How Are Phobias Developed?
Phobias are usually formed as result of a person being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As you can see, anytime a person is in a very intense state (e.g. joy, sadness, dullness, enthusiasm, hunger, laughter - or fear), whatever is going on in their environment at that particular time gets linked up to that intense state in their neurology ( study of the nervous system ). This is an example of a very well-known learning process called "classical conditioning". This explains why you respond to any number of different situations in life relatively quickly and automatically.
Unfortunately, however, the same powerful learning process is responsible for development of a phobia. If, for example, one had been chased down the street at age 8 by three large and ferocious looking dogs, the sight and/or the sound of dogs could easily have been linked up at that time with an intense fear state. Thus, weeks, months or even years later, should the person suddenly find herself in the presence of dogs, she could find herself suddenly feeling terribly out of control with fear. Others around that person may have no clue what could be going on, but that's only because they didn't have that particular experience with the dogs earlier on in their life.
