Phobophobia: the fear of suffering from phobias

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If you have ever felt an irrational and extreme fear, and you are afraid of feeling it again, you may have phobophobia. We tell you what references are used for differential diagnosis and what it consists of.

A phobia is a common anxiety disorder defined as a severe and intense panic response that we experience on a mental and physical level, and whose trigger can be an animal, a person, or any specific idea that causes us acute fear. A very aversive sensation that we do not want to experience again. However, the idea itself of feeling the same thing again may go to the extreme, causing us so much fear that we end up suffering from so-called phobophobia.

Curiously, and l Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-5 includes this disorder in another of the most widespread phobias: agoraphobia . Because, One of the causes of agoraphobia is, precisely, when we have already suffered a panic attack before, and we started to fear situations that lead us to the same thing, an extreme “fear of fear”.

A strong desire to flee

Phobophobia is a complication that arises from the phobia itself; an extreme fear for which almost the same symptoms are experienced as other phobias .

On a psychological level, the symptoms begin when we fear losing control, fainting, We have very intense feelings of dread, and even, and in the most extreme cases, we may feel afraid of dying.

On a physical level, the body also reacts; The heart races because the anxiety is very intense, and symptoms appear. tachycardias, shortness of breath and even tremors. And the clinical fear of fear is a very real phobia that can affect you in making your daily decisions as much as any other phobia, because in the end, That fear is there, and it can arise at any time.

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Its symptoms may be different, since it begins without warning and irrationally. Perhaps, you mentally tell yourself that “nothing is wrong”, that “there is no reason to be afraid”, or that “everything is fine” but, In the end, perhaps, you cannot prevent your body from starting to react to the first symptoms.

What are the causes of phobophobia?

If you have seen someone in your family go through something like this, it is possible that that experience has had a great impact on you, because observing that intense fear reflected in someone so dear to you can cause that pattern of behavior to repeat itself in you, or that You just have it in your genes.

At least that is what has been analyzed in a investigation carried out by experts in psychiatry, which ensures that the most specific phobias have an important genetic component and can be inherited from parents to children.

As explained in the report, at a neural level, experiencing a powerful panic response causes your brain to eventually develop a negative connotation associated with that experience, so your body and your brain start to work together to avoid that fight, flight or panic response.

The problem is that, Focusing on avoiding these established anxiety symptoms can also lead to phobophobiasince you are so afraid of having the symptoms of a phobia, that in the end it is that fear itself that triggers the response you are trying to avoid.

How can you overcome phobophobia?

The first line of treatment for phobophobia, and for all specific phobias, is cognitive behavioral therapy, That is, a therapy that consists, on the one hand, of identifying and modifying certain erroneous or dysfunctional thoughts and, on the other hand, of gradual exposure to what you fear so that it gradually dissipates. This procedure can be complicated when what you fear is fear itself.