Fear of fruit, holes, vomiting, masks… There are all kinds of phobias, often associated with a trauma that occurred earlier in the life of the person who suffers from it. Alexandra Lecart, clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, explains the reasons and the therapeutic solutions that exist to regain confidence in the object or the situation of fear.
If certain unusual phobias are highlighted today by the media, such as school phobia (didaskaleinophobia) or administrative phobia, administrative phobia, there are dozens of other singular fears such as that of fruits (carpophobia), masks (maskaphobia), holes (trypophobia), or vomiting (emetophobia)… Impossible to list them all as there are so many. “There are as many phobias as there are objects,” explains psychoanalyst Irène Diamantis in her book Les phobias ou l’impossible separation. If the "phobogen", the object or the situation that triggers these phobias, can surprise, even amuse, the suffering of phobics is perfectly real. Amaxophobia, or the fear of driving, which often intensifies as the vehicle picks up speed and enters the highway, can be very debilitating.
Large and small traumas
If these excessive fears are infinite and vary from one individual to another, all would find their origin in a large or a small older trauma. “During a traumatic event, occurring in the first periods of life until young adulthood, the phobic person crystallizes his fear of danger and, probably, of death on an object which was nearby at that time. -there by a phenomenon of association, where the object is direct fear like a car accident, or a dog bite”, specifies Alexandra Lecart, clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. One of his patients vividly remembers the event that triggered his wheel phobia. When she was a child, her grandmother used to walk her in a stroller before she fell and bled when she hit the wheels of the cart. "The child must have felt a situation of great danger for the person she loved, and she then crystallized her fear of the risk of physical integrity on the wheels", explains the specialist, specifying that the phobia sets in so to avoid being again confronted with a situation interpreted as dangerous, like an avoidance and survival technique.
Treat yourself with philosophy and 3D helmets
Today there are different types of therapies to cure these phobias and reconsider these perfectly innocuous objects. If behavioral and cognitive therapies (CBT) make it possible to confront the phobic person with the phobic object or situation, Alexandra Lecart also offers virtual therapies which are based on 3D helmets, to bring the patient to experience a situation " in virtuo”, therefore in safety with the psychologist and in a prepared and progressive way, before being able to apprehend it in reality “in vivo”. The psychologist also recommends existential psychotherapy, based directly on psycho-philosophy and thus making it possible to question oneself, one's existence or one's relationship to death for example, and analytical therapy on the traumatic situation at the origin of the phobia. In a global and integrative approach, several therapies can be combined.
