Many phobias are difficult for us to understand because the stimulus, even if it is specific, goes outside the sphere of the usual. This is the case of agate phobia or the fear of going crazy or madness. Who hasn’t ever felt panic at the idea of going crazy? Who has not thought in a moment of mental confusion that he was about to lose his sanity from him? In our dictionary of phobias we tell you everything about agate phobia.
What is agate phobia?
Agateophobia is the fear of madness, of going crazy, of losing one’s mind, reason or sanity and, by extension; it is also the fear of people suffering from mental disorders. Fear is closely related to the social stigma attached to mental illness, but the greatest fear is caused by losing one’s mind.
Going crazy is not as easy as it seems sometimes when we are overwhelmed by life, when anxiety problems occupy all our energy or when depression plunges us into a state of mind in which we do not recognize ourselves. And it’s normal to worry, but that’s not a phobia. Agateophobia is more.
The symptoms of this phobia
In order to be considered a phobia, the fear of madness must be irrational, excessive, and sustained over time. This causes the person who suffers it to persist in an avoidance behavior in certain situations. But how do you avoid madness? It’s a lot easier to avoid a spider or even a crowd when you have a phobic disorder, right?
Agateophobia is closely linked to thought itself, so the most obvious symptoms occur in the cognitive field. Distorted, irrational and obsessive thoughts dominate the lives of those who suffer from this fear of madness, but the physical symptoms that are the usual symptoms of anxiety and other types of are not ruled out.
Why are you afraid of madness?
When we look for the origin of a phobia, we usually look in the past, in some traumatic experience that could have triggered this irrational fear. Perhaps having lived in the family with a person who suffered from a mental illness is a compelling reason to develop agate phobia in the.
But sometimes the traumatic experience doesn’t stand on its own and is accompanied by an anxiety disorder. In the case of fear of madness, it seems clear that it is a mental maladjustment in which distorted thinking takes control and, in the end, the lived reality comes dangerously close to your imagined fears.
Treatment of fear of going crazy
Can you overcome the fear of madness? Of course. Like all phobias, you have to seek psychological help because this is not a problem that we can solve by ourselves. The professional will be able to clarify all your doubts about the stimulus of your phobia, in this case madness, and perhaps you will begin to see less danger within your mind.
But just talking and clarifying terms you will not overcome agate phobia. The most recommended is cognitive, to modify behavior through thought, but in this case, hypnosis is not ruled out to reach that specific episode, if there was one that triggered the irrational fear of going crazy.