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fear of dependence on others
Situational Phobias

Soteriophobia – The Fear of Dependence on Others

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Soteriophobia: The Fear of Dependence on Others

Do you dread the thought of accepting someone else’s help?

Do you avoid being around people to avoid becoming dependent on them? If the answer is yes, you may have soteriophobia.

If you get cold feet by simply thinking about taking the assistance of others in certain situations, there may be something deeper at work.

For some, it’s harmonious living and a give-and-take relationship with others. But for those suffering from soteriophobia, it’s a different story.

Being dependent on others should not be that hard. But the dread of depending on others may make it seem otherwise. Fortunately, like many other phobias, soteriophobia too is treatable. Now, let’s explore the fear to learn how to overcome it.

What Is Soteriophobia?

Soteriophobia is the fear of dependence on others. Sufferers feel extreme dread when they have to accept help or depend on someone, even when it’s for the best. Soteriophobia is a social phobia. Social phobias are phobias where sufferers dread social situations or other people. It can be performance anxiety or their fear of embarrassing or humiliating themselves. Some common examples of social phobias are the fear of public speaking, eating in public, etc.

When it comes to soteriophobics, many prefer free will and self-sufficiency and have a strong aversion towards dependency. They feel threatened when they think of being dependent on others. Usually, social phobics avoid the social situations that cause them dread. They may avoid getting into situations where they may need the help of others, which can result in seclusion and conflicting feelings of isolation. These behaviors become repetitive, worsening the phobia. Sufferers keep avoiding their phobia compulsively to eliminate anxiety which can even lead to the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

What Causes Soteriophobia?

Soteriophobia causes are similar to that of other phobias, although they may be more complex given it is a social phobia. Social phobias can develop because of one’s heredity, genetics, and brain chemistry combined with traumatic events that trigger the phobia. However, genetics and trauma working in tandem appear to be the primary cause of phobias such as soteriophobia.

Genetics

Someone with a family history of mental illnesses like anxiety disorders or specific phobias is at a higher risk of developing phobias such as soteriophobia, because they have a genetic predisposition towards it. But genetics alone cannot develop a phobia. It generally requires a triggering event that instigates anxiety related to dependency.

Trauma

A traumatic experience can serve as a triggering event. It can be anything that caused an imbalance in one’s mental stability. For example, you might have suffered through being dependent on others in the past, such as during a toxic relationship or a difficult childhood. The trigger event can also be a story you heard of someone’s dependency gone wrong, a story of someone being exploited after depending on others.

Personality

Soteriophobia isn’t necessarily event driven. Some people can have strong personalities and require a certain degree of control and power over their life circumstances. Over time, this too can get reinforced to the extent where a person develops a strong, irrational aversion towards being helped or ending up in a situation where they are dependent on others, such as when recovering from an injury or illness.

Associated Mental Conditions

Someone suffering from other untreated mental conditions is also at the risk of soteriophobia. It can be autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder left untreated that leads to soteriophobia.

Age

Soteriophobia is common among children aged 13-18 years. Since they are at their peak teen years and striving to gain more control over their lives, anything that curbs their freedom can seem terrifying. Elderly people who were once independent and lived strong individual lives are also at the risk of soteriophobia. This is because as they age they are forced to accept the help of others and be dependent. It may result in the pushing away of children or partners when offered physical or emotional assistance as they face the challenges of old age.

What Are the Symptoms of Soteriophobia?

If you feel worried at the thought of taking others’ guidance and help it may be a sign of soteriophobia. Other behavioral signs to watch for are:

  • You try to do everything by yourself
  • You refrain from meeting people altogether
  • You don’t ask for help when you need it
  • You feel threatened at the thought of being dependent
  • You avoid situations where you might need to ask for others’ help

Other than extreme anxiety, the following are some physical, mental, and emotional soteriophobia symptoms.

Physical Symptoms

  • Increased heart rate
  • Dizziness
  • Breathlessness
  • Hot or cold flashes
  • Headache
  • Nausea
  • Tremors
  • Tingling or numbness
  • Butterflies in the stomach
  • Excessive sweating

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • Panic attacks
  • Withdrawal
  • Inability to handle anxiety
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Anger or mood swings
  • Guilt or sadness

The severity of these symptoms depends on the individual, the intensity of their fear, how they perceive the situations, and past trauma. One has to have at least six months of consistent symptoms to be diagnosed with soteriophobia.

How to Treat Soteriophobia?

There is no one specific soteriophobia treatment for soteriophobia. Nevertheless, you can take various initiatives on a personal level to improve the symptoms, or you can seek professional help. There are different forms of treatments that can significantly make a difference in your soteriophobia symptoms.

Self-Help Guide to Soteriophobia

Those with soteriophobia want to practice free will, and if that is threatened they feel extreme anxiety. So, perhaps you can accept your own help to eliminate anxiety if your phobia is mild. There are various techniques that—with consistency—reduce stress significantly.

Do Strenuous Exercises

Anxiety disorders like soteriophobia benefit from exercise. Cardio relieves stress by releasing “happy hormones,” such as dopamine and serotonin in the brain, easing the pain related to anxiety. Aerobic exercises and other strenuous exercises put your body under stress and you cope with it. Your body then adapts to cope with stressful situations.

Practice Yogic Poses

Yoga poses put you in a meditative state of mind with consistent practice. With yoga, you learn to redirect your energy to something more positive.

Cut Caffeine

Large amounts of coffee throughout the day can make you more anxious than you generally would be. Caffeine adds to your already heightened anxiety and is best done without when you have soteriophobia. Being aware of your daily consumption of caffeine can reduce some symptoms of soteriophobia.

Meditate

Meditation, no doubt, works best when you master it. Anxiety disorders like soteriophobia put your mind in a constant state of mental anguish. Because of this, you can benefit from meditation. It allows you to cope with stress by teaching your body how to calm itself by focusing on something such as breathing. It activates all five senses and leaves little space for anxiety.

Professional Help for Soteriophobia

When soteriophobia starts affecting one’s social and professional life, treatment becomes necessary. Seeking professional guidance can help you understand your fear more deeply and get you to the root of it. If you believe you have soteriophobia and are enduring its symptoms, consult your mental health professional to get properly diagnosed and treated.

Some of the most widely used professional techniques to treat soteriophobia are:

  • Talking therapy
  • Exposure therapy
  • Cognitive behavioral therapy
  • Dialectical behavior therapy
  • Mindfulness-based stress reduction
  • Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)
  • EMDR

How to Cope with Soteriophobia

By now, you should know that soteriophobia can impair one’s daily life. So how do you vanquish it? Explore your fear, acknowledge it, and start your path to recovery now. Your recovery starts the day you acknowledge your fear and take small steps to try to beat it. It may seem hard at first, but with consistent efforts, you can overcome it.

You can try to make the following changes in your routine to make recovery easier:

  • Stop rationalizing your fear
  • Try and find the gap in your thoughts
  • Allow yourself to be; don’t push changes too hard
  • Stop resorting to avoidance behaviors
  • Give yourself time and space
  • List down positive things about people
  • Try and know yourself. Know what will make you calm in stressful times.

Wrapping Up

Being dependent on others and accepting their help without being afraid of them exploiting you can seem impossible, but it’s not. You decide when you want to fight this fear. It is one borne in your mind and only your mind can overcome it. Living in harmony with others and being dependent when needed, in good faith, will come easily once you decide you’re ready.

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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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