It is said that money does not bring happiness, but it brings us closer. It is clear that it is better to have it than to have nothing at all.
However, there are people who can feel truly afraid of everything that is related to powerful money. Whether because they see it as something that brings evil with it or because they are afraid of misusing it, there are people who have a phobia of money.
This peculiar and strange psychological alteration has been given the name chrometophobia. a phobia that we will explore here looking at its possible causes, symptoms and treatment.
Chrometophobia (from the Greek “chrimata”; money and “phobos”, fear), also called crematophobia, is the name by which the aversion, fear or phobia of money is known. This peculiar and strange phobia has not received much attention in scientific literature, especially because it does not seem to be very common, in addition to the fact that it does not have much scientific support. Even so, if it were real, this psychological condition would be within the group of specific phobias.
One of the reasons why it is difficult to study and talk about it is directly related to how it is defined. Although the central element in this phobia is money, there are several ways in which chrometophobia can be described. However, in these definitions there is one of the following two ideas, which are contradictory:
Chrometophobia can also be defined as the fear of carrying out any type of transaction with money, an idea that can overlap with the two that we have just seen. That is, it can include the fear of buying or spending money, seen as losing it, as well as the fear of receiving it by selling an object by taking it out of an ATM, implying having to carry it with you.
chrometophobia It should not be confused with another phobia in which money is also involved but in a different way: mysophobia. This specific phobia is the fear and anxiety that some people experience when touching coins or bills that strangers have touched, since they could be a source of germs and contagion and which, in turn, is considered a type of germiphobia.
Although chrometophobia is also known as the “disease of not wanting to spend money,” defining it as a real mental disorder is complicated. Both the DSM-5 and the ICD-11 include in their diagnostic classifications the group of specific phobias, which require that certain diagnostic criteria be met for them to be recognized as such, criteria that chrometophobia must meet for it to be considered as a real phobia.
The problem is that The idea of chrometophobia itself is very varied, so much so that it is difficult to specify what we can understand as this phobia and what we cannot. We could consider as chrometophobic those people who have a pathological concern about finances, being afraid of losing money, but we can also consider as chrometaphobic those who fear carrying money and being victims of a robbery or being corrupted by money. That is why, in addition to the fact that there do not seem to be many things about this peculiar phobia, stating that it is a real specific phobia is difficult.
Causes
But although it is difficult to affirm that chrometophobia is a real disorder, we can talk about its possible causes by relating it to how specific phobias are formed.
Along its history, Specific phobias have been explained in multiple ways, in addition to several theories to understand their development and maintenance. Among these theories we find biological ones, focused on the genetic or evolutionary acquisition of certain types of phobias, which are not suitable to explain the appearance of chrometophobia since being afraid of money does not seem to have an evolutionary relationship.
For this reason we will focus on psychological theories to talk about chrometophobia. Among them we find vicarious conditioning , that is, acquiring a phobia through observing that fear in people close to us, especially family and friends. For example, if we see that our father is afraid of touching money or that he prefers not to carry it with him, we may acquire that fear and it becomes a money phobia.
Another explanation behind the development and maintenance of phobias is that there are certain irrational thoughts or beliefs, which may be influencing the acquisition of fear of money. Our own experiences, emotions and feelings regarding money, along with negative experiences related to it, can cause us to attribute a malicious component to it. For example, if during our childhood our parents often fought over money and divorced, we may attribute the power to break up marriages to money.
Conditioning theories state that Fear, in this case chrometophobia, can be acquired as a consequence of associating money with an aversive stimulus. For example, if we have recently been robbed, we may associate having money with negative consequences and we are always afraid that it will happen to us again. We may also know the case of a famous person who was kidnapped for a large ransom, which is why we may be afraid of having too much money in our savings account.
All of the above results in carrying out avoidance behaviors or fleeing from any situation in which money is involved. If we have to touch money or manage it, we will begin to feel a lot of anxiety, which is why we will try to avoid conversations about savings or delegate the management of our finances to other people, such as family members or a partner. As we avoid situations where money is involved, thus alleviating our anxious symptoms the more we will reinforce our avoidant behavior.
Symptoms
As in most specific phobias, in chrometophobia we can find three main groups of symptoms.
On the one hand we would have the physiological. The patient with a fear of money experiences physical symptoms such as tachycardia, sweating, nausea, dizziness or increased blood pressure when having to face situations where they have to manage money, or when faced with the idea of losing it. These symptoms would also manifest when anticipating that he is going to have to handle money or that he could have problems associated with it.
Then we would have the cognitive symptoms. In this case, we find a whole set of negative beliefs and irrational ideas around money, both in the presence of it as a phobic stimulus and in relation to thinking about it. For example, a person with chrometophobia may have superstitious ideas such as “if I carry too much money, people will know and they will try to rob me.”
Finally we find behavioral symptoms, mostly of the avoidant type. The subject with this phobia will actively avoid being near the phobic stimulus or, if he cannot avoid it, he will be forced to resist it with great discomfort.
You may also engage in behaviors such as denying your financial reality, avoiding any conversation related to money, or delegating any financial management to your partner or a friend. This problem can become such that the affected person may even have problems making any daily payments.
How is chrometophobia treated?
Chrometophobia can be treated in multiple ways, but The main therapeutic options would be two: cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and pharmacological therapy based on anxiolytics. Both therapies are complementary, with cognitive-behavioral being especially useful since this phobia, as we have seen previously, would have an important cognitive component. Within CBT we would have the following three main tools:
1. Exposure technique
As its own indicates, the exposure technique consists of exposing the patient to the phobic stimulus or situation.
In the case of a chrometophobe who, for example, is afraid of going out with a lot of money on him, believing that he is going to be robbed, therapy may consist of making him go out with a certain amount of money on him, exposing him to this situation for a long time and causing your anxiety to be reduced through habituation.
2. Relaxation techniques
One of the best ways to manage anxiety, both associated with phobias and any other psychological problem, are relaxation techniques. in them The patient is taught to control his breathing, try to blank his mind or imagine the phobic stimulus in various ways. staging in your head possible behaviors that you can perform in response to that stimulus and imagining what you should do to overcome the situation successfully.
3. Cognitive techniques
In the cognitive component of cognitive-behavioral therapy we find managing irrational beliefs and ideas.
As we have previously mentioned, among the symptoms of patients with specific phobias are their irrational beliefs about the phobic stimulus or situation. In the case of those affected by chrometophobia, we would have to address ideas such as the one mentioned above that if you carry a lot of money on the street you will surely be robbed or, for example, that if you have too much money you will not know how to manage it and will end it. losing.
