There are phobias that are related to traffic, but it is not necessary that you are driving the car to suffer from it. As a pedestrian, you may also experience an irrational fear when crossing a street. And if they run over you? In our phobia we talk about agyrophobia or the fear of crossing the street, a very limiting disorder that can lead to the isolation of the person who suffers from it.
What is agyrophobia?
Agoraphobia is the fear of crossing the street. What at first may seem like a logical fear because it is clear that there is a risk of being over the moment you leave the sidewalk, becomes a phobia due to excessive fear and avoidance behavior? Because you can’t avoid crossing a street, right?
People who suffer from this phobia feel fear and panic even at marked pedestrian crossings, when vehicles do not have priority and must stop. But there is still a risk, which is why we all look this way and that when we cross a street. Prevention that when you have agyrophobia is neither useful nor sufficient, because the mechanism of irrational fear has already been triggered.
Agyrophobia symptoms
When a person with agyrophobia is in the situation of having to cross a street, they experience a series of reactions in addition to fear. Among them you can find dizziness, tachycardia, nausea, tingling in the extremities, headache, a feeling of unreality, and shortness of breathe… In short, all the symptoms of anxiety that can also lead to a panic attack.
It is not strange that people with agyrophobia are considered agoraphobic, since they rarely go out into the street to avoid a situation that is actually unavoidable. In the safety of their home they don’t have to cross any street but the moment they step outside, their fear kicks in. And you have to go out, to work, to buy, to enjoy… Unfortunately, a person with agyrophobia cannot enjoy knowing that at any moment they will have to cross a street.
Causes of agyrophobia
But how does this excessive fear of crossing the street develop? The most common cause is conditioning by traumatic experience. If you have experienced an accident in these circumstances first hand, if in your childhood you were hit by a car when you were crossing the street and you spent a long time in the hospital or if you witnessed an accident and the pedestrian died, it is possible that the origin of the phobia is here.
But there is more. Because you may not have had any unpleasant experience in relation to traffic and yet you are terrified of crossing the street. In this case, it is about that logical fear amplified by an anxiety disorder, which turns rational fears into monsters that make your life difficult to the extreme.
Agoraphobia treatment
It is clear that agyrophobia is a disorder that should be treated as soon as possible because it is one of the most limiting phobias. Can you imagine that every time you go out you have an anxiety attack? It is not enough for your friends to tell you that nothing is wrong; it is not enough for your partner to shake your hand and show you that nothing bad is happening when you cross the street. It is not enough, you must seek psychological help.
The most common treatment for phobias is cognitive behavioral therapy, which works on the initial distorted thought, the one that causes irrational fear, to later move on to modify the avoidance behavior in the face of the stimulus. This therapy is usually accompanied by gradual exposure techniques and relaxation to reduce the degree of anxiety.