All About Pedophobia

Among the most elaborate and intricate rare fears that people may experience, pedophobia deserves special attention - the fear of young children. There is such a mental disorder infrequently, but it can have quite devastating consequences for a person's life.

Pedophobia is a mental disorder of an anxiety type that is very difficult to reasonably explain in terms of logic. A healthy person experiences fear as a protective mechanism in case of danger that is really threatening him. But what danger can lie in babies, because even the strongest of them is not stronger than an adult and can not be dangerous?

Nevertheless, with the fear of peanuts, which is called pedophobia, there is a strong, and sometimes panic, fear at the sight of small childrennot reaching adolescence. Phobia takes various forms, sometimes expressed in the refusal to give birth to their own offspring. Both men and women suffer from it.

Pedophobia is considered an isolated phobia, the object of fear of which is one - these are children. It is believed that pedophobes can live their whole lives without going to the doctors, because avoiding contact with children is not so difficult. But it’s almost impossible for a pedophobe to create his own full-fledged family in which there will be children. Even if there is a partner, the prospect of having children seems terrible, nightmare to a person. Therefore, relations with a partner are often destroyed.

But such forms, when a meeting with a baby causes horror, panic and inappropriate behavior, are isolated cases. More often, pedophobia proceeds more calmly, and it is quite enough for a person to avoid meeting a babyjust by crossing the street or speeding up when parents with a stroller walk towards them.

But patients cannot completely exclude the object of fear from life - children meet in shops, on the street, in pharmacies, they are shown on television, and therefore anxiety gradually increases, causing more and more serious changes in the human psyche and worldview. Character changes - it becomes irritable, unrestrained, quick-tempered, a person is prone to depression for any reason. Children are annoying, and even if you hear through the window how they play in the yard, laugh or cry, the pedophobe feels anxious, wary. It seems to him that somewhere near danger. Since fear is irrational, illogical, the patient himself cannot clearly explain to relatives and friends why he does not like and avoids children, and therefore becomes closed.

Some, however, find an explanation that protects themselves from the need to tell the truth - they begin to deny the values ​​of marriage, families, claim that they have lost faith in everything or simply “childfree”. There are many social explanations that can “mask” the true circumstances, which are very embarrassing to admit.

Often, prerequisites for pedophobia appear in childhood. So, an older child may be too painful to perceive the birth of a younger brother or sister. Jealousy for parents automatically correlates the image of the baby with the danger, because the loss of parental love for the child is a real real danger. Fear of young children may appear after the incident - the child injured a young child accidentally or intentionally, for which he was severely punished.

Children's jealousy on the occasion of the birth of a brother or sister usually disappears over the years when a rational explanation for what is happening appears. But here the entrenched strong image of the child in connection with a sense of threat can persist for life. And an adult with pedophobia, in fact, in most cases does not remember exactly which events served as the basis for his fear.

Sometimes pedophiles become potential pedophiles. If an adult is aware of his physical attraction to children, then he can intentionally avoid communication with children, and gradually avoidance will become habitual, transforming into fear.

The reason for fear may lie in the parental approach to education. There are families in which the birth of children is built almost into a super idea, into a cult. And children from a young age are set up to ensure that they themselves should become parents when the time comes. This happens if both parents are very religious. They are not interested, but what, in general, do children dream about, maybe flying into space is a more valuable dream for them than the prospect of washing their sliders all their lives? And the internal conflict in which such a child grows may well become the basis of fear.

In adults, pedophobia can occur against the background of tragic events - a child is hit by a car, a woman has lost a child during childbirth. It is noteworthy that the joint (partner) births that are popular today can cause the development of pedophobia in men.

Women and men have different symptoms of pedophobia. A woman who suffers from a pathological fear of babies experiences horror at the news that she is pregnant, and even when discussing such an opportunity with a partner. A man may be horrified by the news that his girlfriend became pregnant. He will insist on an abortion, and with a high degree of probability, he will try to run away and hide away from the woman if she refuses to terminate the pregnancy.

Pedophobia is very different from other phobic disorders - there are no panic attacks with it.But this does not make it easier for the patient, since intense anxiety almost does not leave him, from time to time decreasing and growing. So, both men and women carefully, and sometimes deliberately avoid contact with children.

If the partner turns out to be persistent, and still persuades the pedophobe to have children, the ending can be very sad - the patient refuses to take up education, cannot calmly endure children's crying, tantrums, in the end, the child can even be in an orphanage - the pedophobe does not cost anything to refuse From him. And it’s good if there is a grandmother, a grandfather, who is given such a child to education up to the minimum age. If there are no such relatives, the fate of the child may be unenviable.

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to do it yourself. Calls will not help to pull themselves together, and even more so you should not try to be treated with the method of the opposite - giving birth to children out of spite of your fear. Nothing good will come of it.

First of all, you should not be afraid to admit the presence of such a problem. Therefore, honestly answer your questions, do you have any pleasure, approval, pictures of pink-cheeked babies, or is it unpleasant for you to contemplate them? Do you want children? Do the children of your neighbors, colleagues, acquaintances cause anger and irritation?

And it is not so important what exactly you will answer, it is important how you will feel at the same time. Discomfort, when you think about children, anxiety and anxiety are the first “bells and whistles” that should make you discard false shame and go to an appointment with a therapist.

This is what a specialist can, can and should help. First of all, it will help to find the causes of fear, even if they come from an early childhood, the events of which have already been partially erased from memory. The method of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy will help to change the attitudes linking the image of children with danger to positive, and a person will begin to perceive children in general differently. Hypnotherapy and NLP can be used for treatment.

The need for medicines appears only in severe forms, and we found that they are single and are more likely an exception. In this case, tranquilizers, antidepressants help reduce anxiety, but in severe cases, the main hope lies in psychotherapeutic classes.

Along with the course of treatment, it is recommended to engage in breathing exercises and meditate. As the settings change, with the permission of the doctor, you need to begin to gradually communicate with children - with the kids of your acquaintances, relatives, friends, communicate with their parents, do not hesitate to ask and ask questions. Young mothers and fathers will be happy to share their experiences and convince children that this is happiness, although at times quite difficult.