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Sexual Phobias

Gymnophobia – The Fear of Nudity

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Understanding Gymnophobia and the Fear of Nudity

Wondering why you relate so well with Tobias Funke and his crippling fear of nudity in Arrested Development ? Chances are, you’ve got gymnophobia, aka fear of nudity. Yes, it’s a real phobia. This fear goes beyond the apprehension of undressing in front of others or discomfort with gym class showers. It’s a legitimate fear of the naked body.

It may seem strange to be afraid of your own (or someone else’s) naked body. The crippling fear of being seen naked or witnessing someone who isn’t wearing clothes may leave you sweating or hyperventilating.

What’s unfortunate is that this fear can cause anxiety surrounding essential activities such as showering or sexual experiences. Being afraid of nudity is real and the source of this fear needs to be identified before you can overcome it.

How common is gymnophobia? Read on to learn more about fear of nudity.

Why Would You Get Gymnophobia?

You’re probably wondering what causes gymnophobia. There’s a difference between disliking unprompted nudity and dreading it all together.

If you think you have gymnophobia, try and do a quick root-cause analysis. Could it be because of your negative feelings about your body? Do you perhaps think your body doesn’t measure up to the airbrushed figures you see in the media? Or is it because you feel self-conscious about marks or scars on your body?

On the other hand, your gymnophobia may involve a fear of vulnerability when being naked around someone else. This is often the case with survivors of sexual trauma who may perceive nudity as a trigger.

Those experiencing gender dysphoria may also be prone to gymnophobia as they may not feel at home in their bodies.

Symptoms of Gymnophobia

All phobias are on a spectrum and the intensity varies depending on the person as well as the situation. This could mean feeling panic when walking in on a naked family member after your morning jog, or feeling anxious about taking a bath on your own. Where you fall on the spectrum will depend on different variables.

Here’s a list of common gymnophobia symptoms.

Physical Symptoms

  •  Sweating
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting
  • Shortness of breath
  • Irregular breathing
  • Dizziness
  • Stiff muscles

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • Anxiety
  • Paranoia
  • Panic attacks
  • Shame
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Mood swings
  • Withdrawing from others

You may experience one, several, or all of these symptoms if you have gymnophobia. It could even combine with other fears and cause more complex phobias. For instance, fear of sex could merge with fear of nudity and wreak havoc on one’s mental health.

As a result, intimate relationships can feel strained, and the individual may experience incompetence which can lead to depression. Gymnophobia can become debilitating if left untreated for a long period of time. The condition requires early intervention and prompt treatment.

How to Treat Gymnophobia

The good news is that it is possible to overcome gymnophobia. Depending on the intensity of your fear, you can take concrete steps on your own and/or seek professional help to manage it.

It’s crucial to remember that your gymnophobia may be purely incidental or a result of trauma. Either way, there are readily available tools to help manage it so you can lead a full life.

Self-Help Methods for Comfort

Mild to moderate gymnophobia can be easily managed on your own, provided you make a few adjustments to your daily routine.

Avoid places that require nudity, including showers at your gym or changing rooms in clothing stores. For those who fear seeing yourself or others naked, this is a great start.

If you feel self-conscious about being naked with your partner, keep the lights low or off during times of intimacy. This is helpful for shy people, and for those who are triggered by self/others’ nudity.

Wear underwear in the shower, so you don’t have to witness yourself completely naked. You can quickly change into a towel once you’re done bathing.

Professional Options Available to Treat Gymnophobia

By seeking help from licensed medical professionals, you can treat gymnophobia. Your therapist can listen to your concerns in a non-judgemental, safe space and work with you to discover the root cause of your fear.

Once you’ve established a baseline, your therapist can then recommend treatment that fits the intensity of your phobia. You can begin to recognize patterns that trigger you and work on slowly changing them. Moreover, therapy will help you understand yourself better so that you can make informed choices that will help you feel safe.

Below are some professional options available for gymnophobia treatment.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

This therapy is based on the concept that our behaviors are influenced by our thought processes and how we perceive the world around us. Certain events from our life (especially childhood) can alter our view of the world. This usually happens without our knowledge and goes unnoticed.

With the help of CBT, your thought process and understanding of reality are analyzed. If it isn’t an accurate depiction (of yourself or the world around you) and is harming you, CBT employs methods and strategies to challenge and overcome this misaligned thought process.

In this case, your perception of nudity will be analyzed to verify the source of your fear and anxiety. This source is then scrutinized (with care) and your thought process is realigned slowly to invoke a more healthy view of nudity.

Hypnotherapy

If you are unable to trace the source of your gymnophobia, you may want to try clinical hypnotherapy conducted by a qualified medical professional. Through hypnotherapy, your mind is explored and the root cause of your fear is identified.

Hypnoanalysis is a combination of hypnotherapy and psychoanalysis, which is one of the most effective methods to deal with phobias. It can be used to deal with gymnophobia as well.

Medication

Never take medication of any kind without a prescription from a doctor. While there aren’t specific medications that can cure your gymnophobia, there are medicines that can soothe and treat your anxiety and depression and improve your quality of life.

Typically, there are three kinds of medications used to treat anxiety. These include:

  • Antidepressants
  • Beta-blockers
  • Tranquilizers

Learning to Cope with Gymnophobia

The concept of “good naked” and “bad naked” has become a staple in mainstream society. This isn’t just a sketch from Seinfeld, but a fundamental concept that has been around for eons.

Challenging the norms of morality around the human body could be a good start. To elaborate, it’s important to view nudity as normal and clothes as the convenience they were intended to be. This will help you unlearn your understanding of nudity. Nudity is a personal choice, but it should not have feelings of shame and guilt attached to it.

To cope with this fear, you may want to try techniques such as exposure and rewards. For instance, every time you successfully take a shower or use a changing room, reward yourself with a small treat as positive reinforcement. You can also try watching your favorite actors remove their shirts on TV, and allow yourself to view nudity positively.

By learning how to cope with gymnophobia, you can successfully take the first step toward improving your quality of life. Simply put, seeking help will put you one step closer to effectively managing your fear. When you’re ready, you can even push your boundaries by visiting naturist spaces and interacting with pro-nudists as well. We’re not saying that should be the first step—but it could be the end goal.

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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