My Hope (Jung Hoseok x Reader) COMPLETED ✔️

Chapter 59

You were in the middle of your afternoon lecture, twirling your pencil between your fingers as you look at your teacher's PowerPoint on the board. You were learning about phobias, what causes people to have these phobias, and ways to try and ease those phobias away.

Your teacher flips to the next slide and half of the class cringed slightly, even you did, just a little. A big picture of a tarantula was on the screen, its eyes look as if they're staring right out you.

"This phobia is pretty common, arachnophobia, as you can assume: it is the fear of spiders. There are different reasons for this phobia to be developed, the exact causes are through learned habits, a chemical imbalance in the brain, it can be passed down as a family or cultural trait, or traumatic experiences with spiders." You jot down the notes and feel yourself slowly release from being tense. You didn't like spiders, you have no problem killing them, but you didn't want any of them near you.

"Now there are treatments to arachnophobia differentiate depending on how severe your phobia is, there's therapy sessions you can take or you can also use medications." Your teacher raises her hand in the air, "This next phobia is a personal one, but there are people who are afraid of this too, hydrophobia or aquaphobia. The fear of water."

One of your fellow classmates raises her hand, "What's the difference between the two?"

Your teacher seems to brighten up at the question, "I'll show you," the next slide pops up with the title Hydrophobia vs Aquaphobia, "Aquaphobia is what I have, the irrational fear of water, where bodies of water can cause anxiety in the person. Now hydrophobia is something that aquaphobia is confused with. Hydrophobia is an aversion to water that develops in the later stages of rabies in a human being. Not only that, you may have heard in your biology or anatomy classes that in your cell membrane there is the fluid mosaic model, the model contains hydrophilic polar heads and hydrophobic non-polar tails."

"Treatments for this phobia include therapy, such as exposure or cognitive behavioral therapy, exercises one can do at home such as deep breathing and yoga, and some short term anxiety medications. From personal experience, I went with the exposure therapy and towards the end, I had help from a professional swimming trainer to help me with being in water and also swimming around in it. How to stay calm while I'm swimming, and more importantly how to breathe. I can say that the phobia has died down, I just prefer pool water than lakes and oceans, it's much cleaner."

You look up from your notes to see the picture of a black mamba appear on the screen, interest finally sparks in you. Maybe you could learn how to help Hoseok with his phobia.

"Ophidiophobia," you whisper to yourself as you take out one of your favorite pens and bold the title and added a small star next to it.

"The fear of snakes, I tend to believe that this fear is rather rational in itself." Your teacher chuckles, "I'd like to start this one off with treatment options. These are only if the fear affects your daily routine and persists for a long period of time. One therapy is cognitive behavioral therapy, the next is system desensitization, where they will show pictures of real snakes, have toy snakes around, and also show pictures of snakes. Medication can also be used to help ease the anxiety and the panic caused in this phobia. Since this phobia is rather common, the causes are mainly thought to be linked to inherited DNA, through cultural influence, bad encounters with snakes, and so on."

You never wrote faster in your life. Your handwriting was borderline illegible, but you wanted to write down everything you could so you could relay the news to Hoseok and see if you can't help ease the fear. You wanted to help him, you don't know what exactly sparked it, but a large jolt of determination causes you to want to help whoever you can. Your boyfriend was the perfect target.