Theophobia or fear of religion: symptoms, causes and treatment

There are people who are very afraid of God or religion and who tend to be completely disconnected from any activity related to religion, God and spirituality. This irrational fear is known as theophobia.

The term theophobia derives from the Greek The O, meaning ‘god or deity’. This type of specific phobia is manifested by an inexplicable, intense, and irrational fear of God or religion. The person radically avoids any type of contact with spiritual and religious activities. He may even avoid contact with people who fervently believe in God.

In religious life there is a lot of talk about the fear of God. However, how to differentiate it from pathological fear? Among the characteristics that stand out from phobias and that differentiate them from normal fear we find:

The fear is disproportionate. The response does not correspond to a truly dangerous or threatening situation. It cannot be explained by the person. It goes beyond voluntary control. It leads to the avoidance of the feared situation or object. It persists over time. It is maladaptive. .It is not specific to a specific phase or age.

What are the symptoms of theophobia?

Like other specific phobias, theophobia presents with different symptoms that can be grouped into three dimensions: physiological, cognitive and behavioral.

Physiological symptoms

They are characterized by a set of physiological responses mediated by the activation of the autonomic nervous system:

Increased heart rate. Increased respiratory rate. Sweating. Inhibition of salivation. Stomach contractions. Nausea. Elevated blood pressure.

Theophobia can cause anxiety.

Cognitive symptoms

These symptoms are characterized by the presence of ideas, interpretations, beliefs or narratives that the person has about God or religion:

Negative images.Negative beliefs about God.Beliefs of inability to face a spiritual situation. Negative interpretations of physiological reactions.Intrusive thoughts.Concerns. Alarm status.

Behavioral symptoms

Motor symptoms are those behavioral responses that the person displays to confront the irrational fear of God. The most common of these responses is avoidance. For example, if the person perceives that there is a church or religious service nearby, he may immediately remove himself from the situation.

Causes

Next, we will review two perspectives that can help us understand this phobia.

Cognitive-behavioral perspective

Theophobia may be a consequence of the association between God or religion with an aversive stimulus, painful or unpleasant, for example, punishments, traumatic events, etc. In this way, the person learns to fear God, because he does not want to relive those unpleasant experiences again.

These associations are not the only thing that explains the origin of theophobia, it has also been suggested that it may be a product of learning from experiences lived by other people ( vicarious learning ). As a child, the person may have lived with a family member who had a deep-rooted irrational fear of God and through observation she learned to fear Him too.

Other explanations that have been formulated for the development and maintenance of specific phobias, such as theophobia, are based on thinking styles, which are distorted and are the product of disturbed internal dialogue. Thus, based on certain religious or divine experiences, the individual constructs a story or dialogue that feeds an unfounded fear about God.

Biopsychosocial perspective

From this perspective we can say that, The cause of theophobia is the high vulnerability to serious stress situationswhich are responded to with alarm reactions (fear or panic attacks) and with a characteristic attributional style of thoughts of uncontrollability and unpredictability.

These responses depend on genetic vulnerability, social support and the presence of certain personality characteristics (coping skills, sensitivity to anxiety and disgust, negative attitudes) that are, to some extent, a product of the educational style of the figures of attachment (Bados, 2017).

The learning experiences that the phobic has had cause their biological and psychological vulnerability to focus on certain objects. Fear is a product of the interaction between the biological, the psychological and the upbringing or social environment.. Biological or predisposition alone is not a direct cause, it requires contextual factors that activate it.

Intervention

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a good option to intervene on specific phobias, such as theophobia. Let’s look at some of their techniques that can be very useful in these cases.

Cognitive restructuring

Cognitive restructuring focuses on reducing false beliefs about God and religion, that cause behavioral disturbance, and increase more functional beliefs. Thus, in the company of a therapist, the phobic person learns to identify and question his or her maladaptive thoughts, so that they are replaced by more appropriate ones.

Thoughts are considered mere hypotheses about reality, so both the therapist and the person work to collect data that determine the validity or falsity of said explanations. To do this, the therapist designs questions and behavioral experiments that allow the person to evaluate and test their dysfunctional thoughts.

Systematic desensitization

The standardized systematic desensitization procedure includes four fundamental steps (López et al.2012):

Training in Jacobson’s progressive relaxation. Construction of the hierarchy of anxiety-generating stimuli. Evaluation and practice in imagination. Desensitization process. Combined application of anxiety responses vs. relaxation.

The procedure consists of imagining the first stimulus on the list, which is the least anxiety-inducing, and performing Jacobson relaxation with it. Then, the same is done with each stimulus until we reach the ones that cause the most anxiety.

Systematic desensitization makes the patient get used to the phobic stimulus and can reduce its physiological manifestation.

Exposure technique

This technique has been widely used and is recognized as more effective than desensitization. However, the latter can be a good option for the person to begin to get used to the object of their anxiety, and then make a live presentation.

The live exhibition consists of make direct contact with the anxiety-producing or unpleasant stimulus (with religious temples, God, spiritual cults, etc.). The basic indication in these sessions is to stay in contact with the feared stimulus until the anxiety is reduced (Fernández, García and Crespo, 2012).

Finally, theophobia is a rare specific phobia that can seriously affect the life of the person who suffers from it, as they are constantly exposed to the omnipresence of God. Therefore, it is necessary to consult a health professional; The idea is to prevent it from continuing to affect the quality of life and well-being of the person.

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