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Beliefs

Xenophobia – Fear of Foreigners

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Excessive Fear of Foreigners, a Common Phobia

Are you unduly wary of people from other countries? Do you feel a deep-seated dislike towards immigrants and the idea of immigration in general? Do you lean toward laws and policies that could be uncomfortable for foreign visitors and immigrants, including those here legally?

Or maybe you justify your hostility towards foreigners by labeling them as terrorists or troublemakers.

Has it become so bad that it’s affecting your everyday life?

If you panic at the sight of a foreigner, it’s time to take a closer look at your perceptions. Your fear of foreigners may very well be the cause of the anxiety and other psychological symptoms you are experiencing.

This irrational fear of foreigners is called xenophobia and, in this case, the likely consequences affect not only the sufferer but the subject of the fear as well, ranging from unfriendliness to inflicting harm.

Unlike other phobias which you can choose to deal with or not deal with, being xenophobic is a much wider issue which carries both social and political repercussions.

What this means is that it’s critical that you work to overcome your fear of foreigners. This fear is not only unhealthy for you, but it’s unsafe for the object of your antagonism, and by extension, for your country as a whole.

As with every phobic condition, the first step towards healing is understanding the nature and origin of this irrational and sometimes hysterical reaction.

What Is Xenophobia?

Xenophobia is the irrational and abnormal fear of strangers, foreigners, migrants, and anyone who is not an original member of a community or country. It is an illogical reaction to an exaggerated and usually made-up threat or danger. Most sufferers of xenophobia do not have a basis or explanation for their nervous hostility towards visitors, but that does not stop them from treating foreigners poorly, from the cold shoulder to outright hatred, and even physical violence or attacks.

For those struggling with xenophobia, it’s important for them to understand that their disdain is unwarranted. Whatever offense they feel that foreigners as a collective have done exists only in imagination. Now, this is not to say that foreigners never commit offenses. Sometimes they do. But that’s because they’re human—not because they’re foreigners.

The majority of xenophobics struggle to see it this way, however. They find their hostility rational and even logical, when it is quite the contrary. Xenophobia is, by definition, illogical and an emotional reaction to a perceived threat.

Symptoms of Xenophobia

However malicious, unnecessary, and illogical it might be, xenophobia is still a phobia and those who suffer with it are vulnerable to all the attendant symptoms and agonies of a phobic patient.

Physical xenophobia symptoms include:

  • Heart palpitations
  • Hyperventilation
  • Stress
  • Dry mouth
  • Difficulty breathing
  • Restlessness
  • Migraines and headaches
  • Over-sensitivity

Psychological symptoms include:

  • Post-traumatic stress disorder
  • Depression
  • Hallucination
  • Apprehension
  • Defensiveness
  • Insomnia
  • Temperamental tendencies
  • Hostility
  • Hysteria or paranoia

Society often chooses to write off xenophobes as haters with a wanton dislike for strangers. The truth is that a majority of them can’t help themselves. Some even willingly admit that their fear is highly illogical and that they need help. The symptoms can affect one’s life, and no one wants to suffer unnecessarily. The good news is they don’t have to.

Common Xenophobia Causes

Your fear of strangers, foreigners, immigrants, and refugees could be a result of a negative experience with them in the past. Instead of addressing it as a standalone, you’ve generalized and pigeonholed all foreigners into a harmful category.

Over time, this shapes your views, values, and personal politics. You start to feel justified and normalize this behavior. This is especially easy to fall into.

Considering that a lot of others are xenophobic—politicians included—it’s easy to conclude that your feelings towards foreigners are valid, because other people share the same view.

Self-help Solutions to Xenophobia

Confront Your Phobia

First, admit to yourself that your fears are unfounded and capable of causing harm to innocent people. Be willing to take responsibility for your hatred and resolve to be a person who treats all people with dignity and respect, including non-indigenes.

Familiarize Yourself with Foreign Cultures

For you to be truly welcoming of strangers, you must learn to see them through human lenses. Read up about other worlds, values, and traditions outside of your own. Understand that the world is a much bigger, more diverse place, and strangers are a huge part of it. Learning about others’ cultures also helps you understand them better. You won’t view every unexpected thing they do as a threat or with disdain.

Show Support

Train yourself to accept foreigners by showing your support for them in your political, social, and communal events. Don’t alienate them. You might even consider donating to their particular causes or attending cultural events. Such activities send healthy messages to your brain. When you socialize with them, you begin to see that they’re not a threat to you.

Do Yoga and Meditation

As with all phobias, xenophobia is a stress-inducing disorder. Calming measures like yoga and meditation work to keep anxiety in check.

Professional Help for Xenophobia

The following are some methods used in treating this type of phobia with the help of a psychotherapist:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

This helps reprogram the mind to rid it of harmful thoughts about foreigners and replace them with more realistic views. Through CBT, you learn to replace these hostile thoughts with good ones and recondition your mind, as well as ease your symptoms.

Psychodynamic Therapy

You learn that your past negative experience is what led to all this stereotyping and subsequent visceral reactions to foreigners. You’re given the tools needed to separate the issues and understand that being a visitor or foreigner doesn’t, in itself, make a person bad or dangerous.

Other Tips and Ideas

Take a trip to a different country and stay for a while. There, it is you who will be considered a foreigner. Note how you feel when someone makes assumptions about you based on that alone. Anyone can be a foreigner; it’s not a determinant of anything and certainly not a justification to be treated with hostility.

Find Your Humanity

Don’t let xenophobia steal your humanity. Acknowledge that you need help and that you don’t want to hurt innocent people with your imagined assumptions about them. By following these tips and accepting the reality of your fear, you’ll be well on your way to becoming xenophobia-free.

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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