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Koumpounophobia – The Fear of Buttons
Other Phobias

Koumpounophobia – The Fear of Buttons

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The Rare “Fear of Buttons” Condition

Do you break into a cold sweat at the sight of a harmless button?

Do you feel queasy or disgusted at the thought of dealing with buttons?

Do you limit yourself to clothes that have zippers or velcro? Do you turn away from buttons and avoid looking at this simple fastening device?

If your answer is YES to any of these questions, you may be suffering from koumpounophobia—a phobia of buttons, or pure disgust for buttons.

Living with a phobia as rare as this can be hard. On top of this, dealing with the potential stream of curious questions from your friends and family may add to your difficulties.

You have no way of explaining your aversion towards what seems to be an innocent part of someone’s attire or how a button can cause such a repugnant response.

Some people fear swallowing buttons, while others can’t stand the sound of buttons hitting against other objects.  Some may even worry about the potential germs buttons may carry.

But you don’t have to fear buttons forever. You can tackle this very real phobia of yours in many ways. However, you need to first get to the root cause so that you’re equipped to deal with it in the right way. Read on to learn why you’re repulsed by buttons.

What Is Koumpounophobia?

Koumpounophobia is the phobia of buttons and button-related objects. Like any other phobia, the exact signs may differ from person to person. Some people are repulsed at the thought of wearing or touching buttons.

Picture this: After spending hours convincing yourself, you’ve decided to visit a local boutique. You’ve made it through the shop and are about to check out when a row of buttons on the cashier’s blouse causes you to freeze up. She’s smiling at you, but you wonder if she can hear your racing heart.

What could have possibly caused this reaction?

Causes of Koumpounophobia

What causes such levels of fear and anxiety? Is it in a person’s DNA? Was it the aftermath of a childhood accident?

Of course, most do not remember or understand when or how their phobia started. You may not fully decipher the reasons for this strange phobia, but you can get a basic understanding of it to help fight against its triggers.

Here are a few things that may have caused your fear of buttons:

  1. Genetics – If someone in your family tree had a fear of buttons or other such phobia, you are at a higher risk of having this condition as well. Keep in mind that not everyone with a genetic history of phobia will develop one. Researchers have not yet discovered the exact gene responsible and how it is passed on.
  2. Traumatic Events – As with most phobias, a negative experience in your childhood might have been the start of this problem. Most likely, you don’t even remember the exact event. But it still has lingering effects in your mind.For example, a man has a vague memory of a bucket full of buttons falling on his head when he was five years old. Decades later, he still hates the mere sight of buttons. Others may have watched a sibling accidentally swallow and choke on a button. Another phobic recalls being bullied in school due to his inability to button up his clothes, which eventually led him to have this phobia.
  3. A button phobia study revealed that facing violence or abuse from a person wearing buttons may also trigger horrific memories of the past event.

As you can see, a combination of inherited and external factors may cause a person to develop certain phobias.

Symptoms of Koumpounophobia

The symptoms of koumpounophobia are subjective. Some fear all types of buttons while other people may avoid buttons made of plastic or metal. In most cases, a koumpounophobic person can’t stand the sound, sight, or texture of buttons.

If they do get triggered, they may show the following physical and mental/emotional symptoms:

Physical Symptoms

  • Nausea
  • Rapid heartbeat
  • Disgust
  • Dizziness
  • Excessive sweating
  • Panic attack
  • Anger at the mention of buttons
  • Crying or screaming at the sight of buttons
  • Goosebumps
  • Repeated washing of hands upon touching buttons

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • Refusing to attend events for fear of encountering guests wearing clothes with buttons
  • Fear of circular objects like pearls or balls
  • Preferring a square-shaped alternative to every round object
  • A dread of shopping
  • Nightmares
  • Thoughts of death and physical harm upon encountering buttons
  • Refusal to say or write down the word “button”

Self-Help for Koumpounophobia

Are you desperate to get over this fear? Before you seek medical treatment, consider a few self-help techniques you can use. Self-help for koumpounophobia involves training your mind to accept and adapt to your fear.

  1. Accepting your fear is the first step towards battling it. However, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Your mind tends to believe what it continuously hears, so start by reassuring yourself that it’s okay to encounter buttons.
  2. Whenever you come across a button, try relaxation techniques such as breathing exercises to calm your nerves and steady that racing heartbeat.
  3. You can also try joining self-help groups with people who are going through the same situation. Share your coping mechanisms and offer support.

While self-help treatment can be an effective way of dealing with koumpounophobia, some may need to seek professional help.

Getting Professional Help

If self-help methods aren’t enough to get you over your fear of buttons, you’ll need to seek professional intervention.

Talk Therapy

Talk therapy can help you to rationalize your fearful thoughts and change them to positive ones, enabling you to face buttons confidently.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is another method of changing your negative responses into positive ones. It can help you realize why your fear is unrealistic and think rationally every time you experience it.

Virtual Reality Exposure

This method works by helping you get desensitized to your objects of fear by exposing you to buttons in a safe and controlled environment.

Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy can be another effective therapy to get to the root of your koumpounophobia. This method allows you to tackle the underlying trigger in your subconscious.

How to Avoid the Disgust of Buttons Altogether

Though some phobias can’t be cured, you can set yourself up to better manage the symptoms. Professional treatment may be the best way to move past this obstacle, but there are other ways to avoid or overcome koumpounophobia.

Let’s take a look at a few of them:

  • Accepting your fear is the first step towards living a phobia-free life. After this first step, you can actively work towards improving your situation.
  • You can also try visualization, which is a mixture of breathing and relaxation techniques. Form a mental image of yourself successfully encountering the sight or sound of a button. With time, you will be able to cope better in real life.
  • Talk to your friends and family about your phobia and how it affects your life. They may be able to provide help and support. Perhaps the next time you face a friend wearing a coat with those dreaded buttons, you’ll be able to smile back.
  • While it’s always recommended to face your fear, to cope better with anxiety, you can start by avoiding the situations where your phobia might be triggered. For example, avoiding the clothing department in shopping malls or only buying clothes with zippers and velcro fastenings.

Conclusion

Although the situation might seem hopeless at times, remember there’s a solution for everything. The important thing is to recognize the fact that the fear lies in your mind. With focus, dedication, and efforts, you’ll gradually be able to overcome your fear of buttons.

Stories Submitted by Our Readers

Fear of Belly Buttons

I am in my twenties, and I had a recurring dream a couple of years ago where my belly button would open, and all my organs would fall out. I had the dream for a couple of weeks every night. I thought maybe telling my boyfriend would be a good idea and he might help stop the nightmares. Boy was I wrong, he thought it was hilarious and would try to poke my belly button or push his finger into his own. Just the gesture of poking my belly button or someone else’s would give me the creeps. My friends were no better, made fun of me, and often tried to poke me in the tummy. The problem is now I start to shake and can’t breathe.
The good news is that now I have a different boyfriend that is understanding. I am also using exposure therapy which was recommended to me by my therapist. I am still shaking, but I know it will take time to get over the fear.
Mary

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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