Most of us know what it is like to be terrified of something. But is this fear necessarily a phobia?
Take a deep breath...

By Ishani Ranasinghe
Imagine being so scared of electricity that you would not even dare change a light bulb. You wonder how anyone could get through their life like that. There is one word to really explain this fear of electricity: electrophobia.

The list of identified phobias is expanding every day with more than 500 wacky and quirky human fears being labelled and catalogued alphabetically on the Internet.

For many the treatment of the phobias has been a 'cope-as-you-go business' - preflight cocktails for the fearful flyer, stairways instead of elevators for the claustrophobic, etc. But such homegrown tactics are usually stop-gaps at best. Safe and lasting phobia treatments are now at hand.

Researchers are making enormous progress in determining what phobias are, what kind of neuro-chemical storms they trigger in the brain and for what evolutionary purpose the potential for such psychic squalls was encoded into us in the first place. With this understanding has come a magic bag of treatments: exposure therapy that can chase a lifetime phobia: virtual reality programnes that can safely stimulate the thing phobics most fear, thereby slowly stripping it of its power to terrorize: new medication that can snuff the brain's phobic spark before it can catch.

For something that can cause as much suffering as a phobia, it is remarkable how many people claim to have one, and how many of them are wrong. Self-described computer phobics are probably nothing of the kind. They may not care for their machines and may occasionally want to throw one out of the window, but that is not the same as a full-fledged phobia.

Unless you experience ragged breath, you are not phobic. Drawing the distinction between distaste and the singular terror of a phobia is not exactly easy. It is made all the harder by the fact that fear in some circumstances is perfectly appropriate. If flying into storm or easing into weaving traffic isn't the right time to go a little white knuckled, what is?

Experts, however, say true phobic reaction is an entirely different story, a central nervous system wildfire that is impossible to mistake. In the face of the thing that triggers fears, phobics experience sweating, racing heart, difficult breathing and even a fear of death, all accompanied by an overwhelming need to flee. In addition, much of the time that they are away from the feared object or situation is spent dreading the next encounter and developing strategies intended to avoid it.

Most psychologists now assign phobias to one of three broad categories : social phobias in which the sufferer feels paralyzing fear at the prospect of social or professional encounters: panic disorders, in which the person is periodically blinded by overwhelming fear for no apparent reason: and specific phobias - fear of snakes and enclosed spaces and heights and the like. Of the three, the specific phobias are the easiest to treat, partly because they are the easiest to understand.

The human brain may be a sophisticated thing, but there is an awful lot of ancient programming still etched into it. One of the things that helped early humans survive was a robust fear and flight response: an innate sense of the places and things that represent danger and a reflexive impulse to hightail it when one of them is encountered. When the species became top predators a few million years later, those early lessons were not easy to unlearn.

Contemporary researchers also believe phobias had meanings for our ancient ancestors: fear of insects or animals, fear of natural environments, like heights and the dark; fear of blood or injury; and fear of dangerous situations, like being trapped in a tight space. Phobias are not random, that we tend to fear anything that threatens our survival as a species. When times change new fears develop.

It turns out that we process the fear of these modern menaces in the same area of the brain our ancient ancestors did - which meditates a whole range of primal responses, including anger.

As many as 40% of all people suffering from a specific phobia have at least one phobic parent, seemingly a clue that phobias could be genetically influenced.

But genetics doesn't have to be involved. A childhood trauma, a house fire or a dog bite-may be more than enough to seize the brain's attention and serve as a root for fear. Further, two people can go through the exact same traumatic event, but the high strung, emotionally sensitive person is more vulnerable to the fear. Even second hand fear, watching the mother or father react with exaggerated terror to a cockroach or a drop of blood, etc., may play a role.

In many cases the brain may think it is doing the child's life a favour by developing a phobia.

But a condition that is easy to pick up is becoming almost as easy to shake, usually without resorting to drugs. The harder the phobics work to avoid things they fear, the more the brain grows convinced that the threat is real. Phobics are gradually made to face the fears by the doctors and slowly strip away their fear.

Given the apparent simplicity of exposure therapy, phobics may be tempted to try it themselves. That can be a mistake. It is important that exposure take place under the care of a professional, since it takes a trained person to know when patients are being pushed too far and when it's safe to go further.

For some situations impossible to re-create in a doctor's office, like heights and flying in airplanes, virtual-reality programmes are available to provide simulated exposure under professional supervision.

Not all people respond to virtual reality but on average, it's just as effective for treating certain phobias. If specific phobias were the only type of phobias around, things would be decidedly easier for doctors and patients. Social phobias and panic disorders can be a little trickier.

If science has so many phobias on the run, does that mean that the problem as a whole can soon be considered solved? Hardly. Like all other emotional disorders, phobias cause a double dip of psychic pain: from the condition and from the shame of having the problem in the first place.

Over the years, researchers have made much of the fact that the large majority of phobia sufferers are women, from 55% for social phobias and up to 90% for specific phobias and extreme cases of agoraphobia. Hormones, genes and culture have all been explored as explanations. But the simplest answer may be that women own up to the condition more readily than men do. If you don't come forward with your problem, you can't be included in the count. Worse, you can never avail yourself of the therapists' cure.

Phobias are often hard to distinguish from other anxiety disorders. A person who feels compelled to wash or shower dozens of times a day may have a phobic's terror of germs, but a clinician would easily peg the problem as obsessive-compulsive disorder, not a specific phobia. The survivor of an airline crash may exhibit a phobic's panic at even a picture of a plane, but likely as not, the fear is one component of a larger case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Different conditions require different treatments, and without the right care, the problem is unlikely to clear up.

The fact that phobias, of all the anxiety disorders, can be overcome so readily is the best news in a long time. Phobias can beat the stuffing out of sufferers because the feelings they generate seem so real and the dangers they warn of so great.

Most of the time, however, the dangers are mere neurochemical lies, and the lies have to be exposed.

Your instincts tell you to escape or avoid, but what you really need to do is face down the fear. When you spend your life in a cautionary crouch, the greatest relief of all may come from simply standing up.

The espresso maestro
By Esther Williams
Rich aromatic coffee - the ultimate caffeine upper.

It was day one at Colombo's new Barista Coffee Bar at the World Trade Centre last month. The bright and airy location was rapidly filling up with office goers and professionals, eager to sample what Barista claims is the world's finest coffee.

Barista is a specialty coffee retailer offering fine espresso based beverages. An Italian word for expert brew master, Barista is a globally recognized brand name synonymous with high quality coffees. It brings with it the ambience and experience of the typical Italian neighbourhood Espresso Bars.

"Barista is not just about drinking coffee but about imbibing the entire experience," says Barista Coffee Company's Managing Director Ravi Deol. Having started in February 2000, in New Delhi, India, the chain spread rapidly across the country and today has 121 bars, making it the largest coffee bar chain in South Asia.

Barista, Mr. Deol says, is also associated with a whole new lifestyle. "You look around and see happy faces in an informal setting, drinking the finest coffee at a reasonable price. That's what we bring to Colombo."

Instant coffee available in the market is in soluble form, not pure, and cannot be considered real coffee at all, Mr. Deol explains. What makes Barista unique is the superior quality Arabica beans they use, grown in higher altitudes. For their in-house mixed blends they use 3-4 types of Arabica beans from the 20,000 acre Coorge Plantations, in Karnataka, India, belonging to the Tata Group that holds 34% shares in Barista.

Venice is the home of espresso and Italian coffee is widely known, although no coffee is grown there. Over 200 thousand espresso bars there are run by a 'Barista.' Coffees of origin (Columbia Supremo, Cuba Caracolillo Crystal Mountain, Jamaica Blue Mountain and others) are sourced from their respective estates and roasted at Barista Coffee's Captive Roastery in Venice. In addition, single origin variety, made from beans from one estate is also available at a slightly higher rate. For each of the varieties different kinds of grinders are used.

Roasted Arabica beans are valve packed to maintain quality. Customers have an option of buying beans from Barista or having them ground. Grinding itself is an art in Barista. For stronger coffee you have a finer grind, for lighter coffee a coarser grind, etc.

At each of the bars, in view of the customer(s), coffee is ground and brewed using a method called espresso which is also the name for the pure extract. This is the base for all coffees and is mixed with shots of steamed and foamed milk, heated to a certain temperature, in variations to suit the order - cappuccino, Latte coffee, Moche Grande, Borgia coffee, Espresso con panna, etc.

"It is hand crafted and not from a vending machine, says Ruhi Singh, coffee specialist. The foamed milk that is poured into the espresso makes designs - trees, hearts, etc., adding an attractive touch to the rich aromatic coffee.

Should you wish to have breakfast you can bite into a croissant or muffin. Other snacks such as Chicken tikka sandwich, and dessert items like Vanilla Frappe and Lime Ice amongst many others such as Baguette del Lanka are available for an anytime snack. The tea addicts can of course avail themselves of the Earl Grey or English Breakfast tea.

Besides the bar at WTC, Barista hopes to open new units at the Galle Face shopping complex and Duplication Road - each to cater to different sections of the society.

Their timings will be traffic driven as it will be not be a destination store but a neighbourhood bar for family and friends. Like some of the Indian branches these would have facilities for interactive games. Other future plans would include opening branches in Bentota and Hikkaduwa.

A large number of youngsters, women and professionals patronize these bars in India. "If youngsters tell parents that they are off to Barista, their parents wouldn't mind. It is safe for their children to frequent a Barista Bar that is bright and open where smoking or alcohol is disallowed. "The only thing you should inhale is the aroma of fresh coffee," the sign says.

Coffee anyone?

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