Welcome to AJ's...

I assume...

2009-11-20T14:55:22+01:00

...Juzzzy will have seen this, lol

Social phobias

2009-11-19T15:14:18+01:00

It's interesting how things work out sometimes.

I've been thinking a lot about social phobias lately (not least mine) and then see THIS about school phobia on the BBC.

Personally I'm pretty sure it exists although I believe it's exacerbated or even created by other factors.

There are often definable reasons for many phobias, most are totally rational. Our brains don't often create fears for no reason, it's more often that something happens that short circuits part of our brain and forever links that thing to a fear, meaning mentally we may understand there isn't a problem but physically we get the adrenaline rush, the pure chemical reactions that flood our body and cause the fear.

Yes, yes some kids are going to be lazy or think they can coast, some are going to want to avoid school for reasons that aren't phobic, but it's depressingly easy (especially when it's old people talking about the young) to just dismiss everyone under one nice simple heading.

On school days I would more often than not wake up with an adrenaline burst as soon as I realised it was a school day, I would lie with my heart racing and my breathing out of control.

Was I school phobic? Probably not, I actually LIKED learning things and when I got to sixth form and most of the worst bullies had left to ask the important questions in life like "want fries with that?" I found myself being much healthier of mind. To be honest I was bully phobic and sociophobic, something I still fight with today.

But then who is to say exactly what school phobic is?

Perhaps it's a collection of other fears mixed into one single item, just as how fears of darkness and small spaces can can merge into a single fear.

Of course some will disagree, like Frank Furedi from the University of Kent.

He takes the traditional view that if you tell kids about something they'll automatically use it to skive off...

"You take an understandable anxiety about going to school and turn it into a disease… Children will internalise it and play the role that's been assigned to them.

"It cultivates the idea that these [exaggerated medically diagnosable] anxieties are normal. You do begin to encourage children to think in these terms."

Will some little chancers use it? Of course they will.

Ignoring his arrogant suggestion these phobias are exaggerated let's see what might come from making children feel phobias are "normal" as opposed to, say, abnormal.

If we tell children who TRULY have a social phobia, be it school phobia or sociophobia, that it's normal perhaps they'll feel happier talking about it, perhaps it might even EASE some worries.

On the other hand if we tell them, as Mr Furedi suggests, that what they're feeling doesn't exist or isn't normal, if we tell them it's WRONG they feel like this and that if they tell people how they feel they'll be called fraudsters then they're going to hide it, they're going to bottle it up and create more illnesses and injuries to keep them from the source of their fear.

I believe it's one of the tenets of alcoholics anonymous that the first step is to admit you have a problem, perhaps it should be the first step is to REALISE you have a problem.

Chancers will always fight the system to get time off school, phobic children wont.

If solutions are found and the problem is addressed there's every chance the child will go to school and everyone wins.

Children often don't have the ability to understand fears and feelings, older children especially are fighting their fears and unbalanced chemicals in their body.

If we can help them understand these problems rather than just try to force them to ignore them then it can only be a good thing for everybody from the school to the parents to the child, who might grow up a better adjusted person at the end of it all.

Welcome to AJ's...

I assume...

Social phobias

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