Aon's discussion on the difference between a normal fear and a phobia

After reading the article, “What is abnormal?”, in Quest (Hartman, 2007), the question No.1, “how is a phobia different from a normal fear? What might be some ‘healthy fear?’ is so interesting me that I discuss on these two topics. Concerning the difference between a normal fear and a phobia, I think that I can differentiate two kinds of fear with two criteria: level of severity and the effect on everyday life. Although a normal fear and a phobia are one’s strong feelings such as worry, scare, fear, or apprehension, toward some objects, activities, or situations, the later tends to be expressed more extremely and its effects significantly influence on normal life. For example, if someone is afraid of cockroach, they may run away, scream, or try to kill it. Then they can live their life normally. While if the other suffer from acrophobia (a fear of high place), they may sweat and feel dizzy, their heart rate will be increased, or even they maybe shock whenever they have to go to the high place. Consequently, these suffers will try every way to avoid their fear place. They may refuse the lucrative job if the office is located on the skyscraper. As mentioned above, the level of severity and the effect on everyday life of phobic disorder make it different from a normal fear.

Referring to the healthy fear, there was the great healthy fear occurring during 2-3 years ago called swine flu. All over the world was obsessed with fear because of the rapidly widespread infection and the lack of medical treatment. However, the fatality rate was not as high as expectation because of the application of effective vaccines. As a result, the global healthy fear at the end of 2009 is now treated as only a type of influenza which can be prevented and protected.

These are all of my discussion concerning the difference between a normal fear and a phobia and the example of the healthy fear.