Dromophobia: Characteristics, Symptoms, Causes And Treatment
There are a large number of situations, people, objects or animals that generate irrational fear in part of the population. All of these make up a long list of phobias that most people face to a greater or lesser extent.
One of these phobias is dromophobia This strange anxiety disorder prevents people who suffer from it from crossing any urban street or road, interfering very significantly with their daily routine.
Like the rest of phobias, dromophobia is considered an anxiety disorder in which the person experiences an excessive and irrational fear of crossing the street and in which the extremely high anxiety he feels every time he has to cross a street inhibits him from doing so.
Although dromophobia is a little-known type of phobia, it can become a highly disabling disorder, in which people who suffer from it experience many difficulties when residing in urban areas due to the fear they feel in urban areas. the moment of crossing the street.
Fortunately, There are very effective treatments for dromophobia Thanks to which the person is able to overcome the phobia and lead a normal life.
Clinical features
As mentioned above, dromophobia is considered an anxiety disorder. It is necessary to specify that The focus object of the phobia is not the street or its intersections, but the action of crossing the street per se.
The main consequence of dromophobia is that the person avoids all those situations or actions in which they must cross the street, to the point of confining himself to his home thus interfering with your daily obligations and needs.
Like many other anxiety disorders, dromophobia is distinguished by being a phobic fear, which has the following characteristics:
Symptoms
The main symptom of dromophobia is the experience of great anxiety, with all the symptoms that it has associated. This symptomatology does not appear continuously in time, only when the person faces or knows that they are going to face the feared action, in this case crossing the street.
This symptomatology can be classified into three categories, depending on whether they correspond to physical, cognitive or behavioral symptoms.
1. Physical symptoms
In general, any phobia, as well as the experience of an exaggerated fear, produces a series of changes and alterations at a physical and organic level, due to the acceleration of the activity of the peripheral nervous system. These physical symptoms include:
2. Cognitive symptoms
These physical symptoms are in turn accompanied by a series of distorted and irrational thoughts about the situation or situations in which the person must cross the street.
These thoughts are distinguished by containing a high negative charge, in which the person can reach perceive that some type of accident or catastrophe may occur at the moment or while crossing the street.
3. Behavioral symptoms
As is usual in specific phobias, the phobia itself ends interfering with the person’s behavior patterns Altering their way of proceeding in daily life and generating two types of response: avoidant behavior and escape from the situation.
Avoidant behaviors are those behaviors that the person with dromophobia performs in order to avoid having to perform the behavior, such as not leaving the house. While escape behaviors originate when you are about to face the feared situation, an example would be running across all the streets.
Although it is not always possible to detect at first glance, or know the causes of a phobia, there are a series of possible causes common to all phobias which encourage and drive them.
These mechanisms or associated risk factors are:
Diagnosis
There are a series of established diagnostic criteria that must be met when evaluating and diagnosing a person with dromophobia.
Excessive, persistent and irrational fear that originates from the anticipation of the action or from coping with it, in this case it takes shape in the action of crossing a street or urban road.
The patient admits that the fear you feel is exaggerated and illogical
Exposure to the feared action immediately triggers an anxiety or crisis response.
The person avoids or avoids the situation.
The feeling of anxiety or fear and the avoidant actions associated with it, significantly interfere with the person’s daily life, or cause clinically relevant discomfort.
The duration of symptoms must be at least 6 months.
The above symptoms cannot be explained by another type of mental disorder or illness
Treatment
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, despite how disabling this specific phobia can be, there are effective treatments for it. that the person can end up leading a normal rhythm and lifestyle
In the case of phobias, the type of intervention with the highest success rate is cognitive-behavioral therapy, where systematic desensitization (SD) has proven to be highly effective.
In this systematic desensitization, the patient is exposed in an imaginary way to a series of situations related to the phobia, which are arranged gradually, from lowest to highest degree of fear. In addition, relaxation techniques are applied to reduce the level of anxiety.
