Quote Originally Posted by Stunt View Post
People... A phobia is when you have an irrational fear of something... Not simply a fear.

E.g. of a fear of snakes: Johnny saw a snake in the classroom, afraid, he moved towards the door and left the classroom.

E.g of Ophidiophobia: Johnny saw a picture of a sausage and assumed it was a snake, Johnny proceeded to claw his way through all his peers before proceeding to kick down the wall and leave the classroom.

Do you guys get it now?
Technically correct, to some extent. You are stipulaing a extreme case of phobia. A phobia is something that causes fear within someone, to the extent that they will show some form of distress. A phobia will cause someone to become impaired, visibly distressed, and is due to a chemical reaction within their brain that overcompensates for the fight-or-flight mechanism.

Because everyone is different, one can agrue that a extensive sensation of fear can be diagnosable as a phobia, without the person literally freaking out. Each person will show distress differently. This chemical reaction may even cause someone to freeze up. But the fear inducing factor will always be present.

Many social interactions classify this as fear as well. Which is why you cannot talk about phobias without talking about fear as. Whether this be a fleating flutter of adrenaline as you see a snake, or a paralysing bladder release when a spder is seen, both are a type of fear, and equally relevant when discussing various fears and phobias

That being said, I would completely agree that i do suffer from arachnophobia. I've broken a bed trying to get away from a spider, I've twisted my ancle running away from one in another incident, and I cannot get close to a spider even in an enclosure. But my fear is always triggered once the stimuli is within my view though.