What for some may be a unique, special and magical moment for others may be unforgettable on the contrary, because it is a nightmare. The world of phobias surprises us with this fear of stars or siderophobia, a rare disorder that generates a lot of misunderstanding. How can you be afraid of the stars? And this misunderstanding, as occurs with emotional disorders, causes many more complications in the person who suffers from the phobia. We tell you what siderophobia is (its causes, its symptoms and its treatment).
What is siderophobia?
Siderophobia is the fear of stars. So, just as you read. You look up at the sky on a clear night and what may be a magical experience for you may be a terrifying episode for someone else. The stars that illuminate the dark night, the stars that represent our loved ones who are no longer here, or the stars that make us dream of other worlds more wonderful than ours.
Those same stars that some of us contemplate with emotion, that fill us with energy and illusion, for others are a source of irrational and excessive fear. Because the immensity of the sky is also excessive, and the same happens with the depth of the night. And what about that brilliant brilliance of the stars? It is also excessive, like the fear produced by siderophobia.
Siderophobia is a more specific form of astraphobia, a disorder that encompasses all celestial bodies. And it is also related to other fears such as darkness itself or scotophobia, fear of the night or nyctophobia or fear of the moon or selenophobia. As you can see, a whole repertoire of fears and fears of everything that is related to the cosmos or the sky.
Symptoms of siderophobia or fear of stars
Siderophobia the symptoms of anxiety. Nervousness, excessive sweating, dizziness, palpitations, difficulty breathing or numbness in the extremities, among others. And above all, there is that feeling of danger before the stars that make the physical symptoms remain a mere anecdote compared to the psychological symptoms.
Because the person who suffers from siderophobia is aware that they have an irrational and excessive fear. In addition, he has the feeling that he is missing something that most people consider wonderful, which causes his self-esteem to drop to the bottom of the earth for not feeling capable of enjoying himself like others.
Not to mention the limitations imposed by this phobia that considerably reduce the quality of life. A person with siderophobia will avoid being out on the street at night, better at home because the starry sky cannot be seen from the living room. It’s not like it’s very often that you’re invited to spend a night in the country for the sole purpose of stargazing, but it’s an invitation that these people would reject.
Not only direct contemplation of the stars can trigger the symptoms of siderophobia and lead. It can also happen when you see a postcard or night photograph, a picture on television, or the mere thought of the night sky covered with stars.
Why are you afraid of the stars?
At this point it is normal to wonder why a person can be afraid of the stars. Are the stars so dangerous? Well, the truth is that celestial bodies and phenomena are shrouded in mystery and are still quite unknown to us. And we don’t know if the fear of the unknown is something rational, but it is certainly very frequent.
Not everyone knows exactly what a star is, so for most they are something abstract. In reality, stars are luminous spheres of hydrogen converted into helium that are kept in the cosmos by the effect of gravity and are not dangerous at all. But there is a tendency to think that something so bright can explode at some point and destroy everything.
It has never happened and we don’t know if this can happen or not, but the idea is there in the collective unconscious. To this we add its unknown character, the immensity of the cosmos itself and the lack of control we have over that space. We remember that the excessive need to have everything under control is one of the main causes of anxiety disorders.
As with any other phobia, conditioning by traumatic experience is not ruled out as a cause of siderophobia. Surely no misfortune has happened to anyone because of a star, but the simple association is enough. If in the past you received terrible news, for example, on one of those clear summer nights and what you remember most from that day is the starry sky, that is reason enough to develop this phobia over time.
Siderophobia treatment
People with phobic disorders do not have to resign themselves to living with the limitations imposed by their fear. You can overcome a phobia, but with the help of a professional. So it’s time to lose and also invest in mental health, which, after all, is what will determine our quality of life. And how do you overcome siderophobia?
The most common treatment for phobias is Cognitive. This therapy works first with those associations that create catastrophic thoughts about the stimulus, in this case the stars. The thought can be modified to discard those that are intrusive, obsessive, recurrent and also useless and change them for more useful and anxiety-free thoughts.
Once the thought is transformed and the stars are no longer seen as something dangerous, it is easier to change the avoidance behavior. If you do not perceive any threat in the stars, you will not need to avoid them, but the behavior also changes gradually. After all, changing habits takes time.
To help Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Exposures also used. This is a gradual process of approaching the stimulus that produces the phobia, first looking at images of a starry sky to check that anxiety symptoms are not triggered and later coming face to face with the night sky.
It is also advisable to consult with experts who can offer an objective view of celestial phenomena. Often when misunderstanding disappears, fear disappears because the stimulus is no longer something unknown and mysterious. And since phobias always present with a high degree of anxiety, it never hurts to insist on practicing conscious breathing exercises or relaxation.
When listing the resources that psychological therapy provides against phobias, Mindfulness deserves a special mention. We are talking about a simpler meditation exercise than you might imagine which consists solely of making yourself aware of the here and now, of the present moment. And we can assure you that regular practice of something so simple will become your best investment to overcome phobias and anxiety.