Phobias aroused by some animals are frequent and they do not surprise us too much, but it is convenient to distinguish between phobia and repulsion, because being disgusted by spiders is not the same as being afraid of them. The same occurs with mice and rats, which sometimes cause rejection and other times fear in what is known as musophobia. We tell you everything about phobic disorders in our dictionary of phobias.
What is musophobia?
Musophobia is the fear of mice, rats or rodents in general. It doesn’t matter if it is an adorable domestic hamster that delights the little ones in the house or a dirty rat that comes out of a sewer at night, because the fear is the same.
Many people can identify with musophobia because the truth is that rats and mice are animals that are generally considered unpleasant. But a phobic disorder is something more than rejection, it is fear, it is panic and it is irrational because the truth is that the danger that is intuited is excessive.
Symptoms of musophobia
Listening to a mouse running through the basement, brushing against the body of a rat in the dark, hearing the screeching sounds these animals make, being scared by the swift movement of something dark that runs next to you and touches your foot… All these they are chilling situations for people who suffer from musophobia. Even watching rats on TV can trigger a crisis.
And musophobia crises are manifested in a series of symptoms such as anxiety. Nervousness, discomfort, dizziness, tingling, sweating, difficulty breathing, a feeling of unreality or a panic attack are some of the reactions that these small animals can cause.
Causes of musophobia
But what happens in the mind to develop a phobia like the fear of mice? The cultural factor here is important, as is the case with arachnophobia (fear of spiders) or ophidiophobia (fear of snakes), since spiders and snakes are traditionally considered a danger. The same is true of mice and rats, in addition to the revulsion they cause in some people.
Therefore, this phobia may be a fear learned from childhood. If someone in your house screamed in fear as soon as they saw a mouse, it is possible that you develop musophobia by imitation. Although the most frequent causes for the appearance of a phobic disorder are conditioning by traumatic experience and anxiety disorders.
Musophobia treatment
Depending on where and how you live, you may not have to deal with your fear of mice very often, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat musophobia. We already know that suffering from a phobia and not treating it leads to a state of anxiety in which it is common for new phobias to appear, even if they have nothing to do with the previous one.
To overcome a phobia, even if it does not limit or condition your life, psychological and sometimes pharmacological treatment is necessary. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the most successful in leaving phobic disorders behind. And to reduce the anxious component that any phobia entails, nothing better than regularly practicing relaxation techniques.