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Other Phobias

Textophobia – The Fear of Certain Fabrics

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Textophobia: A Rare Phobia

Does even the thought of certain fabrics fill you with disgust or anxiety? Do you avoid going to places where you know you’ll be exposed to specific fabrics? Are you paranoid about the fabric of your clothes?

If you’ve been nodding along to all of these questions, you may have a phobia of certain fabrics.

So, what is the fear of certain textures called? In the world of psychology, it’s called textophobia.

Fabrics may seem like a silly thing to be scared of, but textophobia is a very real phobia that can affect your everyday life. But don’t worry. There are ways in which you can address your fear and eventually even overcome it.

Read on to learn all about textophobia, what causes it, and the different treatments used to help address it.

 

What Is Textophobia?

Of all the phobias, textophobia is certainly one of the rarest and most uncommon. But that doesn’t make it any less problematic.

Textophobia is an irrational fear triggered by certain types of fabrics. An individual with this phobia may feel intense fear, panic, or anxiety when they touch, see, or even think about specific fabrics. Typically, textophobia is triggered by fabrics with distinct textures such as silk, wool, or other textured fabrics.

This fear can be so severe that it interferes with daily life and activities. One with textophobia will not only avoid touching or wearing certain fabrics, but will also avoid areas where such fabrics may appear. For example, an individual with this phobia may avoid going to restaurants furnished with fabrics that trigger their fear.

 

What Causes Textophobia?

Dealing with textophobia can be difficult, and that’s why learning about its causes is important in order to address the fear.

Like with any other phobia, textophobia causes vary. Phobias often occur because of a combination of elements that create an irrational fear.

Often, people develop textophobia after a scary experience early in their childhood involving fabrics. They may have had a bad reaction to a certain fabric or there might have been an incident involving a particular texture. Such traumatic experiences can create an irrational fear, resulting in a phobia.

Family history of anxiety disorders or mental illnesses increases the risk of developing a phobia, including textophobia. This fear may also have been learned at a young age from a parent or caregiver.

Symptoms of Textophobia

The symptoms of this phobia will differ in different people, but certain symptoms are more common and visible than others.

Here are some signs and symptoms of what textophobia may look like in people:

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • Inability to enter spaces with certain fabrics
  • Avoiding contact with clothing made of the fabric or those who wear it
  • Trouble sleeping or concentrating
  • Anxiety when thinking of specific fabrics
  • A feeling of being violated
  • Feeling a loss of control

Physical Symptoms

  • Sweating
  • Shaking
  • Accelerated heart rate
  • Panic attack
  • Nausea
  • Muscle tension
  • Excessive sweating
  • Shakiness

 

Textophobia Treatment

There is no one cure for textophobia, but there are many strategies that are known to be effective when dealing with this phobia.

Self-Help Strategies

If you think your textophobia is mild, there are various self-help strategies you can try to manage your fear and take back control of your life.

Mindfulness, meditation, and deep breathing exercises are highly effective at helping you relax and reduce anxiety. You can also try progressive muscle relaxation, which involves tensing and relaxing different muscle groups in your body. It will reduce tension and anxiety related to the phobia.

Regular exercise or yoga can also go a long way in helping you deal with your fear. You might even consider using positive self-talk like “I am stronger than my fear” to encourage and remind yourself that you are in control.

Remember that it’s okay to take things slowly and be patient with yourself as you work through your fear. With time and practice, you can overcome your fear of certain textures and feel more confident in your ability to cope with challenging situations.

Professional Treatments

While you can always try different self-help methods, seeking professional help is sometimes necessary for treating textophobia. When you seek professional treatment, you will be talking to a doctor or a licensed therapist who is clinically trained to help people with different types of fears and phobias.

For textophobia, a therapist might suggest the following treatments:

1. Exposure Therapy

This involves gradually exposing the patient to their fear trigger—in this case, certain fabrics—in a controlled and safe environment. Over time, the therapy progresses from looking at pictures of the fabric to touching and eventually wearing the fabric. This only occurs once the individual feels safe being around the fabric without having extreme reaction.

2. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

This treatment method helps individuals learn to better tolerate the feeling of feared fabrics and reduce their fear and anxiety through mindfulness techniques.

3. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is one of the most common therapies used for treating phobias. It aims to address negative thoughts and beliefs surrounding the feared fabrics by challenging the logic in these misconceptions and reframing them.

4. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

DBT focuses on teaching individuals mindfulness skills, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness to help manage their anxiety and discomfort around certain fabrics.

 

How to Live with Textophobia

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to avoid specific fabrics in our daily lives. However, even though you can’t control if and when you will face the object of your fear, you can use the skills you learn in therapy to cope with such situations.

It’s also a good idea to talk to close friends and family so that you have a support system as you work through your phobia. Over time, with patience and some effort, you’ll be able to live with or even overcome your textophobia completely.

Conclusion

There are plenty of ways to manage the fear and feel more comfortable around fabrics. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. With time, practice, and the right support, you can overcome your fear of certain fabrics and feel more comfortable in your own skin.

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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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