Some of the most surprising phobias, the ones you couldn’t even imagine existed, make life quite difficult for some people. This is the case of lacanophobia or fear of vegetables, a disorder that goes beyond food preferences and that is combined with anxiety to become a very limiting problem.
What is lacanophobia?
Lakanophobia is the fear of vegetables, vegetables or even fruits. Not necessarily all of them, but some of them. It should be noted that it is not a problem of taste in eating. It is very common that, for example, children do not like vegetables, but that does not imply a phobia.
Luckily, when a person suffers from lacanophobia, they do not experience that irrational fear of all kinds of vegetables. It can be a single type of vegetable or several, but the rest can be eaten without problems and without consequences. Still, this phobic it is dangerous because it can lead to nutritional deficits in the diet.
Symptoms of lacanophobia
The evidence that you suffer from lacanophobia is found in your behavior towards the stimulus or the vegetable that causes you fear. It is, as with all phobias, an avoidance behavior. Just imagining that vegetable or that vegetable gives you chills, so imagine what can happen if you find it on the plate.
It’s not that you don’t like beans, for example, but that they scare you. Finding beans on your plate or around you triggers a series of symptoms that are the same as those of anxiety. Sweating, a feeling of unreality, dizziness, palpitations, shortness of breath or even a panic attack. To this entire are added the distorted thoughts that turn that stimulus like some beans into something dangerous.
Causes of lacanophobia
But, how can you get to have a panic about some vegetables? It is evident that a vegetable is not dangerous, it will not attack you, as in the case of phobias to some animals, and nothing bad can happen to you unless it is a matter of allergy. How do you develop a fear of vegetables?
We almost always go to the traumatic experience as the origin and the case of lacanophobia is no different. Obviously you were not attacked by a mutant vegetable in your childhood, but it is enough to have experienced a moment of great emotional charge while eating a plate of beans to associate that food with an unpleasant experience.
Treatment of lacanophobia
This aversion to vegetables may seem normal to you and you do not think it is necessary to because you have organized your life to avoid the situation of finding yourself before that vegetable that you fear so much. But a phobia can also serve as a sign that something is wrong.
That is why it is necessary to go to a psychology professional and try to understand the origin of this irrational fear. With cognitive you will be able to transform that series of irrational thoughts towards vegetables and also the behavior that you are following up to now. Because the goal is not always that you eat that vegetable again, but that it does not generate fear and anxiety.