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Sexual Phobias

The Fear of Beautiful Women – Caligynephobia

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Afraid of Beautiful Women?

Have you ever come across a person who panics at the sight of a beautiful woman? They don’t feel simply nervous or shy, but actual panic.

How about you? Do you perhaps shut down when you encounter a gorgeous woman? Is it nerve-wracking just to utter a few words around them?

Those who struggle with such symptoms may be suffering with a condition called caligynephobia, or the fear of beautiful women. This fear is also known as venustraphobia. It is different than gynephobia, which is a fear of women in general. It is also limited to a specific gender and does not involve a fear of men.

This situation can be a nightmare for anyone. The sight of a beautiful woman leaving you frozen in fear or causing panic can be embarrassing. But thankfully, there are several ways to overcome it. Read on to learn more.

What Causes the Fear of Beautiful Women?

Intrinsic Cause

Researchers studying this phobia of beautiful women work to determine the root cause. Several studies suggest that some men might inherit caligynephobia. These men, in time, become extremely anxious and sensitive around beautiful women. It also indicates a type of anxiety disorder.

Negative Association Cause

It is also possible that the phobia might arise due to a past negative experience, even though the theory of inheritance of this phobia is popular. If a man has been a recipient of a rejection, joke, ridicule, or insult by a beautiful woman, he might develop this phobia over time. He may begin to associate negative experiences with beautiful women, thus resulting in caligynephobia.

Observational Cause

Some men do not personally have to go through a negative experience to develop this phobia. Research has suggested that some men observe other negative experiences and make associations. They may observe a negative experience involving someone related to them or even a co-worker. This association can be unconscious and unintentional.

Stress-Related Cause

Stress can be one of the triggers of caligynephobia. Some men undergo stress when they are placed in situations involving beautiful women. This stress can intensify an already manifesting phobia.

External Cause

Men who are more impressionable and suffer from low self-esteem often live with caligynephobia in silence. Impressionable men might come across films or television series that suggest how stressful it is to be around beautiful women, and they accept that as a fact of life. Friends and family may also lead some men into believing exaggerations about beautiful women which may not be true in reality.

Quick Q&A

Can a woman have caligynephobia?
Men or women can suffer from caligynephobia; adults and children as well.
What is a caligynephobic person afraid of?
The intense fear of beautiful women.
What is acute caligynephobia?
Intense or long lasting fear of beautiful women.
How do you overcome caligynephobia?
Self-help or professional therapy.

What Are the Symptoms of Caligynephobia?

There are several symptoms for those suffering with caligynephobia. These symptoms are not just physical, but also psychological.

Physical Symptoms

  • Trembling or shaking uncontrollably
  • Screaming or crying
  • Abnormal heartbeats or palpitations
  • Sweaty palms or hands
  • Nausea, vomiting, or headaches
  • Breathlessness
  • Heavy breathing

Psychological Symptoms

  • Feeling zero control over foolish actions
  • Often finding oneself in embarrassing situations
  • Constant feeling of need to run away
  • No sense of reality
  • Choking or gasping for air sensations
  • Assumption of going blind or passing out

In severe cases of caligynephobia, a person might continually feel self-conscious. This affects their self-esteem and relationships. While others may not consider this phobia a serious issue, it is a troubling situation for people who suffer from it. Some men suffering with caligynephobia might even consider remaining single all their life to avoid risking interaction with beautiful women.

How Does One Tackle Caligynephobia?

There are several treatments you can try to overcome a fear of beautiful women. Phobias are generally irrational, and the ways to overcome them often begin with self-help. If the phobia persists, seek professional therapy.

Self-Help

Various self-help techniques assist in dealing with caligynephobia by building self-esteem. There are several ways you can rebuild your self-esteem. Make sure to give attention to self-care during this process. It is crucial to take care of yourself when working to rebuild your self-esteem. This may include doing what makes you happy, being around your loved ones, and checking in with yourself from time-to-time.

Meditation

This is a proven relaxation method. Meditation is significant to harness self-esteem. This method provides control over feelings and emotions, which in turn help you manage your outlook on any external situation. Obtaining control over your emotions is an effective way in dealing with any phobia.

Build a Support System

Surround yourself with supportive people as an effective way of dealing with caligynephobia. These people offer you the confidence and a cushion of support that you require and which helps ease the stressful situations for you. Trusting your loved ones to understand your phobia is the first step towards building a support system.

Understand Your Feelings

Finally, it is vital to understand your feelings. Dealing with feelings can be stressful at times, but it offers a direct insight into your phobia.

Professional Help to Deal with Caligynephobia – Options Available

Occasionally, self-help techniques are not enough to overcome a phobia. In this case, professional options are available.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy helps increase the person’s awareness of their thoughts and actions involving the phobia. Identifying these can help the person identify exaggerations that exist around their fear.  Cognitive behavioral therapy also aids in identifying false threats. It promotes change in the negative thought pattern a person experiences because of the phobia.

Desensitization

Desensitization is another professional therapy in dealing with caligynephobia. In this therapy, the person suffering from the phobia is gradually exposed to the object of their fear—in this case, attractive women—until their panic and anxiety subsides. This exposure is performed in a controlled setting. The therapy begins with imagery desensitization, usually for 15 minutes each session. There is persistent encouragement and positive assurance throughout each session. Eventually, the phobic is encouraged to practice this behavior with actual women. The imagery desensitization builds up self-esteem and helps the phobic to experience a normal response around beautiful women.

Learning to Handle Caligynephobia

Phobias are irrational, therefore there is no definitive treatment that can guarantee a cure. However, with time and effort, therapy can help you learn to overcome or at least better cope with your fear.

If you consider your own physical appearance to be a cause of your fear of beautiful women, try an exercise regimen. Regular exercise boosts confidence and helps rebuild self-esteem when dealing with caligynephobia.

Conclusion

The next time you feel panicked in the presence of a beautiful woman, try and understand where the fear originates from. Take a deep breath, and lean into the self-help techniques covered above. Being free of fear is a beautiful thing.

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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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