All phobias limit your life in one way or another because the habitual behavior is the avoidance of the stimulus that produces the fear. If you are afraid of flying, you will avoid getting on a plane and if you are afraid of dogs, you will avoid walking down the street to avoid any meeting. And what if you are afraid of hospitals? This is what happens with nosocomephobia, a disorder that can put your life at risk. Do you want to know more? We talk about nosocomephobia in our phobia.
What is nosocomephobia?
Nosocomephobia is the fear of hospitals, although it does not stop there. To hospitals and everything you can find in a hospital or health center, including health personnel. In this way, it is a phobia that usually goes hand in hand with fear of doctors or acrophobia, fear of blood or hematophobia or fear of medicines or pharmacophobia. More related phobias are monophobia or fear of dirt and germs or even thanatophobia or fear of death.
Fears and phobias accumulate in this disorder that can endanger your life due to avoidance. Can you avoid going to a hospital? Maybe you can, but you shouldn’t. It must be clarified that it is not only about hospitals. People with nosocomephobia will panic when sitting in a waiting room at the dentist’s office or even lying on the physical therapist’s table.
And this is not all, because the mere sight of an ambulance on the street can trigger that moment that comes with phobias when it is impossible to avoid the stimulus.
Symptoms of nosocomephobia or fear of hospitals
This leads us to detect the symptoms of nosocomephobia. What happens when you have this phobic disorder and you see an ambulance on your way to work? Or maybe you come across a person with their arm in a cast, with a bandage or even with a scar on their face, for example. What is experienced is an episode of anxiety that can lead to a panic attack.
All there present in a phobic disorder. It begins with palpitations, excessive sweating and dizziness; but it goes further. Because the difficulty in breathing and the tingling in the extremities make the fear increase and you think that you are going to die. From there to the panic attack is only a small step. And although deep down you know it will pass, you want to avoid that moment at all costs. And at all costs it means not finding anything that reminds you of a hospital, much less even getting close to a hospital.
Causes of nosocomephobia
We look forth that, as you can imagine, is very dangerous for your health. It is clear that the idea of going to a hospital does not appeal to anyone. The hospital refers you to illness and everyone has a certain fear of getting sick. Now, the hospital is that place where illnesses are detected, but also where they are cured. For a person with nosocomephobia, the last part, that of the cure, is not taken into account.
In most cases, nosocomephobia arises from a traumatic hospital experience. If in childhood you had a long illness and suffered the pain and discomfort of any surgical intervention or any medical treatment, it is easy for you to develop this phobia. Because that experience involved great emotional suffering and was recorded in your mind as a dangerous situation; as a situation to avoid.
It is not necessary to have lived that traumatic experience in the first person. Perhaps after a long stay in the hospital and you associate this place with death and not with healing. As you can see, everything is a matter of perspective according to your vital experiences. There are people for whom the hospital is synonymous with illness while for others it is synonymous with health. And both are correct.
Consequences of nosocomephobia
But more than the causes we are concerned about the consequences of nosocomephobia. Because we are talking, as it happens with other, of an important limitation in your life and we go one step further. Nosocomephobia puts your life in danger. If you avoid going to a hospital, you will also avoid going to your medical center beforehand when you have an aid. Just in case, just in case your doctor refers you to the hospital. Just in case you have an illness that requires a hospital admission. And so you let it go, avoiding fear.
As you know, most of the diseases can be cured if you treat them in time. So the idea of going to the doctor when the first signs that something is wrong starts doesn’t seem so far off, does it? But you can’t do it because your mind is blocked by the irrational and excessive fear of hospitals. And you can’t go. Here begins the search for a treatment because nosocomephobia is a disorder that must be overcome as soon as possible.
Treatment for fear of hospitals
The treatment of nosocomephobia goes through psychological therapy yes or yes due to the seriousness of the consequences. Toys often used which works both on that distorted thought that leads you to see hospitals as dangerous places and on avoidance behavior. Therapy takes time; behavior cannot be transformed overnight, so other strategies are put into practice as well.
One of them is the contact with health professionals so that they show you in a close way the most positive part of their work, the serious illnesses that have been successfully overcome or the most complicated interventions that in the end have changed the life of the patient. For the better. Even those second chances to live that sometimes happen in hospitals. Because in a hospital you not only die, you are also born and rebirth is possible. And because, although it may seem impossible to believe now, in a hospital there are very happy moments.
Progressive Exposure Therapy is also used in the case of nosocomephobia and it is a gradual approach to those places that are so scary. “The systematic exposure of the patient to situations avoided in a safe environment and without imagined negative consequences taking place, contributes to eliminate the fear of such stimuli and encourages the patient to face situations in the natural environment; its objective is to extinguish the conditioned response of fear”.
Little by little, you can even start with images of hospitals where you can see patients already recovered thanks precisely to that hospital admission.
And since all phobias are accompanied by a significant amount of anxiety, the practice of relaxation techniques, breathing exercises and, especially, Mindfulness is recommended. With these resources, not only will anxiety be reduced, but relapses. But as we always remember, put yourself in the hands of psychology professionals. If you want to go to pseudo-therapies, do it as an extra to psychological therapy, do not leave your health in the hands of self-help gurus.