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Vitricophobia – Fear of Stepfathers

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Fear of the Wicked Stepfather – Vitricophobia

Have you ever felt stressed at the mention of stepparents, particularly a stepfather? Do you try to avoid films, books, or even social situations where they may be present?

 

Do you feel physically uncomfortable, mentally distressed, or generally disgusted at the mere thought of a stepfather?

 

If that is the case, then you may be experiencing what is known as vitricophobia, or a fear of stepfathers. It may not be popular on the list of phobias, but vitricophobia is a real condition.

 

Feeling the way you do may be perplexing or frustrating. But don’t worry. Understanding your fear will help you cope better.

 

Understanding Vitricophobia: What Is Stepfather Phobia All About?

Vitricophobia is an anxiety disorder that leads to an intense and irrational fear or phobia of stepfathers.

 

The phobia manifests in different ways and may cause you to have nightmares, feel anxious or uncomfortable, experience panic attacks, or simply avoid stepfathers altogether.

 

This overwhelming feeling of discomfort, stress, or anxiety related to a stepfather can stem from various factors. Vitricophobia causes may include your personal experience or the negative experience of someone close to you. The general cultural beliefs and negative stereotypes surrounding stepfathers may also cause it.

 

Vitricophobia may have roots in a variety of different influences. For example, you may have viewed pop culture media depicting stepfathers as evil and conniving, articles covering abusive stepfathers, and more.

 

Though you may not run away screaming and crying when experiencing vitricophobia, it can still be a distressing experience, no matter what the underlying cause.

 

This is especially true considering how common divorce is and how children involved in divorce are affected by it. The involvement of stepparents in the family unit may cause major disruptions in a child’s life which can lead to vitricophobia that persists even into adulthood.

 

Vitricophobia Symptoms

Phobia and anxiety tend to have similar symptoms regardless of their causes. Your experience with the distress associated with vitricophobia may look different from someone else’s—it’s all highly subjective. Read on for common symptoms of vitricophobia.

 

Psychological Symptoms

If you feel triggered, you may feel irritable, snappy, or stressed. That’s not all. You might experience other symptoms, such as:

  • Fear of losing control
  • Withdrawing emotionally and mentally
  • Dissociating or disconnecting from reality
  • Feeling sad or hopeless
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Confusion
  • Anger or mood swings
  • An overwhelming sense of dread or impending doom
  • A feeling of guilt or shame
  • Hypervigilance

 

You will most likely experience both physical and psychological symptoms simultaneously.

 

Physical Symptoms

Although it stems from an internal feeling of disgust, discomfort, or distress, vitricophobia can physically manifest in the following ways that are comparable to a panic attack:

  • Sweating
  • Racing pulse
  • Hot flashes
  • Chills
  • Trembling
  • Shortness of breath
  • Tightness in the chest
  • Headaches and dizziness
  • Nausea
  • Dry mouth
  • Hyperventilation
  • Rise in blood pressure
  • Ringing in the ears
  • Increase in bowel movements
  • Numbness of pins and needles
  • Confusion or disorientation

 

These symptoms may occur suddenly and without any warning. In fact, a stepfather doesn’t need to be on the scene for you to feel a sense of panic.

 

Self-Help Methods to Cope with Vitricophobia

One of the best ways to deal with a phobia of any type, especially something as subjective as vitricophobia, is to try to reduce the intensity of your response to the trigger.

 

Regulating your nervous system can be a very effective way to reduce the psychological effects of vitricophobia. This way, you can manage a trigger and bounce back without long-term dysregulation, as that may last days or even weeks.

 

This can include simple things such as:

  • Practicing yoga to stay grounded and get back in touch with your body
  • Meditating to process your emotions and feel more in control of the situation
  • Journaling to sort out your thoughts and put them into words, so you feel less overwhelmed
  • Saying affirmations to remind yourself that you are safe and secure and your stepfather cannot hurt you, in case you’re a survivor of abuse
  • Reading positive literature and exposing yourself to pop culture that depicts stepfathers in a positive light to help you change your perception of them

 

Being able to help yourself is crucial, as there are sure to be times when you cannot access professional help. When that happens, it’s good to know ways to self-soothe to get through a difficult situation.

 

A few minutes of regulation can help strengthen your nervous system against triggers and improve your resilience against your phobia. This way, you can bounce back from a triggering situation with ease.

 Professional Help for Vitricophobia Treatment

You may think avoiding the object of your phobia is an effective way to reduce its effect on your life. However, if you have regular interaction with a stepfather, you may continue to feel discomfort until you seek professional treatment. A therapist may utilize one or more treatment methods to help you overcome your fear. Here are two examples:

 

Exposure Therapy

This involves gradual and repeated exposure to the source of your phobia and the related thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Over time, your mind and body build stronger defenses and become more resilient against the trigger.

 

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be very helpful, as it will help you realize that a particular situation or person is not inherently dangerous. This will allow you to gradually manage and control your fear and anxiety when exposed to stepfathers.

You can speak to a therapist, and they will help you address how you approach triggering situations and also how you change your perception of them.

 

How to Avoid Vitricophobia?

In most cases, you can’t really avoid a phobia. They tend to develop on their own because of experiences, perceptions, and anxiety. However, you can reduce your risk of developing extreme vitricophobia by taking some measures, such as:

  • Being aware of your beliefs and thoughts of stepfathers and challenging those which seem irrational or overtly negative
  • Talking to a mental health professional to try to prevent developing vitricophobia if you have a history of fear-related or anxiety disorders
  • Try to focus on positive representations of stepfathers to reduce the perception of the “evil stepfather” stereotype.
  • Educate yourself about healthy blended families and how they function

 

Conclusion

Vitricophobia can be a severe anxiety disorder and may impact your mental and emotional well-being. Thankfully, there are treatment options available to help you manage your fear of stepfathers.

With the right support and proper treatment, you can overcome your phobia and live a healthy, balanced life!

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Your Fear Goes Up and Down

Are you someone who would rather climb the stairs than take the elevator? You call it squeezing in a workout after being sedentary the whole morning. Or perhaps you claim it's a faster route. These are both typical, normal, and acceptable reasons. But what if you need to be in the conference room on the eleventh floor in five minutes, and you're wearing your business suit and wingtips? Would you still prefer to take the stairs? If your answer is yes, then maybe it's time to take a closer look at your reasons for avoiding elevators. Elevators stir all sorts of emotions in passengers. From the discomfort of closeness to strangers to the sensations in our gut, elevators can be a source of the heebie-jeebies for many, but for some, they can also be a source of terror. Let's dig a little deeper into the latter, and see what this terror is all about and what can be done to manage it. To begin with, does being inside an elevator give you chills or the sweats? Or does it trigger an unpleasant memory? Perhaps you remember movies you've watched where something terrible happens inside an elevator. From Silence of the Lambs, The Shining, Final Destination 2, or the king of all elevator horror films, 2010’s Devil, the elevator becomes witness to something sinister and horrible. And you want nothing to do with any of it. You know that you're not claustrophobic. You can deal with heights just fine, too. And you know that you're not going to be trapped inside. All of these contribute to a fear of elevators—but they don't apply to you. Yet being inside one does something to you. It's hard to explain.

What is the Fear of Elevators Called?

What you have is a fear of elevators, which is called elevatophobia. It is most commonly triggered by an experience of getting stuck inside either due to a power outage or technical maintenance. Hearing about other people's experiences or watching a movie about similar circumstances can prompt a fear of elevators getting stuck with you inside. Usually, claustrophobics and agoraphobics may also develop elevatophobia because the triggers and objects of these fears are related. Claustrophobia is the fear of closed and cramped spaces, while agoraphobia is the fear of being trapped without any means of escape. Put the two together, and the elevator becomes the perfect combination of both phobias. The space is limited and closed, with only one means of entry and exit. You can add another point of access if you consider climbing the cables like they do in the movies, but that certainly isn't ideal.

Symptoms of Elevatophobia

If for some reason an elevator stops due to an outage or some technical difficulty, passengers with elevatophobia may go into full panic mode. Even if the maintenance team advises that it will just be a matter of minutes, by then, the person's mind has become irrational with the fear of the elevator falling, being stuck for hours, or other unpleasant thoughts. You would expect a person to exhibit the following physical symptoms: Additionally, you would be filled with that overwhelming anxiety where you feel that you have zero control over the situation. You start fearing the unknown and are filled with negative thoughts about death and imminent doom. You become irrational and unresponsive.

Possible Complications of Elevatophobia

When the panic sets in, the possibility of emergencies related to pre-existing conditions may make themselves known. This might include serious health crises like heart attacks or asthma attacks. When this happens, fear becomes a medical emergency. Elevator rides do not last long; it's just a matter of minutes or even less. But the fact that a person can escalate from panic to a near fatal medical situation classifies the fear of elevators as a 'hard phobia.'

Trying Some Self-Help Methods

Your fear of elevators can likely interfere with your social and work life and relationships. Not everyone understands that elevatophobia, like most phobias, can be crippling. But don't be disheartened. Depending on the level of your fear and level of control, you can gradually face and manage your phobia. Here are some recommendations you can try:
  1. Make a List of Everything that Entails Riding in an Elevator This is a systematic approach to getting over your anxiety. By following a step-by-step process, you can identify where the fear kicks in at its strongest. You can write a list of steps like pressing the topmost button and waiting to arrive on that floor, watching as the door closes and opens, being alone inside the elevator, or having delays with the doors opening. Now try doing the opposite. For example, face away from the door or occupy yourself with your phone so that you are distracted.
  2. Create Your Fear Ladder Although the name says fear of elevators, it is not the whole process that scares you. There are just phases and parts of the elevator riding experience that cause you to panic. So go back to the list you initially created and label the fear level you feel. You can do it numerically, too, like ten being 'really scary,' six, 'manageable scary,' and one, 'not scary at all.' You can put the corresponding fear levels so you can focus more time and effort into activities that are more scary to you.
  3. Face Your Fear By now, you have identified what scares you the most. You can try repetitive action to minimize your fear and increase your sense of ‘normalcy’. Remember that the longer you expose yourself to your fear, the better you get at handling your emotions. If you are feeling overwhelmed, stop. Pushing yourself too fast and too soon can backfire. Modify your pace and go slower instead.
  4. Talk About Your Fear People by nature, unfortunately, are not quick to offer understanding and support. You need to tell them what's wrong before they can empathize. Talk to someone who you trust and ask for their support, especially in the initial phase of overcoming your fear. If you are too afraid to ride the elevator alone, you can ask them to go with you, and before you realize it, you are on your floor, and there was no indication of panic.
  5. Learn To Be Patient Be patient with yourself and your predicament. This is, after all, your fight against fear. It might take hundreds of elevator ride practices before the fear gets under control. Even then, there might be some hesitations and episodes of nervousness. These are acceptable and expected, so cut yourself some slack and congratulate yourself for every progress.

Seeking Professional Help

Along with self-help, you can always enlist a medical professional's aid to support you with your elevatophobia. Talking to someone who has experience with similar cases can be comforting, because you know that you are not alone, and this situation can get better. Talk to your doctor about the severity of your fears and the symptoms that you experience. Explain how you deal with it in an attempt to control it. An exam and a health history are made to ensure that there are no unrelated or underlying problems that your symptoms might mask. Usually, phobias like this are approached with a combination of psychotherapy and medication. Your doctor will talk about these options with you, and it's entirely up to you, with your doctor's recommendation, what you want to pursue. For psychotherapy, the most common type is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which aims to help you find different ways of behaving, thinking, and reacting when about to step inside an elevator or when already inside it. With medications, there are beta blockers and benzodiazepines, but note that these can have side effects. Whatever these side effects are, you should promptly share it with your doctor.

Simple Tips to Overcome Elevatophobia

Elevators are not perfect, but their likelihood to malfunction, fall, or get stuck is very low. If you are not fully confident with this information, you can help overcome your elevatophobia by learning common elevator safety tips and basic elevator operations. These should help curb your mild fear until you become more self-assured. In addition to that, here are some of the things that you can do to gradually overcome your fear of elevators—both in getting on and riding one.

Conclusion

Yes, elevatophobia can be a challenge in today's world, but don't allow the elevator to win. Don't let it stop you from taking a job on the top floor or attending a social gathering on the rooftop. Sure, you can take the stairs if you insist and arrive winded and sweaty, with the party about to wrap up. But is this the quality of life you seek? Elevators are designed to make life easier. There are guaranteed ways to help you overcome elevatophobia. Take the first step and seek help. Soon, you’ll see yourself breezing through the floors with those arduous stair climbs little more than a memory.
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