is a blend of intuition and analysis. The intuition is the pattern-matching process that promptly suggests possible courses of action. The analysis is the mental simulation, a conscious and deliberate review of the courses of action.

An essential intuitive way for identifying options is brainstorming. According to the renowned Neuropsychologist and Neurobiologist Roger Wolcott Sperry though, Intuition is a right-brain activity while Factual and Mathematical analysis is a left-brain activity.

Four Types of Intuition

I’ll first list the three primary types of intuitive perception that are the most usually known; explore seems to specify that these three are listed in order from least common to most common. The fourth type is a term that has been coined in latest years.

1. Clairvoyant: the capacity to “see” auras, guides/angels, etc. in 3D or in a vivid hallucination within the 3rd eye chakra. This is the kind that is most used by movies and television to depict psychic abilities; sadly, this widespread depiction has given the public a skewed idea of what being psychic in fact means. Somebody who is clairvoyant first interprets information from the hypothalamus mostly through the pineal gland.

2. Clairaudient: the ability to “hear” voices of the guides, angels, etc. in a similar way to the way we hear in each day life, or within the mentality. Someone who is clairaudient first interprets information from the hypothalamus primarily through the pituitary gland.

3. Clairkinetic: the ability to “feel” the guides, angels, and beings in other dimensions; getting a physical sensation in or on the body to indicate that another attendance is making a connection. Someone who is clairkinetic first interprets information from the hypothalamus primarily through the heart center.

4. Clairsentient is a recently coined term: it is the ability to “know” information through “impressions,” without having the experience of seeing, hearing, or feeling first. Within the human body, DNA is contained within each and every cell; the DNA is like the “brain” of each cell. A clairsentient uses their entire cellular DNA structure as their primary form of intuitive perception, without first going through the more linear process of “unpacking” information from the hypothalamus through the other glands.

All of these types of perceiving information from outside the physical realm are valuable and viable—one is not more or less preferable than another—and many people already use a mixture of one or more of these abilities to express their intuitive gifts.

Source : www.wikipedia.org
www.www.spiritual.com.au