What are you afraid of? You may suffer from a phobia or you may have heard of the most frequent ones. But the world of phobias is full of surprising fears that leave us wondering about the possible consequences of this problem. This is the case of koumpounophobia or fear of buttons, which we talk about in our dictionary of phobias.
What is koumpounophobia?
Koumpounophobia is the fear of buttons. As you read it, the fear of buttons that clothes have. It is a phobic disorder that can condition the life of the person who suffers it to the extreme, although there are also different degrees of this problem.
There are many people who feel a rejection or aversion to buttons and buttonholes. In this case, they use clothes with zippers or that do not need buttons and the matter stops there. But when it comes to, the fear spreads and goes from not being able to touch a button or not being able to see it on someone else’s clothes.
How is this phobia externalized?
As you can imagine, this situation is much more complicated than it seems at first glance. Avoiding wearing clothes with buttons may be easy, but avoiding seeing buttons is practically impossible. That is when we can talk about koumpounophobia, when the person experiences all the anxiety symptoms that any
Dizziness, a feeling of suffocation, palpitations, a feeling of unreality or even panic attacks if you cannot avoid the feared stimulus, are the most common symptoms of koumpounophobia. To these are added symptoms and psychological consequences due to the certainty that it is an irrational behavior that can lead to social isolation.
Causes of fear of buttons
But where does koumpounophobia come from? How does the fear of buttons develop? Knowing that it is an irrational and excessive fear does not at all alleviate this problem that can be caused by a traumatic experience with buttons in childhood. For example, if as you spent a while in anguish by not being able to unbutton a little clothes.
The other most frequent cause of phobias is a previous anxiety disorder. Anxiety, as we all know, manifests itself in many ways and one of them is the appearance of irrational fears. There comes a time when any object, animal, situation or sensation is considered potentially dangerous.
How to treat fears?
It is convenient to treat all phobias even if they have not reached the degree of conditioning your life and for that you have to seek psychological help. Cognitive has proven to be the most effective when it comes to overcoming phobic disorders, since it works equally on distorted thoughts and irrational behavior.
In the case of koumpounophobia, hypnosis is not ruled out to discover the origin of this fear. And, as with all phobias, relaxation techniques are essential to reduce the effects of anxiety.