Some phobias have similarities between them, although they differ by the main stimulus. This is the case of enochlophobia, which is the fear of crowds of people and can often be confused with agoraphobia. It is not the same and you can discover their differences in our dictionary of phobias.
What is enochlophobia?
Enochlophobia or demophobia is the fear of crowds. Places where a large number of people gather potentially and trigger anxiety. Nowadays it is quite difficult to avoid this crowded situation, especially if you live in a city.
Imagine a concert full of people, a nightclub celebrating New Year’s Eve, a demonstration in the street or a shopping mall on sale, to name just a few examples. The person with enochlophobia will try to avoid these situations or places by all means and it is evident that this is not always achieved.
Differences between enochlophobia and agoraphobia
This phobia of crowds has many similarities with agoraphobia because they share some spaces of fear. They both fear being in a situation where they can’t find help in the event of an unexpected anxiety attack, that they can’t run away if they start to feel bad, or the catastrophic thoughts that assail them in those situations.
However, in the case of agoraphobia, the spectrum of fearsome places and situations becomes larger and larger and it does not matter if there are many people or not. Enochlophobia is limited to those spaces or events that are crowded with people. And no, people with enochlophobia antisocial or shy, they are simply afraid, an excessive fear, of what can happen when they are in a crowd.
Characteristics of enochlophobia
The symptoms of enochlophobia are the same as anxiety. At first they notice a certain restlessness and nervousness, as if warning of the danger they are in with the crowd. Then the physical symptoms begin, such as dizziness, palpitations, sweating, or shortness of breath.
There are also psychic symptoms with enochlophobia, then coming to resemble panophobia, that disorder in which you are afraid of everything. Because fatalistic thoughts nullify any hint of logical reasoning and because, furthermore, there is a certain logic in having reservations when you are in a crowd.
Enochlophobia develops most of the time due to a previous anxiety disorder, which makes fear become your way of life. But neither is conditioning ruled out as the cause of this fear of crowds if you have had a traumatic experience in the past.
Treatment of fear of crowds of people
Luckily all phobias can be overcome with proper treatment and professional help is required for this. Trying to treat phobic on our own usually does not give a good result, but generally the only thing that is achieved is to aggravate the problem.
To overcome the fear of crowds, cognitive is recommended, which is the star therapy in the treatment of phobias. It can be combined with different techniques such as relaxation techniques to combat anxiety symptoms, Mindfulness or acceptance and commitment therapy.