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Other Phobias

Globophobia – Fear of Balloons

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The Fear of Balloons Is Real

Having a fear of balloons might seem unbelievable, but such a condition exists. In medical terms, the fear of balloons is called globophobia. The fear encompasses everything from the thought of balloons, to the sight, smell, and even the idea of balloons floating away.

Typically, society understands a fear of spiders or heights as these are more common occurrences. But when it comes to the fear of balloons popping, many might laugh about it and dismiss it as irrational. To those suffering from this phobia, life can be difficult.

Most people know that balloons aren’t dangerous. But sufferers of globophobia experience a sense of powerlessness over their fear.

If you have this problem, you aren’t alone. The phobia is real; a number of other cases do exist. What’s more, help is available.

What Is Globophobia All About?

This phobia could arise from an experience of getting startled by balloons at social events during childhood. That overwhelming feeling might persist into adulthood. The fear is also associated with the unpredictable bang that comes from balloons.

Like any phobia, globophobia symptoms and severity vary. Some with this condition can tolerate balloons if they’re deflated. However, the minute balloons are inflated, it causes anxiety. In other cases, the phobia sufferer fears hot air balloons, but can withstand smaller balloons.

What Causes Globophobia?

Like in most phobias, this one could emerge from a negative experience during one’s childhood. A fear of balloons popping is typical in young children and tends to diminish with age. But for phobia sufferers, the fear could have continued into adulthood and become overblown because of a significant event when they were a child. For example, they might have experienced a balloon exploding or popping in the face, and got hurt. Or a traumatic event occurred at a birthday party, and because balloons are associated with the occasion, the phobia sufferer developed terrifying thoughts regarding balloons.

Additionally, when balloons pop, they create a sound that resembles a gunshot. The sound of a balloon suddenly exploding could cause a fright to anyone, with or without phobia. But for some people, for instance those who have a heightened mental state, have an anxiety disorder, or children who are easily frightened, the impact is more severe.

Globophobia could also merge with another type of phobia: coulrouphobia, or the extreme fear of clowns. That’s because you often see these two—balloons and clowns—together.

Symptoms of Globophobia

When triggered, phobia sufferers could experience one or more symptoms. A few of the common symptoms include:

Physical Symptoms

  • Shallow or rapid breathing
  • Trembling, shaking, and sweating
  • Gastrointestinal distress, such as nausea
  • Palpitations
  • Fatigue

Psychological Symptoms

  • Panic attacks
  • Severe anxiety
  • Isolation
  • Embarrassment
  • Helplessness
  • A sense of no control

Self-help to Overcome Globophobia

Self-help strategies to overcome globophobia can be effective in coping with the condition and even prevent it from triggering. If you’re undergoing globophobia treatment, these self-help strategies could serve as a complement.

Face Your Source of Fear Gradually

Exposure is one of the most effective ways of overcoming this phobia. You’ll want to face your fear in a safe and controlled way. Some opt to do this in a therapeutic setting or with the assistance of a family member or trusted friend. Develop particular steps to become more comfortable with balloons. You’ll need to practice and follow each step until you feel more relaxed. This approach takes time, and you might need to repeat the process several times before you achieve your goal. Be sure to exercise patience with yourself.

Relaxation Techniques

These comprise a series of exercises that help you calm down and regulate your breathing. Consider doing deep breathing exercises daily. This will help decrease overall anxiety while allowing you to calm down in especially anxious circumstances. When you perform these exercises daily, this kind of breathing becomes automatic, so you can do them whenever you feel anxious.

Alter Thought Processes

While this can be hard, it’s necessary to overcome anxiety. In the beginning, you might feel apprehensive about your coping ability when exposed to the object you fear. If you start making an effort to alter your thoughts, you might notice a considerable decrease in anxiety. It’s equally useful to develop some positive statements that you could tell yourself when confronting your fear.

Professional Help

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Exposure Therapy

This form of counseling can help you manage your phobia by teaching you alternative ways of thinking and behaving toward the object of your fear. The therapy strives to enable patients to develop effective ways of tackling their phobia. An aspect of this treatment approach entails gradual exposure to the source of fear. Exposing—or, in medical terms, desensitizing—the phobia sufferers to their fear object in a gradual yet repeated manner may help them feel less anxious about it. Exposure therapy aims to help patients gain control over their fear.

Mindfulness Training

Mindfulness strategies can help decrease the stress level you feel. This strategy might not be able to stop the rush of anxiety when your phobia is triggered. But it could help you decrease the extent and severity of the fear. It might be advisable to collaborate with a therapist to learn these techniques. Mindfulness techniques include deep breathing, meditation, and progressive muscle relaxation.

 

Coping with Balloon Phobia

Exercise

This strategy can help you refocus. Whether it’s a brief walk or yoga, exercise will keep you grounded while helping you feel capable.

Learn More about Your Fear

This step can be the most difficult, but it’s necessary. You cannot overcome a phobia that’s hidden in your subconscious. You should face it and know more about it. To learn about your anxiety and fears, consider keeping a journal and documenting any noticeable patterns. Learning about your fear will give you a clue on how to offset it.

Use Nature to Your Advantage

Talking to a therapist offers an excellent means to work through your anxiety and fears. However, you can’t always be with your therapist. To help you keep your mind at ease, engage in productive activities, such as going for a walk outdoors. The natural beauty found in backyards or parks can help decrease symptoms of anxiety and fear. Nature helps calm people and decreases stress levels. Lowered stress levels will help improve your moods, making you feel more relaxed than nervous. Jogging or walking outdoors could help clear up space in your head, helping you drive away illogical thoughts and, hence, your fear.

Concentrate on Breathing

The role of breathing exercises in controlling fear is more significant than you may think. Anxiety typically starts with short breaths, which cause various negative reactions in the body. If left unchecked, these negative reactions could escalate into an anxiety attack. Controlled breathing could help you overcome anxiety outbreaks.

To Sum it Up

Sufferers are aware of the impact their phobia can have in their lives. But this awareness can help them turn things around. It can lead them to seek help in getting over the fear of balloons. With commitment and the right support, patients can overcome globophobia with a bang!

 

Stories Submitted by Our Readers

 

Balloon phobia

I am 71 y/o and as an infant I was hospitalized for surgeries to repair a cleft and palate. The patient next to me family were blowing up balloons an d popping them. Thus the phobia began. All these yrs I have tolerated the stigma and ridicule of people. March this yr (23) I began therapy to try and get this monkey off my back. With the help of my therapist I have made good progress but still have some hurdles to overcome. I always thought that a phobia was for a life time. I can now blow up balloons and pop them. Still have challenges when others do it. A hurdle to get over. Anyone reading this it is never too late. Get the help I wish I had done it yrs ago.

Story Submitted by John

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Fear of Balloons

I have a fear of balloons or at least the bursting of balloons. I shake and often run when someone bursts a balloon close to me. Even if I know they are going to do it and I watch I leave the area as fast as possible. I feel like I am going to faint.

Story Submitted by Barb K.

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I am a senior citizen and I have been afraid of balloons my entire life. I can’t really put a specific action that started the fear, but I just can’t stand to see balloons in any fashion. I begin to shake when I see a person with a balloon that has not been inflated, see them blow one up, pop one, or a child carrying one. I just avoid any place where I might see a balloon.

Story Submitted by Rhonda H.

 

SUBMIT YOUR STORY

 

 

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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