Do you like the kisses? Kissing is an act of love and affection. It might seem that everyone likes kisses, giving them and receiving them, but it is not so. There are people who suffer from filemaphobia, which is nothing more than an irrational and excessive fear of kissing. Such people try by all means to avoid what other people so want – a kiss. We tell you what filemaphobia is in our dictionary.
What is filemaphobia?
Philemaphobia is the fear of kissing, kissing or being kissed. And we are not just talking about passionate kisses that require an intimacy for which we may not be prepared, but a simple kiss on the cheek as a greeting or when introducing someone to you.
People with filemaphobia consider kissing to be dangerous. Because? This fear may be related to the spread of diseases, for example, but also to the inability to establish close bonds with other people. We have already seen how in hafephobia there is that fear of being touched or touched by others.
Symptoms of phylemaphobia
When a person with filemaphobia is exposed to this dreaded situation in which they are going to have to kiss someone or receive a kiss from someone, they experience all the symptoms of anxiety. Dizziness, palpitations, dry mouth, excessive sweating, a feeling of unreality or even a panic attack. All for a kiss? No, all because of a phobic disorder.
Added to the physical symptoms are psychological symptoms such as low and distorted, obsessive and invasive thoughts. The person with filemaphobia is aware that her behavior is not functional or logical, but does not know how to change it. The only thing you want is to avoid that stimulus that is the kiss so that your anxiety does not trigger.
The consequences of suffering from filemaphobia can be perfectly imagined. The inability to give or receive a kiss makes it practically impossible to have a partner, although this is not necessary in life, right? However, it is necessary to have friends and have a social circle, a circle that will disappear as the person with a phobia of kissing stops going to events where, without a doubt, they will have to expose themselves to a kiss.
Causes of philemaphobia
What can cause this fear of kissing? As with all phobias, we can look for its origin or cause in a traumatic experience lived in the past. A painful situation with a great emotional charge that that person relates to the act of kissing.
But also suffering from a can develop a phobia. Anxiety makes you live on permanent alert in the face of any danger, so fears can arise from the most unexpected stimuli. Even the kiss that acts that for the vast majority of people is one of the best things in life.
Philemaphobia treatment
You can’t spend a lifetime avoiding kisses, so you have to seek psychological help to overcome filemaphobia. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the most effective for overcoming phobias, since it works from that first distorted thought that ends up invading any loophole of reason or reality.
From thought, avoidance behavior can be modified and for this, gradual exposure techniques have very good results. They consist of subjecting the person with a phobia to the feared stimulus, in bringing him closer to situations that he avoids, starting with simple situations and in an environment he trusts.