ACROPHOBIA: Meaning, Causes, Symptoms and Treatment

Acrophobia is part of the so-called phobic disorders, which are characterized by a disproportionate and irrational fear to certain objects, situations or activities. The suffering of the person who suffers from the phobia emerges both from the anxiety generated by the phobic stimulus, and from the awareness of the uncontrolled irrational fear that the person suffers. In order not to suffer these feelings of anxiety, the person reproduces counterphobic responses, that is, avoidance behaviors with the aim of avoiding the phobic object. The unjustified fear of acrophobia is based on the fear of heights. In this Psychology-Online article, we will expose the acrophobia: meaning, causes, symptoms and treatment.

Index

1. Meaning of acrophobia
2. Causes of acrophobia
3. Symptoms of acrophobia
4. Treatment of acrophobia

Acrophobia means afraid to the heights. This phobia is part of the situation phobias, that is, phobias referring to places, in this case to heights, affecting 5% of the population. So that,

Difference between acrophobia and vertigo

Acrophobia and vertigo have similarities, however, they are not equivalent. Vertigo arises from a disturbance of the ear, which regulates the balance, producing a subjective sensation of a rotating movement of the surroundings or the sensation that it is oneself that is rotating. On many occasions, it is accompanied by a feeling of dizziness and fainting, loss of balance and nausea. On the other hand, in acrophobia the person can suffer at a certain moment the sensation of vertigo, this being only one of the symptoms that can occur in the disorder.

Acrophobia can appear in late childhood or early adulthood. The causes of the development of the phobia of heights, can be produced by antecedents of direct experiences of the own person, for Vicarious experiences of observation, information, inheritance or due to cognitive biases, pressures or stress being also determining factors psychological. The causes of acrophobia can be:

• Direct experiences - vicars - observation: the result of a traumatic experience in childhood that has developed a negative vision and a component of terror of heights. This traumatic experience does not have to have been experienced by the person, it may have been an observation of a foreign situation or that it has been informed about it.
• Inheritance: Several investigations estimate that there is the possibility of a hereditary factor in the development of acrophobia. However, the fact that more members of a family suffer from this phobic disorder may also be because children from an early age observe the behavior phobic of the parents in the face of heights, giving them to understand the danger that it entails, causing them to end up suffering the same fear of heights.
• Cognitive biases: the reasoning processes that we establish play a fundamental role in the development of phobias. If the person begins to turn to the idea of ​​danger that heights carry, he may develop an irrational concern about them, giving rise to the phobia.

The symptoms appear when the person is exposed experientially or in her imagination to the feared stimulus, occurring before the knowledge that a state of anxiety will have to be exposed to the phobic object anticipatory. The symptoms of acrophobia are the same or similar to those that occur in other specific phobias, the most characteristic being the following:

• Anxiety - Anticipatory anxiety
• Fear and panic
• Increased heart rate
• Sweating
• Tachycardia
• Feeling dizzy or dizzy
• Stomachache
• Tremors
• Nausea and vomiting
• Chest pain
• Trouble breathing
• Chills or increased body temperature
• Catastrophic thoughts

The most effective treatment in the improvement of phobias is reproduced in the techniques of cognitive behavioral therapyl. Within this orientation, the most widely used and validated treatment technique with its efficacy is gradual exposure to the dreaded situation, where the person must be progressively exposed to the stimulus that causes irrational fear. The exhibition is structured with a hierarchy of situations from less impact to greater impact, that is to say, it is exposed first to situations that cause the least fear, ending with the most. This gradual exposure can be reproduced "in vivo" or in imagination, being more effective the exposure to the feared situation experientially.

Once it has been determined whether the exhibition will be experiential or imaginative and the list of hierarchies of feared situations has been drawn up, the person should be exposed to these. It should be noted that when the patient faces the feared situation, her anxiety levels will increase significantly, therefore, it is recommended perform relaxation exercises between exposing from one hierarchy to the next to stabilize anxiety of the person.

In many specific phobias, it is very difficult to control a gradual exposure due to the limitations of the phobia itself, for example, a person who is afraid of airplanes will not be able to expose himself to them gradually, because once the plane takes off he cannot get off he. However, with the advancement of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) it has been possible to reproduce a Virtual Reality treatment (RV) which is proving very effective in treating phobias. In VR, the feared object, situation or activity is reproduced, where the person has the sensation of being physically with the stimulus, in addition to allowing interaction with it in real time. This technology allows the person to be gradually exposed to the phobic stimulus in an environment that provides security and is controlled.

If you want to know more, in this article we explain how to overcome fear of heights.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Acrophobia: meaning, causes, symptoms and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

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