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The Fear of Cats-Ailurophobia
Animal Phobias

Ailurophobia – The Fear of Cats

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The Fear of Cats: Cute, Cuddly, or the Cause of Anxiety and Fear?

Does the sight of cats cause your heart to race?

Does the sound of a cat meowing make you feel uneasy?

Does a conversation about cats send a cold shiver down your spine?

Is it difficult for you to express why you’re never comfortable around cats?

It must be hard dealing with a fear that people around you don’t seem to understand. It’s even worse if you encounter questions about why you fear cats. Many may think you’re overreacting when you try to explain your fear. If this is the case with you, you may suffer from a fear called ailurophobia.

Ailurophobia is an irrational fear of cats. While phobias like hydrophobia are common, ailurophobia is rare. This, however, should not have you worried. Through identifying the causes and adjusting your lifestyle, you can successfully overcome it.

The Fear of Cats-Ailurophobia

What Causes Ailurophobia?

To understand the causes of ailurophobia, you must take a trip down memory lane. If you jog your memory enough, you’ll probably find an unpleasant experience with a cat. It could be a bite, a scratch, or a hiss. Anything really. Did you ever witness a cat biting a friend when you were younger? If you can’t remember any of these happening, your case is rather unique. You may belong to a group whose phobia was not triggered by a negative experience with cats.

Who Is Most Likely to Develop Ailurophobia?

Since most phobias develop at a young age, children experience this extreme fear more than adults. This is because adults can easily tell that a cat is harmless even when it turns aggressive, unlike children.

On the other hand, adults who suffer from ailurophobia mainly developed it as children. Women are at higher risk of developing the fear of cats than men, because women have a natural fear of animals.

If you avoid going to places because of cats or deliberately avoid visiting people that keep cats as pets, you may be ailurophobic. Developing extreme anxiety whenever you see cats means it’s time to get help.

You can learn to manage ailurophobia with some mental and lifestyle adjustments.

Others with the Fear of Cats

Symptoms of Ailurophobia

The main sign of ailurophobia is a feeling of intense fear when around cats or even just thinking about them. As an ailurophobe, you may be uncomfortable talking about cats or being in the presence of cat owners. You may panic imagining a cat is in sight. Symptoms are divided into two groups as listed below.

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • Spending too much time thinking about cats
  • Extreme fear when you hear sounds that cats are likely to make
  • Panicking when thinking about cats
  • Having images of cats often flash through your mind
  • Experiencing fictional or imaginary encounters with cats

Physical Symptoms

  • Upset stomach
  • Pain in the chest
  • Increased heartbeat
  • Difficulties in breathing

Ailurophobia Treatment

Ailurophobia can be daunting and can impair your daily functioning, but it is treatable. You can first try self-help techniques, and if those aren’t enough, you can seek professional help as well.

What You Can Do to Help Yourself

After you have considered ailurophobia causes, it’s time to tackle the fear. You might be surprised to learn that cat fear is irrational but treatable. Cats are not as harmful as you may think. You don’t have to suffer as an ailurophobe. Here are a few techniques that may help you.

Write Down Precisely What You Can’t Stand About Cats

Break this down into specific information, such as how meowing makes you feel. If your cause of cat fear is apparent, identify it and write that down, too. This will go a long way in ailurophobia treatment.

Talk to Others about How You Feel

Don’t torture yourself as an ailurophobe. Talk to people you trust. It may be a good idea to talk to someone who has cats at home. Confess to them why you don’t visit their house. Let them know how cats make you feel. Letting this fear out is therapy in itself. You can initiate the conversation with a question like, How do I stop being scared of cats?

Relaxation Techniques

Techniques like mindfulness, meditation, and basic breathing exercises just before you step out of the house are a good way to control your fears. This will allow you to distract yourself from what you will encounter out there. Focus on happy things or events you are looking forward to, and envision a productive day.

Conduct Self-Affirmations

Look at yourself in the mirror every day and do self-affirming. Tell yourself how much you don’t have the fear of cats or fear of anything for that matter. Speak out loudly against any obsessive thoughts you could be having. After some time, you will notice how self-affirmations positively impact your everyday life.

Try Spending Time with Cats

Choose to watch a movie or an animation that shows the warm side of cats. By the time the movie is over, you’ll be feeling a lot better. Go to the next stage and watch a documentary on cats.

After you can watch a cat documentary without cringing, try visiting a friend that has cats. Force yourself to look at the cat. Try to pet it if you’re able. This activity will go a long way toward desensitizing you to cats and help you feel more comfortable around them.

Professional Help

Desensitization Therapy

Desensitization therapy could be an option if self-help hasn’t been enough for you to overcome your fear of cats. If you’re diagnosed with the phobia of cats, desensitization therapy can help. It’s a standard treatment. In a safe space, you’ll be exposed to cats in some form or other whether that be through videos, images, etc. After some time, you’ll get used to their presence and begin to overcome your fear.

Use of Medication

There are no known medications that cure ailurophobia. However, there are medications which treat the short-term physical symptoms that come with the phobia of cats. These medications treat anxiety, increased heart rate, and stomach upsets.

Combined Therapy and Medication

You may need to combine therapy and medication for a while if your phobia is severe. While medications work to relieve physical symptoms, others therapies work to help you better manage or even overcome your fear altogether.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, allows patients to recognize the thought patterns that generate distress so they can reframe them. Although this approach may in time involve some cat exposure, you’ll be equipped enough to cope. This type of therapy alters thought patterns to change behaviors and moods. It lies on the premise that negative feelings or actions result from existing distorted thoughts or beliefs.

In Conclusion

The phobia of cats is as irrational as cats are harmless. That one distressful incident you had with a cat was probably your first and most likely your last. Like all other pets, cats love to play. It’s possible that the cat that scratched you was expressing itself playfully, and the unexpected happened.

Once you’ve been diagnosed with ailurophobia, seeking professional help and undergoing therapy is the sure way to go about recovery. You won’t have to miss out on important events in your life because of cat fear. And you won’t have to stay home fearing you might encounter a cat at the park.

Your recovery depends on you. Do all you can to ensure you respond well to treatment and therapy.

Stories Submitted by Our Readers

Fear of Cats

I’m not sure if this is a true phobia or fear, but here goes. I had a cat at one time, but she passed away. I visited my aunt  six years later, and her cat meowed all the time. Its eyes made me feel uneasy. My heart pounded, and I could hear the beating in my ears. I never told my aunt how I felt. I would allow the cat to get on my lap, and I would pet it while shaking inside. My brother was playing with a stray cat (well not really playing—more like pestering), and it jumped up and clawed his face. Now, I’m an adult, and the fear has increased. I am now completely terrified and want nothing to do with cats.

Keith

I have an extreme fear of house cats. I do not like the way they look; I can’t stand hearing them meow or purr. I feel like running away when I see one. On the other hand, I have no fear of big cats like tigers.

Rosie

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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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