Coprophobia (fear of feces): causes and symptoms

Coprophobia, also known as schatophobia, is a specific phobia whose affected manifest an irrational and unjustified fear of excrement. Patients with this rare disorder suffer high levels of anxiety when faced with a feces. In this way, they try to avoid seeing or perceiving excrement whenever they can.

Although it is a rare discomfort, those affected by coprophobia can see their daily lives altered and suffer discomfort that requires psychological treatment. In this summary we will review what coprophobia consists of, its most frequent causes, its symptoms and signs, and different types of intervention that can help manage it.

• Related article: "The 15 strangest phobias that exist"

What is coprophobia?

Coprophobia is an anxiety disorder. It is an unusual specific phobia that requires health and/or psychological intervention in most cases.

These subjects feel an extreme aversion towards feces, appearing an unusual and exaggerated fear towards excrement. This fear may be based on certain beliefs or irrational thoughts and generate a great anxiety.

Characteristics and diagnosis

Not all fears or rejection of feces can be labeled with the diagnosis of coprophobia. In fact, for the diagnosis to be reliable, it will be essential that there are certain specific symptoms and characteristics. They are next.

1. exaggerated fear

The fear of feces experienced by those affected by coprophobia is clearly excessive in its intensity and in terms of the discomfort it generates.. This means that, when they are exposed to excrement, their mind reacts with acute symptoms of anxiety and nervousness.

Droppings do not pose a real threat to humans, but individuals affected by coprophobia have distorted cognitions and perceive them as highly threatening or dangerous.

2. irrational thoughts

The fear generated by coprophobia is of high intensity and exaggerated because it is not based on rational thoughts. These distorted cognitions generate anxiety in the face of a false threat.

Distorted and unrealistic ideas about the potential danger of feces are the cause of the discomfort manifested by the affected subject.

3. uncontrollable fear

Another characteristic symptom of coprophobia is that the fear is uncontrollable.. That is, the affected individual does not have any resources to manage the emergence of negative sensations, as well as the unwanted anxiety responses.

4. lingering fear

Fear is also characterized by being prolonged in time, that is, persistent. It is not a fear that arises in an isolated or specific way, at some specific stage or after a certain experience.

Thus, the phobic fear of faeces may not be resolved if psychological measures are not taken and clinical intervention is performed on the patient.

5. Avoidance

Finally, the phobic fear of excrement generates the main behavior of this phobia: avoidance. Subjects with this phobia try to avoid being exposed to feces as much as possible, even running away suddenly to avoid such contact.

Symptoms. Coprophobia is an anxiety disorder, since its symptoms are mainly those of an anxious patient.

The expressions that coprophobia has in the behavior and mind of the affected person can be of three types: cognitive symptoms, physical symptoms and behavioral symptoms.

1. physical symptoms

The fear suffered by people with coprophobia generates the emergence of a long list of alterations in the proper functioning of your body when the affected person is exposed to faeces.

This alteration is caused by a misalignment of the normal activity of the autonomic nervous system. This increase can lead to a series of signs of anxiety, like the following:

• Increased heart rate
• Increased rate of breathing
• palpitations
• tachycardia
• Muscle tension
• sweating
• feeling of unreality
• Dizziness, nausea and vomiting

2. cognitive symptoms

In addition to physical signs, coprophobia also produces a series of cognitive alterations. These are based on irrational ideas and thoughts about discomfort and the threat posed by excrement.

These thoughts arise with greater force and intensity when the affected person is exposed to the phobic element. In addition, the physical symptoms feed back and encourage the anxiety that the phobic stimulus produces.

3. behavioral symptoms

Finally, coprophobia also presents several behavioral or behavioral symptoms. These manifestations arise in response to physical and cognitive symptoms, due to increased anxiety and the general malaise suffered by the affected person.

The most common behaviors in this disorder are avoidance and flight. Avoidance is defined as that series of behaviors that the patient does in order not to come into contact with excrement. On the other hand, flight is the behavior that is carried out when the individual cannot avoid coming into contact with feces and instinctively moves away from the phobic stimulus.

Causes

Coprophobia is a phobia that can be due to different causes and factors that can be considered risk.

The propensity to suffer anxiety, the vicarious conditioning, verbal conditioning, certain Personality traits or genetic risk factors make a person more at risk of developing this phobic disorder.

Treatment

The best treatment for this type of phobias is psychological therapy.. Specifically, cognitive-behavioral therapy has proven to be highly effective in controlling symptoms and returning the subject to normality.

This therapy is based on progressive exposure to the phobic stimulus. Slowly, the patient gets closer (throughout the therapy sessions) and gets used to the feces and learns to manage his anxiety and the discomfort he feels.

Bibliographic references:

• American Psychiatric Association. DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (2002). Barcelona: Masson.
• Braunstein, N. TO. (2015). Classify in psychiatry. 2a. reprint. Mexico: 21st century