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Animal Phobias

Taeniophobia/Teniophobia – Fear of Tapeworms

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Teniophobia: The Fear or Disgust of Tapeworms

Do you have an excessive fear of tapeworms? Why? Well, it could be because of stories like this: Eighty-two feet long. That’s the measurement of the longest tapeworm ever removed from a person. The poor man had this unwelcome resident in his small intestines for months or maybe years.

No wonder many are wary of getting these parasites. It’s normal to shudder at the thought of eating food infested by worms. But what if you can’t stop worrying about getting tapeworms? If this fear disrupts your daily life, you may be suffering from teniophobia.

Phobias are hard to overcome, but your recovery starts when you decide to fight your fear. To beat teniophobia, it helps to learn everything you can about it.

What Is Teniophobia?

First off, both these terms mean the fear of tapeworms: taeniophobia or teniophobia.

Teniophobia is the fear of tapeworms. It is derived from the Greek terms taenio, meaning “tapeworm,” and phobos, meaning “fear.”

This is a highly specific phobia with a definite trigger. In this case, phobia sufferers are afraid of tapeworms. Worms are gross, but teniophobia doesn’t refer to mere disgust. Instead, the phobia is a severe fear of getting tapeworms from food.

Teniophobia is related to helminthiphobia, vermiphobia, and scoleciphobia. All these terms refer to the fear of worms or being infested by them. Teniophobia causes one to be extremely wary of tapeworms or even the thought of getting them. In severe cases, a teniophobic may even suffer from panic attacks.

When you have teniophobia, you may allow your fears to dictate your routine. You avoid situations that trigger panic. You don’t need to see or have tapeworms to have a reaction. The thought of being in that situation is enough to scare you. But why are people so afraid of such tiny creatures?

What’s So Bad about Tapeworms?

Tapeworms are flatworms found in the intestines of animals and humans. They have a ribbon-like body and a small head. These worms have hooks and suckers to attach to the intestines. The parasites lay eggs that come out with human feces. These eggs end up in the soil, water, or in unclean food. If present in the body, they consume nutrients from digested food. Having internal worms can cause malnutrition and other serious illnesses. What’s worse, tapeworms have been known to travel to the brain. If this happens, the infected person may suffer from seizures, visual impairment, or even death.

What Are the Causes of Teniophobia?

Are you wondering, Why do I have worm phobia? Generally, phobias don’t have a definite cause. However, they are more likely to develop when influenced by genetics. Sometimes, this condition can be traced back to a traumatic experience. Let’s take a closer look at the most plausible teniophobia causes.

Genetics

If a person has a genetic predisposition to mental illness, they are at a higher risk of developing phobias such as teniophobia. A single triggering event can contribute to a full-blown phobia developing.

Trauma

The death of a loved one due to a tapeworm infection is one reason some develop an aversion to tapeworms. Others experienced being hospitalized as children due to these parasites. As a result, the negative feelings lingered and became a cause of the phobia. You may have also read or watched a dramatic news article about extreme cases of tapeworm infections. These may be so scary that you end up with teniophobia.

What Are the Symptoms of Teniophobia?

No one wants to get infected with tapeworms. It’s normal and recommended to take basic precautions to avoid food contamination. However, those with teniophobia take extreme measures to make sure they are never exposed to tapeworms. These may include:

  • Refusing to eat fruits and vegetables since they may have parasites
  • Refusing to eat meat altogether due to their fear of the animal being infected
  • Compulsively washing hands
  • Overcooking meat
  • Moving to or staying in countries where tapeworms are not common

Here are the telltale signs that you may have this phobia:

Physical Symptoms

  • Breathlessness
  • Nausea
  • Sweating profusely
  • Dry mouth
  • Shaking
  • Rapid pulse
  • Rapid breathing
  • Irregular heartbeat
  • Chills
  • Tightness in the chest
  • Headache
  • Numbness or tingling
  • Hyperventilation

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • Dread
  • Extreme anxiety
  • Inability to articulate words
  • Fear of losing control
  • Confusion
  • Anger
  • Fear of dying
  • Withdrawal
  • Guilt

Teniophobia symptoms vary from person to person and depend on the severity of their condition. These symptoms are common among phobias and anxiety disorders.

Self-Help Guide to Teniophobia

Specific phobias develop in early life and tend to go away. But if it follows you to adulthood, treatment is needed. To learn how to cope with stressful times, here are some positive additions you can make to your routine. They will help you better cope with your anxiety.

Yoga

Yoga is a form of moving meditation. You move your body into various positions while breathing deeply. Practicing yoga leads you to a more healthy life. It focuses your mind on betterment rather than anxious feelings.

Meditation

Meditation requires practice and consistency. When you master meditation, it brings a beautiful change in how you react to the object of fear. It distracts your mind from worrying and allows you to focus on something more worthwhile.

Cardio Workouts

Put your body through strenuous exercises like biking, swimming, or running. Exercise releases happy hormones in your body, which ease anxiety and allows your body to respond better to perceived stressors.

Seeking Professional Help

Consult a professional if you don’t see any positive change with self-help techniques. Seeking professional help may seem unimportant when you can simply avoid uncomfortable situations. You may feel in control right now, but in reality, the phobia is getting a firmer hold on you. There is no definitive treatment available for teniophobia. However, you can take advantage of psychological techniques that work with most phobias.

These include:

  • Cognitive behavioral therapy
  • Talking therapy
  • Dialectical behavior techniques
  • Mindfulness-based stress reduction
  • Exposure therapy

Some of these methods involve counseling, while others involve confronting your triggers directly. The treatment chosen by your mental health professional will depend on the severity of your condition.

How to Overcome Fear of Worms

It’s fairly easy to avoid parasites. Proper hygiene and sanitary food preparation should ensure that you don’t catch tapeworms. However, those with teniophobia may go above and beyond to avoid getting them. Only you know your level of fear and only you can let it go.

Teniophobia treatment starts the day you decide to prepare your mind and body to face the fear. Overcome your aversion to tapeworms by preparing for encounters rather than avoiding them.

  • Acknowledge your fear and try to understand your feelings towards it.
  • Don’t try to rationalize the perceived impact tapeworms have on your life.
  • Recognize your thought patterns. Identify the unhelpful ways in which you choose to think and act.
  • Give yourself time. These methods are not an instant fix for your phobia.
  • Don’t forget the basics like a healthy diet, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep.

Fear preys on you when you avoid it. But with professional intervention and self-help techniques, you can overcome teniophobia.

Conclusion

Don’t let teniophobia take over your life. It may seem like tapeworms are everywhere, but it’s possible to avoid dangerous parasites without going overboard. With these tips and information, you’ll soon be able to lead a normal life, free of anxiety. Be kind to yourself as you overcome your fear of worms. In time, you can enjoy that medium-rare burger or juicy pork chop without a single worry.

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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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