How to treat children with animal phobia

Some people think small animals are very cute and they always like to touch them. However, there are always some people who are particularly afraid of small animals. In fact, this is a kind of animal phobia. Once you see small animals, you will be very scared and nervous. Let's talk about animal phobias.

Psychoanalysts believe that phobias are mainly the result of unresolved childhood Oedipus complex or Oedipus complex conflicts. This sounds incomprehensible and even irrelevant, but this is the mystery of psychoanalysis.

In comparison, the explanation of behaviorism seems to be easier to understand and accept. They believe that fear of a certain animal can come from past experiences in childhood, or it can be influenced by parents or other children, such as a child witnessing his father's panic when encountering a snake, or his mother's repeated warnings. It can also be obtained through the conditioned reflex mechanism. For example, the behaviorist psychologist Watson once used the conditioned reflex method to make a child who was not afraid of rabbits become afraid of rabbits later (the child was later restored to normal using desensitization therapy).

Environmental factors also play an important role. People generally believe that girls should be petite and lovable, but there is a lack of cultivation and reinforcement of girls' qualities such as strength and courage. In such a social environment, patients gradually develop fear symptoms through some negative self-suggestions.

Maybe many people don’t know that this kind of animal phobia is innate, and there is nothing to be ashamed of. However, some people who suffer from animal phobia have acquired it through acquired influence. They must have been frightened by some animal, and then they become more afraid of animals psychologically, thus developing animal phobia.