It's natural to feel fear, like when you're being assaulted in the middle of the night, but when you fear something for no rational reasons you can be sure it's a phobia. There are three types: specific phobias, social phobias and agoraphobias. Specific phobias are an irrational fear of a specific thing or situation and can be subdivided into situational (eg claustrophobia), natural environment (eg acrophobia), animal (eg arachnophobia) or blood-injection-injury types. Social Phobias are related with how people will react to you in a certain situation, for example, fear of rejection. One way to reduce this fear is to read comments on internet so you can see how different are the opinions that people have (so possibly would be the same about you). Finally, Agoraphobia it's more than having fear for open spaces; it is also related to this fear of where escape would be difficult and /or help wouldn't be forthcoming.
Now, where does this fears come from? one explanation is classical conditioning, it says you associate a bad experience with a thing, then you're afraid of the thing. Other explanation is the learning of that fear by observation of others behaviors. Also, if we receive inaccurate information we'll "realize" some things are scary via instructional fear acquisition, for example, via horror films.
What can you do about this? having a phobia means you are aware of the irrational nature of your fear (DSM-IV criteria) but this doesn't mean you can't just make someone confront the thing they're afraid of by telling/showing them it's harmelss because as far a the brain is concerned (insular cortex and amygdala) the fear response is a negative physical consequence so at a subconscious level the phobia is self-fulfilling. Because of this, there are several methods like systematic desensitisation, cognitive behavioural therapy and even antidepressants.
At last but not least, things like homophobia or islamphobia are misleading named prejudices, not phobias! Unfortunately science still doesn't have a cure for being a dick.
(I love that last part jijij)
You can check out this and other news here ----> http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/jun/28/phobias-rationale-irrational-fears
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