There are four disorders in which fear and anxiety are actually felt by individuals, and these divide into two classes: the fear disorders and the anxiety disorders.

Fear is distinguished from anxiety by the presence of a specific, dangerous object.

Phobias and post-traumatic stress disorders constitute the fear disorder; in these disorders, a specific object causes the anxiety. In phobic disorders, the individual shows fear of an object (such as cats)which is out of all proportion to the reality of the danger that object presents.

In post-traumatic stress disorders, the individual experiecces anxiety, depression, numbing, and constant reliving of the trauma after experiencing some catastrophe beyond the normal range of human suffering.

For example, an undergraduate who was raped in her dormitory may subsequently relive the trauma repeatedly in memory and in her dreams, becoming numb to the world around her and experiencing intense anxiety whenever she is alone with a man.

Panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder are the anxiety disorders. In these two disorders, no specific danger or object threatens the individual, yet he or she still feels anxious. In panic disorder, an individual is suddenly overwhelmed with brief attacks of anxiety, apprehension, and then terror. Generalized anxiety disorder, on the other hand, consists of chronic anxiety that can be more or less continually present for months on end.

All four of these disorders share in common an exaggerated version of the normal and adaptive fear that each of us has felt on many occasions.

Normal Fear And Anxiety

Every person alive have experienced fear. The degree of danger we encounter has to do in large part with our job, where we live, ect, ect. Being a member of a team responsible for constructing an oil rig in the wintry North Sea opens one up to more danger than being an accountant. However, anaccountant living in New York City may experience more danger than one working in De kalb, Illinois, or in Los Angeles. While a farmer working on a banana platation in Dominica will experience less danger.

When the man on the rig experiences fear, it is directly related to the danger of his situation; his reactions will be appropriate and normal. Similarly, the accountant's heart has every reason to beat rapidly upon hearing a noise at his backdoor at three o'clock in the morning.

The Fear Response

Elements of fear:

When we experience danger, we undergo the various somatic and emotional changes that make up fear response. There are four elements to the fear response:

1: cognitive elements, expectations of impending harm

2: somatic elements, the body's emergency reaction to

danger, as well as changes in our appearance.

3: emotional elements, feelings of dread and terror and panic.

4: behavioral elements, fleeing and fighting (Lang, 1967; Rachman, 1978).

The following is a summary of the four elements of the fear response.

Table A1. Elements of Fear

Cognitive

Thoughts of impending harm Exaggerating the actual amount of danger

Somatic

Paleness of skin

Goosebumps

Tension of muscles

Face of fear

Heart rate increases

Spleen contracts

Respiration accelerats

Respiration deepens

Peripheral vessels dilate

Liver releases carbohydrates

Bronchioles widen

Pupils dilate

Sweat glands secrete

Coagulants and lymphocytes increase in blood

Adrenaline is secreted from adrenal medulla

Stomach acid is inhibited

Loss of bladder and anal sphincter control

Salivation decreases

Emotional-Subjective:

Feelings of dread, terror, panic

Queasiness and butterflies

Tight stomach

Creeping sensations

Behavioral:

Appetitive responding decreases

Aversive responding increases

Escape

Avoidance

Freezing

Aggression

Fear may take several forms, and different elements may be involved. No two individuals need display the same elements of fear when they are afraid. Nor is there any particular element that must be present. Fear is diagnosed according to the following logic:

(1) all of the elements need not be present; (2) some of the elements must be present, although there need not be the same combination every time; (3)no one element must present; (4) the more intense any element and the more elements present, the more confident are we in labeling the state as "fear." The cognitive element of fear are expectations of specific impending harm, usually in the immediate future. Alarge doberman growls menacingly at you. You think, " He's going to bite me," and you feel a surge of fear.

On a dark and lonely street, you sense a sudden movement behind you. You think, "It's a mugger," and you freeze. You are unprepared at a recitation, and the teacher calls on you. You break into a cold sweat as you think, " I'm going to be humiliated." Notice that mental representations evoke the bodily reactions of fear.

Somatic Elements Of Fear

Somatic or bodily reactions also occur when we are afraid. there are two classes of bodily changes: external changes and internal changes. Like the octopus, who changes from green to red when afraid, human appearance changes, often dramatically, when we are afraid. A keen observer will notice the change in bodily surface: some people skin becomes pale, goose bumps may form, beads of sweat appear on our forhead, the palms of our hands become clammy, our lips tremble and shiver, and our muscles tense. However, most salient of all, fear can be seen in our face and those changes in the face can, by themselves, increase fear reactions elsewhere in the body.

In addition to the changes in appearance, there are internal changes within the body. In a matter of seconds after we perceive danger, our body's resources are mobilized in the emergency reaction; these internal changes are the psysiological elements of fear.

Emotional Elements Of Fear

Fear is also accompanied by the following strong emotional elements: dread, terror, queasiness, the chills, creeping sensations, a lump in the pit of the stomach. These elements are familiar to us because we talk about them when describing our feelings of fear. We are also more conscious of the emotional elements, wheras we generally do not stop to reflect on our cognitions, nor are we particularly aware of the inner physiological workings set off by fear.

Behavioral Elements Of Fear

The behavior we engage in when afraid continues the fourth and finial element of fear. There are two kinds of fear behavior: classically conditioned fear responses, which are involuntary reactions to being afraid, and instrumental responses, which are voluntary attempts to do something about the object we are afraid of.

In the world of elementary school children, bullies sometimes pick on a hapless child on his way home from school, perhaps in what was once a safe alley. After this occurs a few times, the youth will become afraid when approaching the alley. The child will display a number of involuntary fear reactions, like sweating and faster heartbeat. This is an example of classical conditioning of fear.

We know that classical fear conditioning takes place when a previously neutral signal is paired with a traumatic event. As a result of this pairing, the signal itself will cause fear reactions. In this case, the signal is the conditioned stimulus (CS), the trauma is unconditioned stimulus (US), and fear is the conditioned response (CR). Once conditioning has occurred, the signal alone causes the physiological emergency reaction to occur, profoundly changing other voluntary behavior.

In the example, when the hapless youth sees the alley, he/she will stop munching, or stop reading. Fleeing and fighting (flight or fight)are the main instrumental behaviors in response to fear. There are two types of flight responses: escape and avoidance.

In escape responding, the harmful event actually occurs and the subject leaves the scene. For example, the child being beaten up by schoolmates will run out of the alley if given the chance. Similarly, a rat will jump across a hurdle to escape from and terminate an electric shock. In contrast, in avoidance responding, the subject will leave before the harmful event occures. A signal will herald the bad event: the alley is a signal that some bullies might await the child, just as a tone might signal shock to a rat.

The child will run out of the alley and take another route home, even if no bullies are beating him or her up. Responding to the tone, a rat will avoid the shock before it comes on, thereby preventing the shock from occurring at all. The signal, because of its previous pairing with shock (in early trials, in which the subject failed to make the avoidance response, shock occurred), produces fear, and the subject responds during the signal to remove itself from fear.