Phobia questions

Hi! This is entirely my personal opinion.

The term "enochlophobia" is unfamiliar. The description sounds like a form of "social anxiety". A character who'd use the more technical-sounding term sounds as if she's well enough off to both afford and commit to regular treatment for her phobia. (In real life, that's often not the case.)

Phobias are unique for each sufferer. I guess bad tropes or assumptions are that someone can be teased out of a phobia by unsympathetic people and that phobias aren't debilitating or even dangerous at times. For example, stress can cause long-term physical damage when it can't be managed well.

The conclusion for Truman was unrealistic as a happy ending. It reminds me of Free Willy. People think survival traits will somehow kick in when dropped into a drastically new situation without training. More often than not, that's untrue.

Maybe it was better for Truman to leave the lie regardless of what happened afterward. Maybe that woman who motivated him and a few show execs helped him hide away until he learned how to live outside the show. More likely, Truman died soon after he entered the larger world.

Your fourth question is tricky, because it depends on specifics. Yes, she might stay back from the crowd despite an urge to escape. Alternatively, her perspective of the crowd might shift so that she can push through. What can make the difference is how she developed the phobia.

I would be annoyed if she could take a magic pill that makes her fear go away without consequences. I'm not sure what's meant by it making her feel like an outcast or in pain, though. I would've thought that's how she felt around crowds without the medicine.

starrystorm said:

Hi. I'm writing a secondary character who has presented herself with enochlophobia, or the fear of crowds. I would like her to be as accurate as possible and not offend anyone (which is why I waited so long before posting). It isn't major towards the plot, but it goes along with the theme of finding what you fear and what you can take. So these are the questions:

1) Is enochlophobia the right term? I've heard other words that mean the same thing as well.

There are probably a few, depending on the specific, but sure?

2) What are some (inaccurate) phobia cliches I should avoid.

I dunno, is that a thing? That the people don't get it's irrational, maybe? Though sort of depends.

3) How long does it take to recover. I know in the movie The Truman Show, Truman was facing his fear at the end and looked okay with it. Is it that realistic? I do plan on her trying exposure therapy a few months before the story begins, and at the end, she faces her fear to save the MC.

Truman didn't have therapeutic intervention, and I don't know I'd consider his fear a phobia. He was told his whole life how dangerous it was to leave and saw his father drown in the waters he was told were terribly dangerous. As to how long it takes to be able to not have an extreme reaction when faced with the whatever, depends. In general, phobias are one of the easiest things to 'cure,' in psychotherapy, given a willing patient and a decent clinician. Some people can take months, some people can take two sessions, depends on the person and the issue (how long, what it entails, their feelings about it, etc.).


4) The character is in a collapsing tunnel. A mob is trying to escape. She is at the back of the tunnel, the farthest from the exit. Since she is afraid of crowds, would she stay behind (or slow down) or would she try to save herself? Basically, would phobias slow down a need for survival? Sorry, if this was a stupid question.

This again depends on the person but most people have a pretty strong survival instinct, especially in a scenario in which there isn't time to ponder. If you're in a stuck elevator and have a fear of, I dunno, firefighters, and they come to get you, and you've been sitting there, talking to, looking at one, who wants to take your hand, you're probably going to have trouble with that. If you've got a paralyzing fear of kittens but are fleeing a rampaging gunman and there's someone holding a kitten as you run by, you probably won't notice, if you see what I'm saying.

5) If she had some kind of pill or mark that could almost erase the fear, would this be cheating? (She refuses to wear/eat the medicine because it makes her feel like an outcast/in pain).

Cheating?

I know there are other threads like this, but they didn't have exactly what I was looking for, and the Internet is no help either. Sorry for the amount of questions.

Click to expand...

I don't know if that was helpful -- it'd probably be more handy to start with what you need and work backwards than forwards.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

The term I've heard is agoraphobia, which is technically a fear of open spaces, but amounts -- at least for the one person I know who's had it -- to a fear of crowds.

I'm not afraid of crowds, but I have had to deal with acrophobia (fear of heights) and also now defunct phobias of dogs and telephones. I still don't like dogs or telephones, even though I'm no longer phobic of them. And I think that may be common, that even once the phobia is gone, the person may dislike whatever the phobia was about. So I wouldn't expect your character to suddenly grow a fondness for football games, rock concerts or political rallies.

I've never had therapy for any phobias, but note that I'm done with the dog and telephone phobias, but not the fear of heights, which I have much less exposure to.

Hope that helps.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

I'd answer, but I'm afraid to...

1) Agoraphobia.

2) No idea. If it's just agoraphobia, look up the term and the various symptoms, go by those.

3) Minutes, days, years, never. It's a phobia. Every one is different. What do you actually need to happen?

4) Depends on the person. 10% will stay in any case, phobia or not, simply because it's polite to let others go first. 10% will kill anyone in the way to get out, the survival instinct is that strong. The rest are varied. Again, what do you need for your story?

5) If she refuses to use it, it doesn't matter what the medicine/mark/talisman/etc. is, does it?

Jeff

It also may be useful to clarify what you mean by "phobia". While, strictly, it means a fear of something, the term also gets used as an intense dislike for something, rather than a fear of it. The most obvious example is "homophobia". I suffer from "aeroplanophobia"; I ain't afeared of 'em, I just hate flying in 'em.

As for "enochlophobia", I didn't know what that meant, either. I thought it might be a fear of Enochs. If you need to use a very esoteric technical term not known to many readers, you need to define it right up front somehow. Don't be sending your readers to a dictionary.

caw

Have you tried listing all the symptoms together and then googling to see what phobias come up?

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

It was more than exposure in my case. Sorry I didn't make that clear. I do a lot of yoga and meditation, and one year into my practice the dog phobia broke quite dramatically.

In case you need to know, phobia (at least for me) is a very physical sensation. High heart rate. Wrench in the gut. Sometimes I'll get that now, even if my mind is (apparently...and even to me) completely calm.

I don't know that I'd take a pill to release the phobias and especially not if it made me an outcast. But it wouldn't bother me to see that someone took the opposite view.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

starrystorm said:

Weaselfire-- what I needed was for her to stay inside the tunnel so the MMC could figure out he had powers that could save her.

Click to expand...

Don't need a phobia for that. Confusion, crowd injuries, potential collapse of the opening... Lots of reasons to hold back.

Jeff

Whether she'd stay or go would depend on what scared her most. Also where the fear comes from may matter (it could be very simple--separated from parent by crowd as young child). I have some of the same phobias as my mother because when mama is scared, child intuits there is a reason. But I'm scared of spiders because of experience. Next relates to what Siri said--what coping skills does she have within herself to get through the fear? If she can push through and understands the danger, she might try. She might try either way, but be unable. Or follow the pressing crowd at a distance or have someone else to save/help. It's all in how you set it up.

I heard the difference between a fear and a phobia is - taking spiders as an example - fear of spiders means if you see a spider you will be afraid of it, you might also worry about say, spiders hiding in your shoes at night; but a spider phobia means you feel fear and anxiety at even an image of spider - thus it's more irrational, widespread and debilitating.
Not sure if this is relevant to your question at all

Lone Wolf said:

I heard the difference between a fear and a phobia is - taking spiders as an example - fear of spiders means if you see a spider you will be afraid of it, you might also worry about say, spiders hiding in your shoes at night; but a spider phobia means you feel fear and anxiety at even an image of spider - thus it's more irrational, widespread and debilitating.
Not sure if this is relevant to your question at all

Click to expand...

Not all phobias are the 'can't look at a picture of whatever or will have a panic attack' type, though some people are certainly affected that much and level of distress in general can speak to whether it's a phobia. In *general* -- phobias are irrational. Also in general, the people know they're irrational.

Like the Truman Show thing -- he was afraid of the water because he'd been told all his life how dangerous it was, and saw his father drown. The ocean is not an irrational thing to then fear. It'd be odd if someone wasn't scared of the ocean if they were told it'd kill them their whole lives and saw proof. If someone has a fear of submersion in water that extends to the bathtub, that's irrational.

Like your example, if someone is scared of snakes, that's not irrational; snakes can bite and be unpredictable and they're not a common thing for most people, and people are afraid of the unknown. If you're out walking and encounter a snake and get all 'AAAAAhh!!' that's probably a rational fear response. If someone is holding their non-poisonous, small pet snake and you back away hyperventilating, or if you see a picture of one and freak, that'd be more indicative of a phobia type response, because it's irrational. The small pet snake being held by someone used to holding it (or the picture) is very unlikely to harm you in any way.

Ditto cornflake. A phobia can grow out of a rational fear, but expresses itself in far less rational ways. For example, I'm afraid of heights and confined spaces and sharks. But those are all rational fears, and they don't stop me from doing things I really want to do (like flying in airplanes or swimming in the ocean), so I don't consider them phobias.

I have two phobias, one of which (dead bodies) is based on a rational fear. This one does interfere with my life: When my cat kills mice, I shut myself in my bedroom and am too scared to come out until someone else not me has disposed of the corpse. If no one else is home and I can't just hide in there all day, it's like I'm in a horror movie: inching along, eyes wide open, almost in tears, jumping at every tiny sound, looking around wildly for the horrible thing I know is here somewhere.

My other phobia (fear of balloons) is based on an irrational fear. I am fine with Mylar balloons, and a little uneasy but basically fine when rubber balloons are being used as decoration and no one is touching them. But anyone touching a balloon scares me so much I can't stay near it; I feel like something is literally pushing me away from it, the instinct to run is so strong. I have noped right out of little kids' birthday parties many times.

I think fearing a panicked mob is reasonable, for whatever that's worth. Keep in mind, I live with high levels of anxiety and might not represent the typical reader.

I'd say a fear of getting trampled from a panicked mob is reasonable -- that happens easily, and the situation is unpredictable.

A fear of getting trampled by a crowd while, I dunno, there's just a small bottleneck entering a theatre at the ticket-taker's stand is irrational, as that's unlikely to happen as long as the crowd is normal, just moving slowly, and it's not a general admission concert people are going to rush into.

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

A fear of being trampled in a panicked mob isn't unreasonable. Avoiding crowds all the time because they make YOU panick is.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

My doc calls "fear of crowds" anxiety-fuelled / anxiety-related agoraphobia. They also state that agoraphobia is a form of anxiety. Everyone reacts differently. But the core I've found is that there's nothing wrong with the crowd; it's just one's perception of the crowd. That's the irrational bit. Often, the irrational is uncontrollable and has no basis in fact, but is the result of how a person feels, and what they're dealing with.

Sometimes, one person fears the crowd, while another's fury is triggered by a crowd (invasive of personal space), etc.

The rational bit about being trampled by the crowd is quite legit. That's related to a survival instinct.

Regarding medicine. In some cases, it's usually medication for anxiety. Depending on one's severity of anxiety, dosage can be once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once before bed. Or just once a day, immediately after breakfast.

But I agree with the others: depends on what you need for your story.

Having read through the thread, I was wondering if it has to be so strong as to be a phobia. During my life I've lived rural where most people knew each other and the biggest crowd would be a supermarket queue and I've lived in London. I certainly had to take a deep breath to get from the train to the tube station when I first arrived - I waited until the rush was down to the stragglers and tagged on the back. Wasn't feeling fear just caution and unfamiliarity - I didn't fancy being in the crowd. I later got used to it and got really fast at weaving through a slow moving crowd. Now I am living rural again and have for years and have a mixed response to crowds. If I'm not in a hurry, I wait for the worst to pass and join on the end, if I am in a hurry I can do the weave through thing.
Now, you are talking collapsing tunnel, which is a good spur to make you get a move on, but if she is seeing people tripping in the rush to leave and the start of major pile-ups, she just might be standing there with her back to a wall looking back at the tunnel, across the crowd, trying to pick a balance of dangers - has the worst of the crowd falling and trampling passed is it safe enough to run away from the collapsing tunnel. Might happen like that too with a phobia - but not a phobia expert. Am getting a vivid mental picture from your scenario though.

I think what you're describing isn't so much a phobic response but a somatic response to a danger. Fight or flight are typically noted, but freeze is entirely common. A character under threat could freeze and stay behind, maybe even hide (small children may default to this) even if her brain is screaming at her to run. Or she could barrel through as fast as possible with no thought for herself or others and nothing in mind but OMGGTFO: flight. Or, she could, but this might be odd, start swinging, at others or the falling bricks: fight (this one would obviously need some sort of characterizing explanation).