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Other Phobias

Verbophobia – The Fear of Words

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No Words for Verbophobia

Do you fret about spelling, pronunciations, and translations? Does it cause you such a hard time that you prefer to altogether skip anything to do with words? You could be living with verbophobia, the excessive fear of words.

The extreme fear you feel on an everyday basis can be crippling.

You might sweat profusely when required to read words out loud. Or perhaps you stammer and stutter when you stare at the page. Public speaking, for you, must be a nightmare. What’s more, not everyone may understand it, and that makes it even harder for you to deal with it.

Is verbophobia real? Yes, very much so. But it’s also possible to live a verbophobia-free life. First, you need to determine the cause of your phobia, then work with that to treat the fear.

What Is Verbophobia All About?

Verbophobia is an inexplicable fear of words. It’s always there, like a nagging presence. It never leaves your side. You may get tongue-tied when you need to pronounce a certain word. Or, you hold your tongue when you need to speak.

Just the thought of certain words may trigger panic, let alone having to speak them. You might even find yourself avoiding movies with subtitles. While it may sound far-fetched, those living with verbophobia experience discomfort with words everyday. Words are everywhere. Speaking is an unavoidable necessity in a social world. Living with a fear of words is, therefore, a challenge.

Verbophobia is different from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, which is the fear of long words. Verbophobia, or the abnormal fear of words, falls under specific word phobias.

Symptoms of Verbophobia

Like most other phobias, verbophobia symptoms can either be physical, mental, or emotional. Some of these symptoms are listed below:

Physical Symptoms

  • Sweating
  • Trembling
  • Breathing difficulties
  • Increased heartbeat rate
  • Feeling disoriented
  • Headaches
  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Tightness in the chest and chest pains
  • Dizziness
  • Confusion
  • Fainting

Mental/Emotional Symptoms

  • Uncontrolled anxiety in public
  • Shame and guilt
  • Feeling unworthy
  • Sadness and hopelessness
  • Fear of losing control
  • Withdrawal
  • Self-isolation and avoidance of going to public places.
  • Depression

But What Are Some of the Verbophobia Causes?

Just like with other phobias, there’s no specific cause of the fear of words. The fear stems from a combination of many factors depending on the individual. Let’s take a closer look just a few of the possible causes.

Traumatic Childhood

How were your childhood years? Do you remember being laughed at in school for mispronouncing certain words? Do you remember being punished for misreading words? That may be the cause. The most likely age to develop verbophobia is during childhood years. The emotional turmoil that a child bears doesn’t leave them even in adulthood.

Genetics

Your genetics greatly influence your opinions, beliefs, and practices. Find out whether there is a history of verbophobia in your family. The problem could be hereditary. In addition, if you saw people around you struggling with certain words while growing up, you could end up with the same problem. This is because—other than school—children learn a lot from home.

Education

For those who didn’t finish school, it’s possible a lack of formal education is the root cause. Now, if you’re required to read words or speak in public as part of your job, you might shy away from those tasks due to shame or low self-esteem. You might have developed a fear of failure surrounding mispronunciations. If you didn’t finish school, it’s okay. Try not to let feelings of inferiority be a stumbling block to your success. If you think it will help, you might consider adult education programs. Your fear of words can be overcome.

Self-Care Tips for Verbophobia

Since we can’t live in a world without words, it’s important to seek treatment for verbophobia as soon as possible. Words can’t be ignored. More often than you think, you’ll be required to express yourself in public. Here are a few self-care tips you can practice to help you better manage your fear of words:

Try to Ignore Verbophobia

You can choose not to give too much attention to your fear. The more you think about verbophobia, the worse it gets. Choose to focus on other things that make you happy.

Apply Relaxation Techniques

Relaxation techniques go a long way in calming you down when tense. Practice controlled breathing and meditation each day. Before leaving home, breathe in and out for a particular duration of time. You’ll know the breathing is taking effect when you feel more relaxed and calm.

Get to Know Your Fear

Try to acquire as much information as there is about the abnormal fear of words. Read books and speak to experts in the field. The data you’ll acquire will set straight the fact from fiction. Some of this material was written by those who overcame the fear of words. How best to go about healing than to hear from someone who struggled with the same fear?

Talk to Someone

Find someone you trust to talk with. This could be a family member or trusted friend. Tell them precisely how words make you feel. Hopefully, they can offer you their support. In addition, you need others to encourage you in your journey to recovery. It would help if you had some outside motivation to stay on track.

Verbophobia is one of those phobias where practice can help to remove the problem. In your own space, practice reading. Mark your progress every day. In addition, you can have someone close help you practice. Ideally, this would be someone who wants nothing but for you to improve. It they offer critique, it should be positive.

You Can Also Seek Professional Help

In professional treatment, there are various methods which can help you overcome your fear of words. Some treatments may be combined to provide the best possible outcome for overcoming verbophobia.

Counseling

In counseling, you’ll talk with a trained therapist. The therapist will listen in a non-judgemental way to understand where your fear is coming from. They’ll guide you as you express your innermost thoughts and feelings. Your therapist will gradually help you identify and change unhelpful thought patterns.

Exposure Therapy

Exposure therapy involves guided exposure to the very thing triggering your phobia—in this case, words. With verbophobia, you’ll be exposed to reading and public speaking to alleviate your fear of words. Exposure therapy is a safe, controlled, and monitored therapy.

It takes time, but it’s worth it. The therapist may start you off by saying simple words out loud. The more you improve, the more the therapist will introduce you to more complex terms. At the end of your treatment, you should be able to better manage your fear of words.

How to Cope with Verbophobia Altogether

Simply determine the best way for you to treat your phobia. You can try a combination of treatments, or come up with a routine that suits you best. Either way, the best way forward is to make a firm decision regarding your phobia and deal with it.

Verbophobia Can Be Managed

Verbophobia can have far-reaching consequences. The fear can affect your confidence and even cost you jobs and opportunities. The best approach to healing is practice, counseling, and therapy. When well combined, you should be able to overcome verbophobia.

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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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