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Allodoxaphobia – Fear of Other People’s Opinion

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What Is Your Opinion of Allodoxaphobia?

Do you live in continuous anxiety and fear of hearing other people’s opinions about you? Do you often realize that your phobia is irrational and unfounded, yet you find it difficult to overcome? Perhaps you suffer from allodoxaphobia.

As the fear becomes ingrained in your consciousness, you’ll typically stop answering questions or engaging in activities because you dread people’s judgment. This phobia falls under the category of rare social phobias and can isolate a sufferer, hindering them from living a full life.

Allodoxaphobia indicates an irrational fear of people’s opinions. Sufferers experience levels of anxiety that can range from mild to extreme. Those with this phobia take seriously what others think of them, leaving them with low self-esteem. You’d agree that living in constant dread of what others think can be taxing on your nerves, and in worst cases can force you into isolation.

Sufferers tend to cease social activities to the degree of discontinuing school or work. In severe cases, this phobia could generate paranoia, causing immense stress in the lives of both the sufferers and their families. This phobia can occur at any age and if left untreated could pose severe complications.

Once your therapist identifies the root cause of this phobia, he or she can help you gain a more controlled reaction to the triggers. It is worth noting that treatment can take time. Sufferers and their families must demonstrate a high degree of patience and remain optimistic throughout treatment.

Some Details about Allodoxaphobia?

Although many people dread being unable to express their opinion, a small percentage of the population simply do not want to listen to others’ opinions. The trigger for opinion phobia is typically similar to other phobias including traumatic or negative episodes.

Teachers, caregivers, or parents are frequently responsible for triggering this fear in young kids through constant criticism or caution. Over time, a constant barrage of critical censure might lead to the child suppressing his or her feelings. A traumatized or abused child also has a high likelihood of developing this phobia. Typically, sensitive or passive people who fear reprisals or criticism are most likely to develop allodoxaphobia.

Sufferers might have experienced criticism at work or in school, causing a response activated by the brain. Consequently, the mind repeatedly triggers the same response when it faces a similar stressful circumstance. This is a protective mechanism that a person suffering from this phobia usually applies to avoid hearing others’ opinions.

What are Some Causes Allodoxaphobia?

Although the precise causes are unknown, there’s an overwhelming agreement among mental health experts that the environment and genetics are important factors in the development of the condition. For instance, someone with a history of mental illness in their family might have a higher likelihood of developing this phobia. This might be the result of being genetically predisposed.

In such a case, it would only take some kind of traumatic event to generate allodoxaphobia. For instance, someone might develop this phobia after undergoing public humiliation, thus obtaining an influx of negative views from his peers.

Media can trigger this phobia as well. Accessing materials in graphics or print could generate panic in people who are often in the public eye.

Symptoms of Allodoxaphobia

People suffering from the fear of other people’s opinions exhibit intense anxiety because of their overwhelming concern about what others think of them and their actions. If you suffer from this phobia, you might find yourself constantly thinking or second-guessing what others in your circle, such as friends, acquaintances, neighbors, colleagues, etc., are thinking or saying about you. These thoughts may hold you captive for a considerable part of the day. Moreover, you might also be uncertain about your core values.

However, not everyone with this phobia will experience this. Sufferers might instead avoid in-depth conversations to steer clear of hearing other people’s opinions. In extreme situations, they might even opt to keep away from others just to avoid views that might accompany idle conversation. Typically, people suffering from allodoxaphobia exhibit these common symptoms:

Physical Symptoms

  • Trembling
  • Chills or hot flushes
  • Feeling faint
  • Disorientation or confusion
  • Hyperventilation
  • Increase in blood pressure
  • Dizziness and headaches
  • Rapid heart rate
  • Sweaty palms
  • Nausea

These symptoms often occur abruptly, without warning, and can be distressing to the sufferer.

Psychological Symptoms

  • Fear and anxiety
  • Feeling disconnected
  • Feeling hopeless or sad
  • Shame, guilt, self-blame
  • Feelings of dread
  • Panic attacks
  • Anxiety
  • Self-criticism

Self-help Strategies to Overcome Allodoxaphobia

Exercise

Exercise is known to have many benefits when it comes to mental health and even tackling phobias of various kinds. In particular, cardiovascular exercises can help alleviate the sufferer’s stress significantly. This does not mean that weight-resistance training would not benefit someone with anxiety.

Rather, aerobic exercises are more effective at releasing endorphins in the brain. Experts assert that exercise can condition the mind to cope with stressful circumstances better. This is because of the stress the body experiences during strenuous exercise. Over time the brain gets conditioned to accept this level of stress.

Therefore, if you live a sedentary life, engaging in some type of aerobic exercise might help decrease allodoxaphobia symptoms by making it easier for you to cope with the stress and anxiety related to this condition.

There are numerous activities you can engage in to help address or reduce the symptoms of this phobia, for instance, biking, jogging, swimming, and skiing. Engaging in regular exercise might help alleviate some of the pain related to allodoxaphobia.

Yoga

Various yoga poses can benefit sufferers substantially. This is partly because yoga helps take the mind to a meditative state which is both calming and soothing. It can help alleviate some of the anxiety related to this phobia because you’ll be directing your attention to something more productive.

If you’ve never practiced it before, it might help to watch some videos or enroll in a class to help you through various poses. Like meditation, the more you practice, the more skilled you’ll become. Besides decreasing the symptoms of the phobia, you’ll acquire increased flexibility, strength, and other benefits.

Decreasing Caffeine

Huge quantities of caffeine can increase your anxiety levels during the day. After all, when you consume a high dose of caffeine, your heart rate increases and you’ll find yourself getting tense. Moreover, your body will go into a flight or fight state of mind.

Such a mind-frame is frequently a precursor for somebody with this phobia to exhibit panic attacks. Therefore, reducing your caffeine intake might help decrease your anxiety levels. Although this strategy won’t eliminate your anxiety, it will help reduce any needless suffering you may otherwise experience.

Professional Help

Dialectical Behavior Therapy

This treatment approach is effective for those struggling with anxiety disorders such as allodoxaphobia. The approach is effective because you’ll learn various coping skills either as part of individual or group therapy programs, which may last approximately six months.

Mindful meditation is a common practice that falls under DBT. The approach can benefit sufferers considerably because it takes place in a group setting, making it necessary for people to get out of their comfort zone.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

This intervention seeks to enhance your mental health. Those suffering from allodoxaphobia benefit from this approach. It allows them to understand better why they behave and think the way they do when it comes to their irrational fears.

With this approach, you’ll face exposure to other people’s opinions by engaging in relaxation exercises. For this approach to be effective, a therapist must be careful to expose the person to the feared stimulus gradually. Otherwise, it would be counterproductive to the point of exacerbating the fear. For this reason, a therapist should recognize the severity of the symptoms to identify the exposure level a person with allodoxaphobia can handle.

Conclusion

While allodoxaphobia can make it hard to cope with daily life, it’s possible to manage it with a blend of professional and self-help strategies. At the end of the day, you need to remind yourself that while people have a right to their opinion, you have an equal right to ignore it. Someone else’s opinion doesn’t have to be your reality.

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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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