Dromophobia: characteristics, symptoms, causes and treatment

There are a large number of situations, people, objects or animals that generate irrational fear in part of the population. All of these make up a long list of phobias that most people deal with to a greater or lesser extent.

One of these phobias is dromophobia.. This strange anxiety disorder prevents people who suffer from it from crossing any street or urban road, interfering significantly in their daily routine.

• Related article: "Types of Phobias: Exploring Fear Disorders"

What is dromophobia?

Like the rest of phobias, dromophobia is considered a anxiety disorder in which the person experiences an excessive and irrational terror of crossing the street, and in which the extremely high anxiety that he feels every time he has to cross a street inhibits him from doing so.

Despite the fact that dromophobia is a little-known type of phobia, it can become a highly disabling disorder, in which the People who suffer from it experience many difficulties when it comes to residing in urban areas due to the fear they feel at the time of crossing the street.

Fortunately, there are very effective treatments for dromophobia thanks to which the person is able to overcome the phobia and lead a normal life.

• You may be interested in: "The 16 most common mental disorders"

Clinical features

As mentioned above, dromophobia is considered an anxiety disorder. It is necessary to specify that the focus object of the phobia is not the street or its intersections, but the action of crossing the street per se.

The main consequence of dromophobia is that the person avoids all those situations or actions in which they must cross the street, to the point of seclusion at homethus interfering with his daily obligations and needs.

Like many other anxiety disorders, dromophobia is distinguished by being a phobic fear, which has the following characteristics:

• Excessive and disproportionate fear taking into account the real danger of the situation
• It's an irrational fear
• The person is unable to master this fear
• Generates avoidance behaviors of the situation
• It's about constant fear and permanent

symptomatology

The main symptom of dromophobia is experiencing great anxiety, with all the symptoms associated with it. These symptoms do not appear continuously in time, only when the person faces or knows that he is going to face the feared action, in this case crossing the street.

These symptoms can be classified into three categories, depending on whether they correspond to physical, cognitive or behavioral symptoms.

1. physical symptoms

In general, any phobia, as well as experiencing an exaggerated fear, produces a series of changes and alterations at a physical and organic level, due to the acceleration of the activity of the nervous system peripheral. These physical symptoms include:

• Acceleration of heart rate
• Increased respiratory rate
• palpitations
• Feeling short of breath
• Muscular stiffness
• excessive sweating
• headaches
• gastric pain
• Nausea, dizziness and fainting
• vomiting

2. cognitive symptoms

These physical symptoms are accompanied in turn by a series of distorted and irrational thoughts about the situation or situations in which the person must cross the street.

These thoughts are distinguished by containing a high negative charge, in which the person can come to perceive that some type of accident or catastrophe may happen to you at the moment, or while crossing the street.

3. behavioral symptoms

As usual in specific phobias, the phobia itself ends interfering with the person's behavior patterns. Altering their way of proceeding in daily life and generating two types of response: avoidance behavior and escape from the situation.

Avoidance behaviors are those behaviors that the person with dromophobia performs in order to avoid having to perform the behavior, such as not leaving the house. While escape behaviors originate when you are about to face the feared situation, an example would be running across all the streets.

Causes of dromophobia

Although it is not always possible to detect at first sight, or to know the causes of a phobia, there are a series of possible causes common to all phobias which promote and promote them.

These mechanisms or associated risk factors are:

• genetic elements
• Personality
• Cognitive styles
• direct conditioning
• vicarious learning

Diagnosis

There are a series of diagnostic criteria established and mandatory when evaluating and diagnosing a person with dromophobia.

• Excessive, persevering and irrational fear that originates from the anticipation of the action or by coping with it, in this case it takes shape in the action of crossing a street or urban road.
• The patient admits that the fear you feel is exaggerated and illogical.
• Exposure to the feared action immediately triggers an anxiety or crisis response.
• The person avoids or avoids the situation.
• The feeling of anxiety or fear, and the avoidance actions associated with it, significantly interfere with the person's daily life, or cause clinically relevant discomfort.
• The duration of symptoms must be at least 6 months.
• The above symptoms cannot be explained by another type of mental disorder or illness.

Treatment

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, despite how disabling this specific phobia can be, there are effective treatments for it. that the person can end up leading a normal rhythm and lifestyle.

In the case of phobias, the type of intervention with the highest success rate is cognitive-behavioral therapy, where systematic desensitization (SD) has proven to be highly effective.

In this systematic desensitization, the patient is imaginarily exposed to a series of situations related to the phobia, which are ordered gradually, from minor to major degree of fear. In addition, relaxation techniques are applied to decrease the level of anxiety.