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Cacophobia – The Fear of Ugliness
Body Phobias

Cacophobia – The Fear of Ugliness

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Decoding Cacophobia: The Fear of Ugliness

Do you feel anxious when you encounter or think of something that you consider ugly? Is it difficult to explain why you avoid looking at certain things?

Do you feel extreme disgust or fear when you look at someone who is unattractive? You don’t hate the person, but the mere sight of their face makes you want to throw up or even run away.

If you have had any of these experiences, you may have a fear of ugliness or cacophobia. The worst thing about cacophobia is that you are fully aware of how illogical your thoughts and response are. There’s no real threat, but you can’t seem to help your unreasonable reaction.

The good news is that it is possible to overcome this rare phobia. To do so, you first need to get to the root of the problem.

Everything You Need to Know about Cacophobia

Is cacophobia real? While it seems like a trivial matter, it is an officially recognized phobia. Let’s take a closer look at the meaning of cacophobia and its possible causes.

Cacophobia – The Fear of Ugliness

Cacophobia is a strong fear or disgust of anything ugly. It comes from the terms caco, which means “unpleasant,” and phobia, which means “fear.” Since people have different ideas of what is ugly, it can be tricky to identify or predict the triggers. What may strike fear in one person with this condition may not affect another.

One suffering from cacophobia tries to avoid the object or person they consider unpleasant to look at. This avoidance could make life difficult for them and also the person they avoid. The obsession over how something or someone looks may also cause strained relationships or miscommunication in the workplace. You may give the impression that you are a biased person.

Cacophobia Causes

Environmental Factors

Your culture, society, family, and peer group all influence your definition of beauty and ugliness. These factors may cause you to develop cacophobia. Other negative experiences may also cause this irrational fear. For example, being a victim or witness of violent crime can be traumatic. It also means you associate graphic images with danger. Another factor is low self-esteem, which may cause a person to react badly to anything that does not match the usual standard of beauty.

Genetic Factors

A history of mental illness in the family could put you at risk for developing mental disorders or phobias. This factor is true not only for cacophobia but for other phobias. There’s also a chance that cacophobia is a symptom of other mental issues.

Symptoms of Cacophobia

Cacophobia symptoms are similar to those of anxiety disorders. The characteristics of this phobia could easily be mistaken for bias or harsh criticism, so diagnosis can be challenging.

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • Poor self-image and self-esteem
  • Anxiety attack after seeing something unpleasant
  • Uncontrollable thoughts that lead to the person panicking
  • Disgust
  • Narcissistic behavior as a coping method
  • Highly objective about the appearance of everything
  • Running away or escaping
  • Avoiding contact
  • Discomfort

Physical Symptoms

  • Rapid heartbeat
  • Choking or chest pain
  • Dry mouth
  • Shortness of breath
  • Shaking or trembling
  • Headaches
  • Sickness
  • Sweating
  • Dizziness
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Pupil dilation
  • Heightened response to the subject of fear

How Do You Deal with Cacophobia?

Cacophobia treatment might begin by learning to help yourself to cope with or even overcome your fear. Listed below are some self-help strategies you can practice. Self-help strategies may not provide a permanent solution, but they can help reduce cacophobia symptoms.

Exercise

Physical activity can help release calming hormones, flush out toxins, and relieve stress. Yoga, tai chi, and other workouts incorporate relaxing body postures and movements that are effective at reducing anxiety. Exercise alone may not change the phobia, but it may reduce stress and anxiety. It may also make other therapies and meditation more effective.

Mindfulness and Meditation

These are methods to change your thought processes and response to stress. Mindfulness and meditation work by guiding the thoughts to find a pathway that calms you down in the presence of a stressor.

When someone with cacophobia encounters a stressor or possible threat, their default response is fear. However, ugliness is not a real threat. Meditation and mindfulness help put such thoughts to rest by allowing you to focus more on the present. You have a better grasp of your situation, which lessens the intensity of the fear response. The best part: Practicing mindfulness and meditation can be done on your own.

Diet

Monitor your diet for a week to see whether a particular ingredient is changing your mood. Stimulants like caffeine can make you more anxious or dehydrated, which then results in the inability to think clearly.

Professional Help for the Fear of Ugliness

If self-help strategies aren’t enough to take the edge off your phobia, seek the guidance of a mental health professional. Your therapist may offer several options to manage your phobia symptoms.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT helps you to think about the event by stepping away from it. Distance ensures the trigger isn’t a threat and gives you control over how deeply you want to think about the stressor. The therapist will guide you with questions and techniques to put your mind on the right track.

Exposure Therapy

Also known as desensitization, exposure therapy works to reduce the effect of the stimulus by repeated exposure. It is helpful because, in a controlled environment, a professional can observe the impact of the stimuli and how a person reacts.

This controlled exposure allows the patient to develop resistance towards the stimuli. However, exposure therapy may have negative effects that could worsen the fear response, so it is important to have the guidance of a licensed therapist.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

DBT is often done in a group setting. It uses techniques like the half-smile (which is exactly what it says), mindfulness, and distress tolerance. Half-smiling techniques will get you to think about the trigger as you try to keep a half-smile on your face. This tricks your brain into thinking there is no threat and therefore puts you at ease.

While mindfulness techniques are similar to the ones mentioned in the self-help section, these are practiced with a group suffering from a similar phobia. It also includes building your tolerance for the stressor, so you don’t respond as drastically.

Talk Therapy

This gives one a chance to openly discuss the object of fear. Talking about the stimulus can bring out the root cause or event that triggered it. This therapy also works through repetition, where the therapist helps the person change unhelpful thought processes into something more reasonable and helpful.

Medication

Prescription medication could help reduce physical symptoms associated with your level of anxiety and stress. If you have a biological cause behind your phobia then medication could do wonders. However, such medications often have side effects, so be sure to follow your physician’s instructions.

Learning to Cope with Cacophobia

Learning to cope with cacophobia takes time. It involves not only mastering your fear, but also changing your perception of ugliness. Such opinions or views have a root cause that is not always easy to figure out.

It’s possible to overcome a fear of ugliness and appreciate people or things that may not seem attractive at first glance. No matter how difficult the phobia may look, it is always manageable with the right mindset and support.

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.
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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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