Psychology Textbook

Ironically, as I was reading and taking notes for my Introduction to Psychology II, I happened to fall upon information on fears, insecurities, and anxiety disorders. The textbook that I'm reading is

Lilienfeld, S.O., Lynn, S.J., Namy, L.L., & Woolf, N.J. Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding – 2^nd Edition,  2011. Pearson.

The chapter that I found was Chapter 15: Psychological Disorders. The chapter describes how fears and insecurities develop psychologically.

For example:  On page 585, it states, "...phobias appear to be acquired largely through learning experiences and often require only a weak genetic predisposition to trigger them" (Lilienfeld, 585).

• I actually never thought that genetics could be a factor in obtaining fears. I thought it was through experiencing it to a point where the object, idea, or thought could no longer be tolerated. Finding out that phobias may have a biological factor in it changes my view on if people could overcome their fears. So, question that occurred from this is: If a phobia/fear was contracted genetically,  how could one overcome that? Is there a possibility to even overcome that? 

The textbook also talks about fears only become phobias if it restricts our lives and/or cause distress. It goes on to say that fears are actually the most common type of anxiety disorder. As I was reading the articles I found on Academic Search Premier Plus, I remember seeing that fears can turn into an anxiety disorder. Now that I've read this, I've thought that my research must involve psychology. So from now on, I'd research "insecurity" and "fear" with "psychology."