I need to have a debate on Anxiety and who thinks they are real or not.. Example fear of spiders.... 

i think it is if you are allergic to spiders, 

Allergic to spiders? So if your not allergic to them, and are just afraid of them, would you consider the anxiety over them real? 

Um I hate spiders. It bad enough that I have nightmares about them at times. I have woken up and sworn there was was hanging over my head a zillion times. Then I kick all the sheets off the bed, and sleep with the lights on. 

I would say that the anxiety is real if it interferes with your normal life. 

i believe it can be real. people have different ways of reacting. for example, it could be a past experience, a movie they watched when they were young or even a death behind it. 

I just moved into a new aparment and I came home one night and there was a huge brown spider on my door. I was excausted and had a truck full of stuff to unload. I sat at the back of my truck staring at my door crying for an hour. I was so mad at myself for letting this little tiny ugly spider do that to me. So I think they are real. I know I had some people laugh at me when I asked them for help. I would like to find someone to agrue with this post about how its not real. 

My husband is afraid of spiders. Infact when he sees a spider he makes me kill it with a shoe or something he wont even kill it. Thats how afraid of spiders he is. I concider spiders just another insect and i will kill it as if i were killing flys in my hosue like its no big deal. 

Tammy are you only talking about fear of spiders or would you like another example? I have severe anxiety over something that most people don't understand. If you would like to hear about it I will be more than happy to tell you about my VERY REAL anxiety! 

Sure Misty... I just choose spiders because that is a fear I am familiar with. 

I think it is very real. I freak out about spiders in person but I even freak out to see them on tv. The worst is that Weird foods with andrew zimmern. In the opening of the show he has a deep fried terantula on his plate and it makes my heart race and the back of my throat scratch. They had that as a full page ad in a magazine and I actually couldn't touch the page! 

I worked at a psychologist office and we had some cases with extreme anxiety. They are all real and even with a treatment it will not go away fully. We had patients that on a scale from 1-10 (lets say for spiders) the fear was 10 and they only got down to 3-4, which is still very good.