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Body Phobias

Peladophobia – The Fear of Bald People

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Decoding Peladophobia or the Fear of Bald People

Do you panic or feel disoriented when you spot a bald head in a public place? Do you live in absolute fear of becoming bald? Do you sweat or tremble when a bald person walks into a room?

If you find yourself avoiding bald people or experience nervousness at the thought of encountering bald people in your day to day life, chances are you have peladophobia.

Those struggling with peladophobia live in a different world. For some, bald people may be out to attack or hurt them. For others, baldness may represent uncleanliness or a genetic flaw. Whatever their thoughts, they’re scared of bald people. Really? Is there a phobia of baldness? Very much so. It may sound unrealistic, but this is the reality of those living with peladophobia. But like other irrational fears, peladophobia is treatable.

What Is Peladophobia All about?

What is the phobia of baldness called? The term for a fear of baldness is called peladophobia. It’s defined as the irrational phobia of bald people and baldness. Peladophobia comes from two terms, pelado, which is Spanish for bald, and phobos meaning fear.

People living with peladophobia may constantly imagine becoming bald themselves. The thought sends them into panic mode. Peladophobes may tend to believe that bald people will turn into zombies. Even with the knowledge that the fear of bald people is irrational, sufferers may feel helpless. Many individuals suffer with a fear of bald people.

Peladophobia Causes

The fear of bald people and baldness stems from something. No one is born with a fear. Fears and anxiety develop from a specific cause. The most prevalent of the causes are negative experiences. Where did your fear of bald people originate?

Past traumatic experiences are a main reason you might develop any phobia. If you’ve ever been injured or hurt by a bald person, that very well could be where your fear came from. Children tend not to forget negative experiences with older people. You probably didn’t outgrow the emotional and physical trauma suffered back then.

Is there any history of mental illnesses or social anxiety disorders in your family? You can inherit whatever is in your bloodline. When exposed to a trigger, you may quickly develop peladophobia. This is because you’re genetically predisposed.

Parents also transfer fears to their children through learned behaviors or the environment. If someone in your family was bald and didn’t have proper hygiene, that may provoke the onset of peladophobia. If your parents or older siblings spoke ill of bald people, this negativity may have shaped how you view baldness. Eventually, it can develop into a phobia.

Symptoms of Peladophobia

Someone with peladophobia may experience anxiety as the main symptom. The symptoms you experience will all depend on the severity of the phobia. In extreme cases, some patients may require hospitalization. Symptoms are either physical, mental, or emotional, as outlined below.

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • A dreadful feeling
  • Unexplained fear
  • Unimaginable anxiety
  • Panic attacks
  • Fainting

Physical Symptoms

  • Shaking and trembling
  • Sweating
  • Muscle tension
  • Chest pains
  • High blood pressure
  • Avoiding bald people
  • Shortness of breath
  • Dry mouth
  • Nausea
  • Inability to speak
  • Upset stomach
  • Hot and cold flashes

Self-Care Treatment for Peladophobia

One way to treat any phobia is by taking care of yourself. After all, it’s you who best understands the nature and severity of what you go through. Before reaching out to health experts, why not try some self-help methods to treat your fear of bald people?

Talk about It

Why don’t you reach out to a friend or close relative? This close person may not offer medical advice, but being heard is therapy on its own. Don’t keep your problem to yourself. The more you open up about it, the more likely you are to heal. Speaking about it means you’ve accepted that there is a problem and it needs a solution.

Apply Relaxation Techniques

Simple relaxation techniques like breathing in and out go a long way in helping you cope. Meditation also helps. While these techniques may not alleviate the problem altogether, they help you manage it. It’s important to practice controlled breathing every day. Before leaving the house, breathe in and out for some time until you feel calm. When you spot a bald person, apply the same breathing technique. You’ll find that breathing has a way of calming your nerves.

Knowledge Is Power

There are myths and misconceptions about your fear. Your beliefs about bald people and baldness don’t have to be true. For this reason, get all the information you can. Find reading materials about peladophobia. Acquire knowledge about baldness, where it stems from and why it’s harmless. With the proper knowledge, you’ll be one step closer to recovery.

Professional Treatment for Peladophobia

Health professionals can help you deal with your peladophobia. Counseling and therapy are the most common treatment methods. Let’s explore.

Exposure Therapy

Exposure therapy incorporates exactly what the name suggests; exposure. This treatment method may not be exactly what you would prefer as a patient, but it works. How better to heal than to face a fear head-on? In a safe and healthy environment, you will be introduced to bald people by a therapist. Photos and videos of bald people will precede real-life bald people. The more you get used to something theoretically, the more you overcome your fear of it.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy, or simply CBT, is another effective treatment method for peladophobia. A therapist will walk you down a path of self-discovery. Through what you tell your therapist, together you’ll uncover why you think and feel the way you do. The knowledge you acquire from CBT will enable you to face your fear with courage.

Talk Therapy

In talk therapy, you’ll express yourself to a therapist. The therapist will be there to help and not to judge. They will offer a safe space for you to open up. Being heard is a pathway to recovery. In talk therapy, you’ll be understood—not criticized. Having someone understand your fear is powerful therapy.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Peladophobia

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is a standard form of treatment for anxiety disorder patients. In MBSR, you’ll experience eight weeks of training for mindfulness therapy. MBSR also incorporates group sessions. This treatment procedure is built on distractions. The more you are distracted from something, the less you’ll think about that particular thing. A therapist will go as far as giving you homework where you’ll focus on something else. In the next session, you’ll explain your findings on that specific thing.

How to Avoid Peladophobia Altogether

Dealing with a phobia can be a monumental task. The first step to recovery is admitting that the fear is there and it’s irrational. As someone who struggles with a fear of baldness, you may be unable to control yourself even with the knowledge that your anxiety is unrealistic.

You Can Deal with Peladophobia

The end goal here is to get better. If you move from panic attacks to a bit of discomfort while around bald people, that’s a battle won. In treatment, be fierce, brave, and put up a fighting spirit. With the proper treatment, you should overcome your fear of bald people, or at least be able to better manage it.

Stories Submitted by Our Readers

Fear of Bald People or Going Bald

I was in high school when my fear began. As a matter of fact, it was in biology class. My teacher started talking about male pattern baldness and how it was a dominant trait. This terrified me as on both sides of my family there were bald men. I always thought they looked disfigured, and I felt sorry for them. Now, I was going to go bald at a young age.

My hairline started receding before I turned 30. I had been scared of this since I was a teenager and now it was happening to me. I would wash my hair every day and use a blow dryer hoping that would make it look full without any signs of going bald. Of course, it didn’t work. I just gave up and began to think like I had a terminal illness and everyone would look at me and think poor old guy.

Now, I’m in my 30s and I am pretty well bald, but dealing with it and not scared any longer. It just wouldn’t do any good.

Ramon

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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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