I have suffered from this condition for forty years and was pleased to see that there is at last a name for it, but I was dismayed to see how many people who have posted here put their faith in psychiatrists and psychiatric medication. In my case, it was precisely an experience with forced drugging when I was only thirteen which laid the foundations for this problem. There was nothing wrong with me when I was put in the mental hospital, I had merely been caught in the crossfire between recently divorced parents who took out their frustrations on me-- but when the doctors got through with me I had the seeds of a crippling phobia. Not only does psychiatry NOT cure such phobias, it causes them and worsens them. This phobia challenges all the assumptions upon which psychiatry is based because it is very severe, indeed life-threatening, yet it involves no delusions or irrationality.That is to say, people do not experience this problem because they have a distorted perception of reality but because they have an emotional reaction to certain situations which is stronger than that which other people have in such situations. No cognition is involved, and thus "cognitive therapy" cannot help. In my opinion, the only thing which can help is an increase in self-esteem, and this is not likely to come about through contact with psychiatrists, who make their living lowering people's self-esteem by telling them that they are irrational.