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Animal Phobias

Nyctohylophobia – Fear of Forests at Night

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Deep Into the Fear of Dark Forests

Does the thought of being stuck in the woods at night make you break a sweat and panic?

Would you choose to stay home rather than experience a great camping adventure with friends, because the idea of a dark forest makes you ill?

If yes, you might have nyctohylophobia.

Forests can be magical places, though intimidating at night. Whose to know what lies within, right? And our minds tend to wander into the unknown: the mystery, the monsters, and the who-knows-what types of creatures that may shelter in those woods. Emotions such as fear and awe for something we don’t quite understand are completely natural. But what you feel is so much more.

Maybe you can’t explain the terror that grips you when people talk about forests. The mere thought of being alone in the woods is enough to spiral your imagination into overdrive. You can’t stop thinking about the dangers and the unknown element. You end up excusing yourself from state forest picnics, beg off the overnight hiking adventure, or make up plans to avoid walking through the woods.

Being scared of the woods is natural but having an extreme fear of woods phobia is an entirely different matter. But you can overcome this fear. Many proven methods can slowly ease your panic until you feel as though you can control it.

What Causes a Fear of the Forest?

Your fear of dark, wooded areas or forests at night stemmed from something.

For one, forests are murky, mysterious, and, yes, generally scary. This makes them a perfect setting for horror films where people tend to get lost. Eventually, something unknown chases them. Remember the Blair Witch Project?

Forests have become synonymous with a survival scenario where being there overnight can turn into a life or death situation.

Considering dark forests have become a gory venue for death, murder, and elemental plots, moviemakers have began capitalizing on the natural mystery of woods. Take Sleepy Hollow for instance. The scarier the movie, the greater your aversion to the woods.

Or perhaps your fear of the forest may have grown out of fairytales such as “Hansel and Gretel.” Maybe it was “Little Red Riding Hood.” Since childhood, stories have portrayed dark forests as being steeped with unknown and inexplicable dangers. Who could fault you for fearing the woods?

Everything You Need to Know about Nyctohylophobia

Not wanting to go into the forest, especially at night, is understandable. But being completely afraid of the woods is an entirely different story. This level of fear is beyond normal and should be taken seriously.

Nyctohylophobia, meaning fear of dark, wooded places or fear of the forest at night, comes from the Greek word nycto, meaning “night,” and hylo, which stands for “forests.”

This fear is closely related to hylophobia, or the fear of forests regardless of the time of day. Other phobias, including nyctophobia (fear of the dark), thanatophobia (fear of death), and autophobia (fear of being alone), can trigger nyctohylophobia.

Surprisingly, you are not alone. A lot of people have nyctohylophobia. Based on a survey, 18 percent of those who answered admitted to being afraid of dark, unknown wooded areas, while 41 percent would rather be anywhere than in the forest alone. Research also shows that the phobia is more common in women.

While this fear is not something you have to deal with every day, the idea or sight of a dark forest, probably in a movie or on television, can make you anxious and may even trigger a panic attack.

Symptoms of Nyctohylophobia

Now that you know most nyctohylophobia facts, learning about the symptoms is the next step.

Below are the physical and psychological symptoms that you might experience if you have nyctohylophobia. You might show only one or two of these symptoms. But there is also a possibility that you experience many of them.

Physical Symptoms

  • Hyperventilation, heart palpitations, and shallow, rapid breathing
  • Dry mouth
  • Sweaty hands
  • Excessive sweating
  • Higher blood pressure
  • Nausea
  • Headache and dizziness
  • Gastrointestinal distress

Psychological Symptoms

  • Anxiety level goes up
  • Panic attacks
  • The desire to run, hide, and even scream or cry
  • Avoid watching movies that show wooded areas and forests
  • Avoid activities like hiking, picnics, trekking, and overnights in cabins in the forest
  • Constant dread about getting lost and being alone in the woods
  • Uncontrollable thoughts of being attacked in the woods

How Do You Deal with Nyctohylophobia?

When your fear surfaces, you know that you can’t control your reaction. By the end of your episode, you end up feeling embarrassed and physically and emotionally tired. If your fear of the forest is affecting your quality of life, and social relationships are at risk, then getting help is the next step for you.

Although there is no specific methodology to cure the phobia, there are many treatment options that you can explore and try.

 

Self Help: Helping Yourself Overcome Your Fear

If you feel a little nervous about discussing your fears with a stranger, try self-help methods first. After all, any phobia is an inner battle. You have a good idea of what triggers it, how it affects you, and how it makes you feel afterward.

You can start with general self-help techniques to help you control and eventually ease your fear. You can start learning and practicing deep breathing methods and doing some meditation to direct your mind to calm down and relax. Surround yourself with positivity and tranquility when you are starting to feel anxious. If you’re open to it, you can even try yoga.

The next self-help recommendation may be a little harder, but creating a positive visualization of a forest can help you. Re-frame your mental and visual representation of forests. Look into it as a place of serenity where you can enjoy the richness of the Earth naturally. Look at pictures of forests, the pleasant ones, where the trees are basking in the golden sunshine against a backdrop of clear skies.

Seeking Professional Help

As reinforcement to the self-help techniques you’ve adapted, speaking with a professional therapist can also make a lot of difference. Here are some treatments that your therapist might propose to you.

Exposure Therapy

This is a common treatment for people suffering from phobias. The principle of this therapy is “the more you are exposed to the object of your fear, the less you’ll be scared of it.” With this kind of treatment, expect your therapist to display pictures of forests and dark, wooded areas. Eventually, you progress to watching short videos of it. This is a long process, but it is proven to desensitize your fear until one day, you can stand in a forest, calm and composed, ready for sundown.

Hypnotherapy

In severe cases, knowing the root of your fear can provide answers and the correct treatment approach. This form of treatment has helped adults attain positive results.

Medication

This is your last line of defense if all else fails. The medications being prescribed to you are not intended to cure the phobia itself but rather tame the anxiety and tension you feel. However, consider it the last option as taking medication can cause side effects.

Other treatments that can be suggested by your therapist to help you overcome nyctohylophobia are Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Learning to Cope with Nyctohylophobia

All the recommended techniques and methodologies may not cure you of your fear of the forest, but they can help you stay in better control when the panic starts. You can improve the way you manage your anxiety and not allow it to control you.

Again, it is worth emphasizing that it is natural to be afraid of dark forests at night. But having that illogical fear of the forest can harm you. That’s why you have to find the courage to deal with it.

Reducing your apprehension can be easier if you have a strong support system. Family and friends that understand your fear will be more than happy to encourage you.

Learning to control your fear is already a huge step in overcoming your phobia. You have to continuously challenge yourself until the fear reduces to the level of very slight discomfort.

Conclusion

Learning how to manage your fear of the forest can make vacations and road trip adventures more enjoyable. You can even start a vlog or documentary series of your nights in the forest as you challenge your fears.

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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