Haphephobia: causes, symptoms and treatment

Phobias are anxiety disorders, which means that they cause great discomfort to the people who suffer from them, who feel anxious symptoms when they are faced with the phobic stimulus or imagine it. Although there are phobias that are hardly incapacitating, except in specific cases, due to the infrequentity with which the phobic meets the stimulus, in other cases the opposite occurs and it is difficult to lead a normal life for those who suffer.

In this sense, one of the most complex phobias is hafephobia, which is the irrational fear of being touched. Luckily, phobias can be treated and the patient can overcome this disorder, and this is no exception. In this article we explain what this disorder consists of and what its treatment is.

What is haphephobia?

Haphephobia is a specific phobic disorder (unlike the agoraphobia wave social phobia) that causes great suffering in the person who suffers from it.

It is an irrational fear of great intensity that manifests itself when the individual suffering from the phobia

comes into physical contact with other people and is touched. It produces a series of cognitive, physiological or behavioral responses, among which the extreme anxiety and the attempt to avoid the feared stimulus to reduce the unpleasant sensation.

Hafephobes suffer from serious social problems, since they fear interaction with other individuals in case they may come into contact with them. Therefore, a simple greeting or hugging their own parents or spouses becomes a situation that produces intense feelings of fear. These subjects can avoid situations in which they can come into contact with others, even acquaintances.

Causes

Phobias usually originate from the most ancient part of the brain, and according to some experts, we are Biologically programmed to fear certain stimuli. This, which has worked so well for centuries to preserve the existence of human beings, sometimes causes this type of disorder today. That is why phobias do not respond to logical arguments, and the alert reaction seizes the subject, who feels as if he were facing a real danger.

Phobias, therefore, develop thanks to one of the most basic forms of learning in human beings, a type of associative learning called classical conditioning which was first discovered by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist who conducted a series of experiments on dogs.

His initial objective was to measure the salivation of the dogs and for this reason he gave these animals food, since saliva is a reflex action that occurs to promote digestion. Over time, Pavlov realized that although at first the dogs salivated when presented with food, after several trials, the The mere presence of the researcher triggered salivation, as the animals had learned that when he appeared, they would receive the food. Classical conditioning causes an association between a stimulus that causes a reflex response and another that does not, but in the end the latter ends up producing the same response as the other stimulus to which it is associated.

Later he was john b. Watson, an American scientist, who found that classical conditioning also occurred in humans. In fact, he was able to make a child learn a phobia of a white rat that previously did not cause the child any discomfort.

You can learn more about this study in the following video:

Other origins of phobias

Phobias, therefore, are learned through classical conditioning because the person experiences a significant traumatic event. But phobic disorders, and especially in the case of hafephobia, vicarious conditioning can also be a cause of this pathology.

Vicarious conditioning is neither more nor less than observational learning, for example, that the person has seen a movie in which the main actor is infected with a disease by coming into contact with the skin of others. The phobic may suffer from irrational fear and unrealistic beliefs as a result of the emotional impact caused by some event that he observes, in this case, the movie.

Symptoms of fear of contact with other people

Phobias, as I have previously commented, produce cognitive, physical and physiological and behavioral symptoms.

They are the following:

• cognitive: anxiety and anguish, lack of concentration, nervousness, thoughts of contagion, thoughts of imminent death, terror and fear, thoughts of running out of breath.
• physical and physiological: headaches, tremors, upset stomach, rapid heartbeat, hyperventilation, etc.
• behavioral: avoidance of the feared stimulus.

treatment and therapy

Phobias are one of the main reasons why people require psychological assistance, and despite the fact that they cause great discomfort, respond really well to psychological treatment. In extreme cases, pharmacological treatment is indicated, but always together with psychotherapy.

One of the most widely used therapeutic models is cognitive behavioral therapy, which aims to modify internal events (thoughts, beliefs and emotions) and the behavior of people to improve their well-being. Relaxation techniques, cognitive restructuring or exposure techniques are some of the most used for this type of pathology.

Within the latter, highlights systematic desensitization, with which the patient performs a series of exercises that gradually expose him to the phobic stimulus while learning more adaptive strategies to deal with fear and anxiety.

In recent years, new therapeutic methods have been showing their effectiveness in different scientific studies. Among these, the Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). New technologies are also applied in therapeutic sessions, since virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality are useful tools that are used more and more to expose the patient to the phobic stimulus.

In fact, it is currently possible to find "apps" for the treatment of phobias and for the treatment of anxiety disorders. You can find more information at the following links:

• 8 apps to treat phobias and fears from your smartphone
• 15 apps to treat anxiety