Interesting article on phobias in todays Daily Mail.....
Spiders, snakes, claps of thunder — we can have phobias about anything.
But new research has revealed that while they often run in families, that’s not because we genetically inherit them, but because we learn them from our parents.
As a clinical practitioner who’s worked in the field for 20 years, I’m not at all surprised by the new research. We learn so much from our parents; why not our phobias, too?
But, actually, it’s more complicated than scientists from Rutgers University in New Jersey, who conducted the study, have suggested.
As a toddler, if your mother screamed the first time you proudly showed her the spider you’d just found, her behaviour certainly primed you to find spiders frightening, too.
