What is fear for? Fear is necessary in our lives in order to protect ourselves from danger, and the same is true of anxiety. A different case is phobias, which are already a disorder that affects our normal activity. And there are phobias of all kinds, more specific or more general, as in the case of panophobia or fear of everything.
What is panophobia?
When we talk about phobias, we usually refer to that feeling of panic and anguish that is generated by a specific situation; or it can be an object, but also something concrete. However, panophobia curls the loop of fears because it is a more general phobia that covers everything depending on the person. Panophobia is the fear of everything.
Most people cannot understand this phobia, but the person who suffers from it lives with a feeling of permanent anguish in fear of everything that surrounds them or what might happen. It is a generalized fear, but of what? Everything, life in general, is not a specific fear.
For this reason, panophobia is sometimes associated with disorders such as schizophrenia, generalized anxiety disorder or borderline personality disorder. When concerns become general, the range of fears opens up and has no limits.
Consequences of being afraid of everything
The consequences of panophobia depend on the degree of development of the phobia, but this problem tends to social isolation. If you avoid more and more things because they scare you, the result is a vital paralysis in which you can lose your job, your family, your social relationships and, of course, your perception of reality.
Symptoms of panophobia
Phobias also have symptoms, most of which coincide with those of anxiety. In the case of panophobia, the physical symptoms include dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, headache, abdominal pain or tremors.
The psychological symptoms of this phobia begin with sadness, low self-esteem, and uncontrolled crying, later leading to constant anguish, anxiety, and obsessive thoughts. In many cases, all these symptoms lead to depression due to the uncontrolled situation.
Why do I have so many fears?
What causes panophobia? Finding the origin or cause of a phobia is complicated except when it comes to a traumatic situation. The fear of everything is not something specific and it, although in most cases specific phobias have occurred previously.
Poor management of these specific phobias can end up generalizing the feeling of fear and extending it to encompass everything, as occurs with panophobia. There are also studies that point to genetic inheritance as the cause of this phobia. That being the case, can panophobia is treated?
Panophobia treatment
All phobias have a treatment and can be overcome with the appropriate therapy. Even if it is a genetic inheritance, which only indicates a predisposition to suffer it, you can get ahead because psychological therapies work. But of course help is needed.
Without ruling out drug treatment prescribed by a specialist, some therapies give very good results when it comes to overcoming this fear of everything.
1 Systematic desensitization
This therapy is accompanied by relaxation and exposure to one’s own fears. It seeks to redirect the response produced by a certain situation or object by facing it with the help of the therapist instead of avoiding it.
2 Cognitive behavioral therapy
This therapy is the star of psychological therapies and works by transforming both behavior and considering thoughts from another point of view. Panophobia, like, distorts reality and if this situation has been reached, you can also do the opposite path by seeing reality objectively again.
3 Self instructions
Self-instructions can be part of cognitive behavioral therapy and are most effective both for treating panophobia and for overcoming anxiety problems. If the negative thought determines the behavior, it is necessary to modify that thought. Faced with “something bad is going to happen”, there are other alternatives, such as “nothing bad has to happen”.
4 Hypnosis
When you are afraid of everything, some say that hypnosis can help to find the source of the problem. This therapy works and is safe as long as it is performed by a professional because with it the negative associations generated by fear are broken.
5 Meditation
Meditation and specifically the fashionable technique of Mindfulness usually accompany any therapy in the treatment of phobias. Full attention or becoming aware of the present moment, of what is happening right now helps not to anticipate the events that are to come.