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Spheksophobia – The Fear of Wasps Phobia
Animal Phobias

Spheksophobia – The Fear of Wasps Phobia

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Fear of Wasps Phobia Known As Spheksophobia

Do you get goosebumps whenever you see a flying wasp?

Do you run away the instant you see that distinctive yellow and black body?

Are you deathly scared of watching movies that have swarming or stinging insects?

Do you look at a wasp’s nest as if it were a ticking bomb?

Wasps make most people squirm in disgust. A lot of people are afraid of these insects because of their painful stings. But what if your terror is so extreme that the mere thought or image of a wasp can reduce you to tears?

You may have spheksophobia, an intense dread of wasps. Don’t lose hope. You’re not alone in having this problem. What’s more, you can overcome this phobia with the right information and support.

Spheksophobia – The Fear of Wasps Phobia

What Is Spheksophobia?

What is the phobia or fear of wasps? The word spheksophobia originates from the Greek language. Sphēks refers to “wasps” while phobos means “fear.” It’s similar to entomophobia, or the fear of insects.

Spheksophobia sufferers avoid gardens, parks, and similar locations. After all, wasps are likely to be found in places where flowers, trees, or bushes grow. Sometimes, those with this phobia are scared to even step out of their homes. They experience a range of symptoms including anxiety and panic attacks. In some cases the phobia is so severe that it interferes with daily life.

How Common Is Spheksophobia?

Is it normal to be terrified of wasps? It’s quite common since these insects are notorious for their painful and toxic stings. These insects are similar to bees but are larger and more aggressive. Wasps do not leave their stinger behind in human skin, so they can sting you multiple times. It’s difficult to protect yourself from this fast and ferocious insect. Some people have severe allergic reactions to wasp stings, which can be life-threatening.

Like most animals, wasps usually won’t bother you if you leave them alone. But if you happen to disturb them or their nest, they will sting you in self-defense. Keep in mind that wasps may also attack humans without any warning. You may not be aware that you’ve gotten too close to a nest. Sometimes, wasp attacks happen for no apparent reason.

What Causes Spheksophobia?

If you’ve experienced a wasp’s sting or you’ve seen someone get stung, you’re likely to develop a phobia of wasps. You may also develop this phobia after watching a nature documentary or reading a news article about wasps. Sometimes, parents might unknowingly pass on this phobia to their offspring. If you keep warning your children to be wary of wasps, they’re likely to be prone to phobia.

Spheksophobia Symptoms

People suffering from this fear of wasps are likely to suffer from these symptoms:

Physical Symptoms

  • Freezing on the spot upon encountering a wasp
  • Heart palpitations
  • Heavy breathing
  • High blood pressure
  • Dizziness
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Gastric problems

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • Urge to run away
  • Panic attacks
  • Severe anxiety
  • Nightmares about wasps
  • Refusal to go outdoors or in areas with plant life
  • Detachment from reality
  • Frustration
  • Aggression
  • Irritation or short temper

Self-Help Techniques for Spheksophobia

Are you looking for a spheksophobia cure? It’s important to know that overcoming this phobia takes time. A phobia of wasps and bees can be handled well with self-help methods and support from your loved ones. No matter how tough, try to face your fears.

Before seeking help from professionals, consider helping yourself. It takes strength and determination to do so, but you have it in you. Incorporate changes in your lifestyle to help you deal with symptoms such as panic attacks. Aside from getting enough sleep and eating a healthy diet, consider these tips:

Regular Exercise

Phobia sufferers highly recommend exercises like cardio, aerobics, and yoga. Physical activity prompts the brain to release endorphins, which reduce phobia symptoms.

Less Caffeine

Consider reducing caffeine and other stimulants in your diet. Not only can caffeine make you feel jittery and hyperactive, but it can also makes your anxiety worse.

Relaxation Techniques

Learn how to control and relax your breathing. This way, you can soothe yourself when you start having a panic attack. A similar strategy is meditation, which allows you to calm your mind and manage anxiety.

Visualization Skills

Here, you will visualize yourself dealing with your phobia. Imagine you come across a wasp. What will your reaction be? Your imagination is powerful. In fact, it might even be the weapon you need to win your battle against your fears.

Support Groups

If you have trouble working alone, try joining a self-help group. This is another useful method for overcoming a phobia. All you need to do is seek out like-minded people and share your experiences with them. Some are ashamed of having this fear of wasps. They fear they will be laughed at, so they avoid talking about it. They choose to not open up. However, opening up about your fears can go a long way toward overcoming them. Also, it can be encouraging to know that you’re not the only person suffering from this phobia.

It’s important to know that all self-help methods require time and focus.

Professional Spheksophobia Treatment for the Fear of Wasps

It can be challenging to deal with this phobia if you can’t even step outside your home. If your symptoms are that severe, consult a medical professional who can properly diagnose your condition.

To help you successfully manage the symptoms of spheksophobia, you may undergo psychotherapy. For example, neurolinguistic programming can help you better manage your fight or flight response. Some experts recommend hypnosis. Here, a trained therapist will induce a deep state of relaxation. This therapy may help you discover the origins of your fear and deal with the stress caused by your phobia.

Other interventions include exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. As a last resort, a doctor may prescribe medication to alleviate extreme phobia symptoms. Keep in mind that pharmaceuticals may not always work. Not only that, but they may also have unpleasant side effects.

Learning to Cope with Spheksophobia

Keep in mind that self-help methods and professional intervention may not fully cure your phobia of wasps and bees. As with most phobias, there’s no guarantee that the fear and anxiety you experience will ever go away. But if you want to get a handle on your phobia, you need to face it head on. Simply ignoring it won’t make it magically disappear. Do something about it, otherwise, those tiny insects will continue to seriously limit your life choices. Eventually you’ll gain control over your responses and learn how to handle the situation better.

Conclusion

Truth be told, nobody likes creepy-crawlies. Don’t feel embarrassed about your fear of stinging insects. Take actions that can help you better cope with this condition. Even if you’re unable to completely cure your phobia, you’ll still have a full life. One day soon you’ll take a stroll in a flower-filled garden without batting an eye at flying insects.

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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