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Other Phobias

Fear of Windows – Defenestraphobia

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Let’s Look into Defenestraphobia or the Fear of Windows

Do you ever fear that someone is looking at you through your windows?

Do you wake up suddenly from your sleep with a feeling that someone is peeking through your windows?

Did the Netflix movie The Woman in the Window make you feel uncomfortable, and was it, at the same time, relatable?

If you’re familiar with any of these scenarios, you may have defenestraphobia.

So, does having this phobia of windows mean you’ll never be able to lead a normal life? No. You can alleviate the symptoms of the phobia with self-help and other forms of treatment.

To overcome this fear, you must first understand when you developed it and what caused it. Next, you can focus on symptoms and treatment to better cope with the phobia.

What Is Fear of Windows?

Fear of windows is just like any other fear. The fear is often related to a fear of being watched through a window. However, you have probably never caught someone in the act of staring at you through the window. The fear often stems from the imagination.

People with this fear may avoid going to places with windows, going near a window, or even thinking about a window.

Sleeping near a window can cause anxiety in those who have defenestraphobia. These individuals may arouse several times at night to ensure the windows are closed. This fear is not as common as others, but if you have it, you should remember that you certainly are not alone.

Defenestraphobia Causes

There is no specific cause for this phobia, as various factors can contribute to the development.

Past trauma or incidents could have caused the phobia. Any specific traumatic incident can leave a long-lasting effect on a person’s mind. A one-time negative incident that involved windows could have left a scar on your mind. Maybe someone got arrested peeking through your neighbor’s window and hearing their story gave you chills.

Learned response or environmental factors are another possible cause. In this case, you may have grown up around someone who had this fear—a family member or a close friend. Constantly watching them panic at the sight of windows might have instilled fear in you over time.

Finally, you may have acquired the genetic tendency toward this fear from your parents or even their parents.

A combination of nature and nurture can cause you to develop a phobia.

Symptoms of Defenestraphobia

Earlier diagnosis of phobia can make coping easier for a person. However, as some phobias can limit a person’s daily activities, you should not take them lightly.

There are no specific symptoms for different kinds of phobias, but knowing some common phobia symptoms can be beneficial.

Physical Symptoms

  • Nausea
  • Difficulty breathing
  • Choking sensation
  • Tightness in chest
  • Trembling or shaking
  • Hyperventilating
  • Dizziness or lightheadedness
  • Sweating
  • Chills
  • Stomach pain
  • A rise in blood pressure

Psychological Symptoms

  • Fear of dying
  • Feeling sad and hopeless
  • Fear of windows at night
  • Feeling like losing control
  • Anger and irritability
  • Fear of harm
  • Feeling powerless
  • Panic attacks
  • Anxiety
  • Withdrawal

You may find one or more of these symptoms if you have this phobia. The symptoms depend on the severity of your phobia.

Some Ways to Deal with Defenestraphobia?

Once you’ve confirmed that you have this fear of windows, you can start with the treatment. Before seeking professional help, you could try self-help techniques proven effective for people with phobias. In the case of specific or simple phobias, all the phobias have standard treatment options.

Self-Help Techniques

The person who can best understand your feelings is you. As you will know exactly how you feel and why, you may be able to tackle your phobia suitably. Self-help techniques to overcome phobias have proven effective for many years.

Lifestyle Changes

You can make lifestyle changes to keep yourself from thinking about your phobia. Incorporating regular exercise, a nutritious diet, increased social activities like visiting family and friends regularly, and keeping busy with work could help keep you otherwise occupied.

Mindfulness Strategies

Mindfulness is a type of meditation where you focus on your feelings at a given moment. It involves breathing techniques, guided imagery, and other techniques to help relieve stress and aid relaxation.

Clinical trials have proven mindfulness effective for various conditions like anxiety, pain, insomnia, and stress.

Join a Support Group

Sharing your feelings can be the most effective way to release pent-up emotions. Talking can help you sort out your thoughts. However, it can get a bit difficult to share your feelings with your friends and family. Joining a group of people with the same phobia can help in this case. You can share ideas and discuss common concerns with others without fear of being judged.

Yoga

Most would be surprised at the effectiveness of yoga or meditation. During times of stress, many people find yoga beneficial. As you breathe deeply with focused attention, it becomes easier to eliminate negative emotions and helps you overcome the fear.

When to Seek Professional Help

Living with a phobia can get challenging, especially when your phobia is a part of everyday life. After all, windows are everywhere!

Because defenestraphobia is a part of everyday life, you cannot ignore or avoid it. It can limit your life in many ways and cause anxiety and depression, so it’s vital to seek help early.

Consult your doctor if:

  • If your panic attack frequency has increased
  • You can no longer lead a normal life
  • You try to stay as far away from windows as possible
  • This fear has been bothering you for more than six months

How can treatment help you?

  • Treatment will help you better understand your feelings
  • You can resolve complex emotions
  • You can better organize your thoughts
  • You will have a place where you can talk without judgment
  • It will enable you to take control of your feelings and body

Professional Treatment

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive behavioral therapy helps people eliminate destructive feelings and thoughts that can negatively impact them in the long run.

During cognitive behavioral therapy, your therapist will help you identify irrational thought patterns and replace them with realistic ones.

Hypnotherapy

Hypnosis can serve as a supportive treatment to aid in treating your phobia. During hypnotherapy, the therapist will put you into a receptive and relaxed, trance-like state and offer suggestions to help you change your perceptions. It can help with overcoming fears and related irrational or unhealthy behavior.

Exposure Therapy

During exposure therapy, the therapist gradually exposes you to the source of your fear. Repeatedly encountering the source of your fear in a safe and controlled environment can help reduce anxiety and avoidance.

Help to Get Rid of Defenestraphobia

No treatment can entirely heal or eliminate your fears in a short time.

There is no single treatment that can guarantee a cure. You may need a combination of treatments like counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnosis, and self-help techniques to overcome the fear.

All types of treatment will benefit you over time, as long as you stay consistent with your therapy or self-help practices.

Wrap-Up

Although overcoming this phobia can be tough, it’s not impossible. The first thing you need to do is acknowledge your fear. With the right treatment and support, you’ll stop running from your fear and start facing it. Getting help and support from your family members and friends will make coping with defenestraphobia much easier.

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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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