Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer
3K
3K
740
3K
Menu
Menu
static-img
Environmental Phobias

Eremophobia – The Fear of Isolation

Share This Article
Share Post

Decoding Eremophobia — The Fear of Isolation

Do you dread being alone? Perhaps just the thought of being in isolation has you so scared you’re unable to be your usual self.

While we all crave attachment and attention, some of us might suffer anxiety and panic attacks over our morbid fear of loneliness. If that’s the case with you, you most likely suffer from eremophobia.

Let’s learn all about eremophobia meaning, causes, and treatment.

The Basic Information about Eremophobia

Eremophobia is the fear of what? Also known as monophobia, autophobia, and isolophobia, eremophobia is the morbid and inexplicable fear of isolation or of being alone.

It is true that we have been hard-wired into believing that attention, relationships, and intimacy with others are the key to our survival. This makes us fearful of separation and isolation. For some, it takes an ugly, more serious turn by the name of eremophobia.

People who suffer from eremophobia do not enjoy solitude. They need to be around others or have company all the time. Just the thought of being left alone can be distressing for them and impact their life negatively.

Eremophobia Meaning

Eremophobia is derived from the Greek word erēmia, meaning “desert” (a barren piece of land), and phobia, meaning fear.

How Do You Pronounce Eremophobia?

The phonetic spelling, which can help you figure out the pronunciation of eremophobia, is: er-e-mo-pho-bia.

Eremophobia Causes

Being left isolated or enduring the feeling of loneliness varies from person to person. Your idea of isolation and loneliness might differ from your friend or a family member, so try not to compare your struggles with others. There are various reasons you might develop eremophobia.

A traumatic childhood event where you felt abandonment or experienced something negative when you were alone can be a major triggering factor of eremophobia.

It’s also highly possible for you to develop a fear of isolation because one of your ancestors had it. Fears can be passed from generation to generation through genetic composition.

The environment can play a role in instilling fear into your system, too. What you grow up seeing and absorbing can reflect through your actions. If you grow up seeing a close one being afraid and scared of being left alone, you start considering it as a potential fear for yourself as well.

Eremophobia is unique from other phobias because the fear stimulus is always present, even though it has no physical trigger.

Symptoms of Eremophobia

Though our reasons for developing eremophobia may vary, one common link for this phobia—and most phobias for that matter—is anxiety. Your anxiety takes a new face when you suffer from this phobia. You may become afraid of yourself and your own company. Any time you’re away from others, alone with your thoughts, your body—both mentally and physically—takes an ugly turn and you may exhibit multiple symptoms related to your fear.

The symptoms that come with eremophobia are similar to any other phobia that exists. These symptoms are generally uncontrollable and can negatively impact your normal life.

To determine if you might be struggling with eremophobia, be on the lookout for the following symptoms:

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • Getting anxious and restless at the most trivial situations
  • Lack of concentration and lack of will to complete a task
  • Being easily distracted from completing daily chores
  • Developing a feeling of being unloved and craving attention at all times
  • Lack of independence and always wanting to rely on other people for support
  • Feelings of seclusion even in a large group
  • Inability to relax and calm oneself down
  • Losing temper and getting easily irritated

Physical Symptoms

  • Panic attacks
  • Seizures
  • Heart palpitations
  • Shortness of breath
  • Nausea
  • Goosebumps
  • Dizziness
  • Body ache and pain
  • Excess sweating
  • Migraines and headaches
  • Dry mouth

How Do You Deal with Eremophobia?

When you are trying to deal with eremophobia, first identify if it is the fear of isolation you’re suffering or the disgust of it. Fear should not be confused with disgust.

The emotion of fear occurs when you’re afraid of a dangerous outcome from your source of fear—isolation in the case of eremophobia. Disgust, on the other hand, is the emotion that occurs when you sense a potential disease, illness, sickness, or contamination from the source.

You deal with eremophobia as you would deal with any other phobia. There are a few conclusive treatment options. Let’s take a closer look at them.

Self-Help: What Can You Do to Help Yourself?

If you feel you may have eremophobia, confide in someone you trust about what you’re going through. This could be anyone from a friend to a family member or even a colleague. Talking about your fears is one of the best ways of overcoming them.

Try and understand where your fear comes from. You might have developed eremophobia as a result of separation anxiety. Collect your thoughts and write them down in a journal.

Meditate. Meditate. Meditate. Meditation is a form of self-help that will clear your energies and create a blanket of positive aura around you. This will motivate you to move ahead of your fears and live a better, more fulfilling life ahead.

Professional Help for the Fear of Isolation: Options Available

Presently, there are no concrete treatments available that will make you completely free of eremophobia. However, there are a few professional psychotherapy options that will help decrease the symptoms associated with your fears. Let’s have a look at them:

Exposure therapy is one such treatment. It involves the exposure of the individual to the phobic stimulus in a controlled and comfortable manner. The initial stages of this therapy are performed in a safe and comfortable zone, gradually making it more challenging each visit. This therapy helps in the reduction of anxiety and similar mental disorders that result from eremophobia.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is another practical approach towards facing a fear. In this method, your therapist helps you face your fears and makes a note of all the behavioral changes you demonstrate, physically and mentally alike.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is a healing practice based on the principles of exercising, meditation, yoga, and wellness. This form of therapy helps you combat the issues of stress, anxiety, and depression through mindfulness.

How to Cope with Eremophobia?

Coping with a phobia as severe as eremophobia requires a special kind of attention and devotion. Fear is a natural response to an unknown danger. The danger you perceive is not as great as you think it to be. Most of the time, it doesn’t even exist.

Your fears are in your head, and only you can remove them. Use affirmations. Tell yourself every day that you are much more than your fears. Don’t let your fears defeat you and get the better of you.

Face your fears. No matter how daunting it might seem in the beginning, the results outweigh the difficulty. Running away from eremophobia will not make it go away. Facing it and identifying the problems it brings is the only way you’ll be able to overpower it.

Final Words

Being fearful of a certain object or situation is a normal feeling. What is not normal is living with it day after day and having it negatively impact your daily life.

When your battles with eremophobia seem like a tough end, rely on self-help techniques or seek professional help to find your way out. Your fears are only as big as you make them to be. So give yourself a chance to live free of fear.

FearAZ.com is looking for personal stories of any 'fear of' or phobia. If you have an interesting story you'd like to share, we welcome your submission. If the story fits with our content and guidelines, we'll add it to our site.
0LikesShare Post

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.
This Pop-up Is Included in the Theme
Best Choice for Creatives
Purchase Now