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Environmental Phobias

Amathophobia – The Fear of Dust

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Brushing off Amathophobia – The Fear of Dust

Do dust bunnies creep you out or disgust you?

Do you spend most of your time cleaning or dusting throughout the day to reduce your fear-of-dust stress or anxiety?

You’re not alone; more than 9 percent of Americans have some type of phobia that ranges from mild to severe. But amathophobia, or the fear of dust, is treatable. So if you’re trying to rid yourself of this dust phobia, start by first understanding how you developed it. They say once you get to the root, you’ll find the solution.

Amathophobia Causes – What Causes the Fear of Dust?

Just like other phobias, amathophobia doesn’t have a distinct cause. Although, according to some scientists, your genetics and environment generally play a significant role in developing phobias. A family history of anxiety disorders and phobias may increase the chances of offspring with similar issues.

Other causes of this fear may be a past incident where you had a bad experience with dust or witnessed someone else suffering due to it. It may also stem from another mental illness such as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). If you’ve been diagnosed with GAD or OCD, your fear of dust may be an extension of this.

Some Things You Need to Know about Amathophobia

Sometimes people get confused between fear and disgust. While fear usually represents an imminent threat to survival, disgust is primarily characteristic of contamination and represents a possible threat to survival. If the simple mention of a topic or particular object—in this case, dust—causes you to have an anxiety attack, it may be a full-blown phobia.

Amathophobia can also arise from learned behaviors. In your childhood, you may have lived in a dust-ridden area or in a dusty house and experienced the problems it causes. Because of this, in adulthood you may find yourself constantly cleaning your home or any space that may contain dust.

Amathophobia can lead to the creation of an extreme environment around those who struggle with the phobia. It may even prevent one from leaving their house, since dust is found almost everywhere. In addition, these unwanted thoughts and fears can lead to OCD in the future.

Because of the private nature of amathophobia, it’s difficult to determine how many people may actually have this fear.

Amathophobia Symptoms

If you’ve already done your research, you may have found that almost all fears share many common symptoms. This often makes it difficult to diagnose a specific phobia and seek treatment. Awareness of your symptoms will help in your diagnosis. Early diagnosis can prevent the phobia from worsening.

Amathophobia can cause the following physical symptoms:

  • Difficulty breathing
  • Nausea
  • Dry mouth
  • A choking sensation
  • Tightness in the chest
  • Feeling like you will faint
  • A rise in blood pressure

Amathophobia can cause the following psychological symptoms:

  • Anxiety attacks
  • Fear of losing control
  • Anger, mood swings

A person with amathophobia can show some of the symptoms listed above or most of them at once depending on the severity of the phobia.

Treatment for Amathophobia

Despite this fear, many are able to live healthy, normal lives. But if your phobia is worsening day by day, it may be time to seek treatment.

When should a person seek treatment?

  • You are not able to lead a normal life due to the phobia
  • Your symptoms are getting worse each day
  • You are struggling to cope with the phobia

 

Amathophobia Treatment Options

Constantly trying to avoid something that is present almost everywhere can be an exhausting and terrifying experience. But remember, no phobia is so bizarre that you will not find help. Why not first start with some simple self-help methods? If those aren’t enough to help you better manage your fear, visit a professional.

Self-Help

To get this phobia under control, begin by convincing yourself that the fear is irrational and dust is not something that can harm you. By reassuring yourself in this way, you’ll hopefully gain some comfort in thinking or talking about your fear.

Try to share what you feel with others to help you understand what circumstances or situations lead to your anxiety. Also, try focusing on replacing negative thoughts with positive ones.

Meditation is also a helpful tool to incorporate into your self-help treatment. You can learn to control your feelings and train your mind not to dwell on your fears through meditation. If your phobia stems from some past event, meditation can help you live in the now rather than getting too caught up in the past.

Additional Self-Help Tips

  • Start sharing your fears with your loved ones
  • Become aware of your feelings
  • Partner up
  • Practice breathing techniques

Professional Help

Exposure therapy, as the name implies, gradually exposes you to the object of your fears over a period of time. This therapy is conducted under the guidance of a mental health professional in a controlled, safe setting.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is based on the concept that the way we think about certain things will affect how we feel about it. By learning how to look at your fear from a different perspective, you’ll be able to better cope with your fear when you actually experience it.

Learning to Cope with Amathophobia

Dust is everywhere and there’s little we can do to avoid it. You can clean and vacuum daily, but you’ll still find dust. And it’s unlikely that each time you step outside, you’ll cover your mouth to avoid dust in the air. Yet there’s still hope if you live with the phobia.

Amathophobia treatments which exist today may not guarantee a cure for your phobia, but they will help you better cope with it. Learning to better manage your fear will allow you to lead a normal, healthy life without having so much dust-related anxiety.

Conclusion

You can take control of your life by learning to manage the fear of dust. Through self-help or professional treatment methods, work to gradually understand your fear and create some positive beliefs.

 

 

 

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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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