If some people experience an excessive love for reading and books that is known as bibliomania, others feel real panic in front of the book. It is what is known as bibliophobia, a phobic disorder that triggers anxiety and anguish and is very detrimental to the social and intellectual development of the person who suffers from it. We tell you more about bibliophobia or the fear of books in our dictionary.
What is bibliophobia?
Bibliophobia is the fear of books or reading. But it is not only that you do not like to read or that you do not want to accumulate books on the shelves of your house as bibliophiles do, but rather a rejection or aversion that comes accompanied by high anguish and anxiety. The reaction is to avoid feeling that fear and therefore avoid books and reading.
Can you avoid reading? Well, many people don’t read a book in their whole lives because they don’t like reading. But throughout life and especially during the first years, you will hardly be able to avoid a few textbooks, at school, in high school or in any training you do.
Symptoms of bibliophobia
The person suffering from bibliophobia cannot have a book in front of them. He cannot open a book because doing so experiences all the symptoms of anxiety. A growing nervousness when he intuits that he has to face the feared situation and that he passes into shortness of breath, palpitations, excessive sweating and dizziness. That person may even suffer a panic from finding a book in their hands.
Bibliophobia is not a phobia that you can get around or ignore. The limitations that it entails are evident, especially if it occurs in children. And also, it causes psychological consequences such as low due to the invasion of irrational thoughts about books. We cannot forget that a phobia arises because that person thinks that they are facing a serious danger. And by the time one becomes aware that his fear of him is irrational and excessive, distorted thoughts have already invaded his entire mind of him. All?
Causes of bibliophobia
Before looking for a solution, it is convenient to investigate the causes of this terror of books or reading. Generally, you have to go back to a traumatic experience in childhood. If a child has learning problems and is a little behind in reading skills than his peers, he may have such a hard time in class that he wants to avoid this situation at all costs.
And an untreated childhood phobia will most likely accompany that person into adulthood. Sometimes bibliophobia arises later due to an anxiety that multiplies fears almost randomly. Anxiety sees danger in any stimuli, even reading.
Bibliophobia treatment
Psychological help is needed to overcome a phobia such as the fear of books. Cognitive is very effective, since it works the initial thought that presents books as a danger to later move on to transform behavior or avoidance behavior.
This therapy is accompanied by gradual exposure techniques so that the person suffering from the phobia gradually gets used to having a book, opening a book, reading a book and observing that nothing bad happens. And due to the high degree of anxiety generated by any phobia, you also have to resort to relaxation techniques that should be practiced regularly.