Get Creative - Fear/Phobia (Information Report)

 Fear, distress, anxiety, these words all mean one thing, being terrified, horrified, dreadful. People could panic when frightened, fight, flight or stand still, there’s so much more different kinds of fear and this report could go on forever.

Fear has been with us ever since life existed, it was the perfect way of keeping someone safe. This is in every complex moving and living organism, something that without, could possibly fail the species. But fear isn’t good either. Sometimes it’s annoying, painful and could get in the way of other things.  

Fear is engraved in our head and activated from the small inside part of our brain called amygdala responsible for the survival instincts. And when it thinks we’re in danger, it activates parts that are responsible for the fight or flight instinct and creates stress hormones in the process. Though there are rare cases of a disease where it destroys the part of the brain responsible for the fear and so, that person has no known thing they are scared of. But that’s really rare and there's only been approximately 400 cases since it was discovered.

Fear can be from mild to severe and there are also different types from “oh, that makes sense” to “what in the world?” There’s so many so how do we know what we’re talking about? Well, that's when phobias come into play. Phobia is an alternate name for fear and you usually add some incredibly complex latin word onto the front of the word to name a specific fear. Nyctophobia (fear of the dark), Acrophobia (fear of heights) and Arachnophobia (fear of spiders) are some of your everyday fears, ones that you might have yourself. But there’s some absurd ones too. Take one of the most popular ones for example, famous for its irony, Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (the fear of long words.) Phobias could’ve come naturally, although some could be the effects of a traumatic experience like being in a car crash could’ve activated Dromophobia (fear of roads with any form of vehicles in sight) The list can go on and on as anything could be scary or uncomfortable so somebody.

Fear is yes, annoying sometimes but it’s a vital part of life on earth. Without it, we would’ve never gotten to where we are today so be grateful you can be scared.

So this is supposed an optional topic for an information report as a get creative task. I learnt a lot and it was fun learning about the names of some new phobias and something new was how some fears can be from traumatic experiences.