If every time there is a storm you are afraid to go out or startled when you hear thunder, you may have brontophobia. Brontophobia is the fear of thunder and lightning, that is, of storms. Why is a person afraid of storms? Can that affect your life a lot? How do you get rid of the fear of tornadoes?
If you want to know what they are symptoms, causes and treatment of brontophobia, keep reading Psychology-Online.
This word would come from the Greek "bronte" which means "thunder" and "phobos" which means "fear". Therefore, brontophobia is a irrational fear of thunder and lightning. Sometimes it is known as astraphobia, although this fear focuses more on the fact of being struck by lightning, while in brontophobia it is in general the fear of thunder and lightning and its consequences, like a fire, and not just the fact of being directly hit by the Ray. It is usually common during childhood but, in some cases, it lasts into adulthood. It is part of the known as specific phobias, that is, you have an irrational fear of a specific situation or stimuli. Specific phobias are a
That fear begins when a storm is anticipated, for example, by listening to the weather forecast or seeing the cloudy sky and in the person suffering from fear, various physical, behavioral and psychological symptoms begin to appear that end up affecting the well-being of the person. Next we will see specifically all the symptoms of brontophobia.
The typical symptoms of brotnophobia can be separated into 3 categories:
- Physical / physiological symptoms: dizziness, increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, sweating, gastrointestinal problems, muscle tension ...
- Cognitive symptoms: these refer to thoughts and emotions. They are usually irrational ideas about the danger of one's life due to a storm which leads to emotions of fear, anxiety among others.
- Behavioral symptoms: person avoid the places that terrify you. For example, if you see that there is going to be a storm, you will not leave the house, you will even stop going to work to avoid it. In the case of children, it is quite common for them to hide under a bed or table in order to feel more secure.
In some cases, it may develop agoraphobia since the person may stop feeling safe every time she goes out, so she chooses to stay at home.
If you have the symptoms of brotnophobia described above, it is normal for you to ask yourself "why am I afraid of storms?" Brontophobia is multi-cause, that is, it is caused by a set of factors:
- The causes may be due to having experienced a negative experience related to a storm or hearing that someone close to you has experienced such an event. These situations can be, for example, car accidents, electrical problems, etc.
- The fact that during childhood they received constant storm danger messages It can also end up causing the development of this type of phobias.
- Also, receive messages from catastrophic events related to a storm can make the person end up fearing that they will live in the future.
- On the other hand, like most psychological disorders, it is more likely to develop in people with biological tendency to anxiety.
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 Brontofobia: what is it, symptoms, causes and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.
Brontofobia: what is it, symptoms, causes and treatment
