Thunder and germs and spiders, Oh my

People pay to be scared every day on rollercoasters, in haunted houses and off bungee jumps. However, people also pay to not be scared of numbers, thunder or the sun (arithmophobia, ceraunophobia and heliophobia) just to name a few of the 500 plus categorized fears.

The alphabetized list can be found at www.phobialist.com and the people who suffer from them can be found anywhere. By some estimates, nearly 50 million people in the U.S. suffer from a phobia.

Some of the phobias listed are those coined for fun like bogyphobia or the fear of bogeymen. However, other phobias like glossphobia, fear of public speaking, or koniophobia, the fear of dust, infringe on healthy living.

According to the April issue of "Time", phobias may be genetically influenced. Around 40 percent of the people who suffer from a specific phobia have at least one parent who also suffers.

Phobias can also be learned responses. Traumatic experiences such as a car wreck or a fire can inflict a fear response in the brain. Highly sensitive and emotional people are more susceptible to the fear.

Even secondhand fears, like watching a parent's fear response, can trigger the same fear in a child. H.P. Lovecraft, known writer, once said, "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear."

Until recently, people dealt with phobias in whatever way they could. Working night jobs to avoid the sun or keeping all the lights on at all times to avoid the darkness (achluophobia). However, phobia treatments are rising in success and number due to many discoveries in science.

Of the 50 million who suffer from phobias, 35 million suffer from social phobia, one of the most difficult of phobias to fight. However, in the last year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug specifically for the treatment of social phobias. The amazing thing is the drug already existed, an antidepressant called Paxil. It works by controlling the anxiety enough for traditional therapy to hold. It has had huge success.

Traditional therapy uses exposure treatment to cure the sufferer. The patient is exposed to that which causes the fear until the fear itself fades away. A German proverb says, "Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is." Exposure therapy helps to bring the wolf down to size. The process can be slow by exposing the patient to less dangerous portions of the fear each time or the process can be quick by flooding the patient.

Flooding immerses the patient in the fear reflex until the fear fades away. When patients cannot handle the flooding technique, counter-conditioning is used instead.

Systematic desensitization is the most common counter-conditioning method used. It involves three steps (1) training the patient to physically relax, (2) creating a hierarcy of events of that which causes the fear (3) counter-conditioning relaxation as a response to each fear event beginning first with the least anxiety-provoking and moving then to the next least anxiety-provoking.

Two WSU students have been able to conquer their fears on their own. Marlena Henry, junior, has overcome her superstition as she calls it. She suffered from misphobia, the fear of dirt and germs. The other, Vince Kirshaw, freshman, deals with his day by day. He suffers from arachnophobia.

"I used to wash my hands 30 times a day," Henry said. "If I touched anything I felt dirty and I'd go wash my hands."

Her hands soon got to the point where they were all scabbed and raw from being continually washed. Soon, people started noticing her hands, and she decided she didn't want people to think she was crazy and that it was time to stop her habit.

"It's so much less exhausting to have to wash your hands 30 times a day," Henry said. "It's exhausting to have a habit."

Kirshaw has been afraid of spiders for as long as he can remember. Watching the movie "Arachnophobia" made it even worse.

"I saw it (the movie) on the Halloween after it came out to get a scare," Kirshaw said. "It worked."

The reasons spiders terrify him are many, and fun facts about them that he discovers only increase the list.

" They have more legs than I do. They have 900 eyes, I swear, so they can see every aspect of you. And they can hide everywhere," Kirshaw said.

Kirshaw used to scream and beg other people to kill the spiders he encountered, but he has now gotten himself to the point where he can kill them himself if he has shoes on.

One of his fears concerning spiders is the urban legend about how the average person swallows so many spiders per year in their sleep. Kirshaw dreads the thought of one crawling on his arm while he is asleep.

He knows that he is bigger than spiders, but that doesn't stop the fear. When he brings an item inside that has been outside for awhile, he thoroughly checks it for spiders. The only other routine he goes through is making sure all doors and windows are locked and secure. He doesn't want to think about spiders finding another way in.

At the end of the interview, a spider dropped in front of him. "Oh my god. There is one hanging on my ceiling fan right now. I can't sleep in my bed now."

Phobias can be misdiagnosed. A difference exists between someone detesting cockroaches and another person breaking into a sweat and feeling the need to run when a cockroach is spotted. Signs of phobias include having a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation, heart pounding, lightheadedness, excessive sweating and/or trembling when exposed to fear stimui and taking elaborate steps to avoid that which is feared.

You can leave a message for reporter Heather Wheatley by calling 626-7621.