Last Updated on April 13, 2023 by Mike Robinson
Chaetophobia is a specific phobia where the individual has an excessive and irrational fear of hair.
Specific phobias fall under the category of anxiety disorders. All phobias have a common trait where a person experiences an irrational fear. In the case of chaetophobia, hair is the thing that triggers that fear.
Humans or animals could trigger anxiety. It is an irrational aversion to both human and animal hair.
Chaetophobiacs cannot live normal lives due to this fear. It impacts all of their interactions in society.
What Causes Chaetophobia?
Let us discuss this disorder’s symptoms, causes, and effects to help us understand what it is and how it works. We will also talk about the most common treatments that work.
There are common factors in cases of chaetophobia. Although the majority of specific phobias do not have a single cause, data shows that specific phobias are often due to a past traumatic experience. When emotional events in our past go unresolved, they can evolve into disorders like phobias.
In terms of psychology, we would talk about classical conditioning, vicarious conditioning (or learning behaviors by watching others), how people learn new things when they are young, and, in some cases, the possibility of a genetic factor.
Symptoms of Chaetophobia
Chaetophobia is an irrational fear that is out of proportion to the threat and causes irrational thoughts. This fear happens when the phobic stimulus is present, or someone anticipates it will occur.
When someone with chaetophobia has to deal with their hair, they feel completely out of control. Although this activity is done daily, it is a dreaded activity for chaetophobiacs resulting in fear and anxiety.
Additionally, the person with this phobia may be more uncomfortable in settings requiring cleanliness or social interaction.
The person tries to avoid all situations that trigger their phobia because they feel they have no control over the symptoms. They live their lives avoiding or fleeing from circumstances where hair or fur may be present.
Fear is considered an adaptation that helps people stay alive, which is fair and logical. Marks (1987) says that adaptive fear is a set of feelings that are a normal response to real dangers and help us run away when our lives are in danger.
However, fear is not helpful when it takes over when there is no real danger. You can distinguish normal from irrational fear or phobia by how long it lasts and how often it happens.
A Simple Test for Chaetophobia
We cannot call a fear a phobia if it’s just a single fear that doesn’t affect anything else. These are the common traits you will experience if you suffer from chaetophobia. You may experience some or all of these traits.
- Feelings of disgust if hair loss occurs when washing hair.
- Getting upset each time the person has to cut their hair.
- Avoid animals with hair or fur. Find it difficult to visit any house where they live with an animal, especially a dog or cat.
- Difficulty in performing the daily tasks of cleaning the bathroom.
- Feel anguish whenever you have to come in contact with someone or something with abundant hair.
- Experience physical symptoms when faced with the phobic stimulus (the hair). They include:
- An increase in the autonomic nervous system
- Increase in the cardiac and respiratory rates.
- Sweating and dry mouth.
- Stomach contractions, nausea, diarrhea
- Rise in blood pressure.
How Common is Chaetophobia?
About one percent of the population experiences some type of phobia. Therefore, phobias are pretty common. But if they aren’t treated by a professional, they can last a person’s whole life through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It is one of the most important parts of some phobias, especially chaetophobia.
Effective Treatments for Chaetophobia
Since phobias are anxiety disorders that frequently interfere with a person’s daily life, they all require treatment.
Psychological therapy is very effective in treating these types of phobias. Although there are no guarantees, many people who receive timely treatment are cured.
A clinical psychologist specializing in specific phobias must administer the treatment to eliminate this disorder.
Gradual Exposure Technique
Most of the time, therapy methods are successful in treating phobias: Since chaetophobia is a specific fear, the best way to treat it is through gradual exposure.
In the gradual exposure method, the person is exposed to their fear in small increments at a time. Increasing exposure makes them desensitized to the stimuli (hair). Upon completion of the therapy, the patient will no longer fear hair.
In this case, it is best to make a display of hair for the patient to see as the first step. After that, you can allow physical contact with the phobic stimulus.
Studies have shown over and over that this is the best way to treat specific phobias in the short and long term. People who start using the method immediately find that benefits grow over time.
Mental Visualization Technique
There are some phobias you can’t face in person for various reasons, so you have to visualize them in your mind instead. The main goal of this method is to help the person avoid situations that make them anxious until their anxiety levels go down.
According to scientific studies, this method is effective for treating specific phobias because exposure without the feared consequences causes phobic reactions to go away (both physiological and physical).
Anxiety Control Methods
Anxiety control techniques are a group of techniques that therapists use to deal with and lessen anxiety. These things are crucial when anxiety levels are high in the early stages.
One example of this technique is teaching someone to distract themselves from their anxiety by learning to do things they don’t associate with anxiety.
Muscle tension and learning to breathe slowly through the diaphragm are two examples used in this technique. When implementing these treatments, the professional will want the patient to look into the causes and factors that keep his phobia going.
Hopefully, this discovery will help the patient and the professional develop a treatment plan.
Other Types of Therapy Treatments
The previously discussed behavioral techniques have been around longer than these methods we will now cover. Most of the time, therapists combine the following methods with exposure techniques to improve the treatment.
- Emotional emotive therapy (Ellis, 1962; Warren & Zgourides, 1991), and emotional emotive therapy are some of the most common methods used in this field.
- Training in stress inoculation (Meichenbaum, 1977, 1985)
- Systematic rational therapy (Golfried, 1977)
The objective of these therapies is to change the patient’s thought patterns, maintaining the emphasis on the difference between realistic and unrealistic thoughts,(Marshall, Bristol, & Barbaree, 1992).
These treatments try to change the patient’s thinking, focusing on the difference between rational and irrational beliefs or between what is likely and unlikely to happen (Marshall, Bristol, & Barbaree, 1992).
As a result, the ultimate goals are for the person to gain from them in order to decrease anxiety during exposure therapies as well as to correct and modify those irrational thoughts through adaptive attributions of motor and physiological reactions (Anthony, Craske & Barlow, 1995; Shafran, Booth & Rachman, 1992).
The main effect of this phobia is that people with it must stay away from people with a lot of hair. As a result, if necessary, they may act strangely around people with hair.
Sometimes, the problem is so bad that the person dislikes himself and even cuts off their own hair. They also often feel uncomfortable when they have to look at themselves in a mirror.
These are a few situations when these people might feel and look uncomfortable. Also, it is common for them to have feelings of disgust when washing their hair.
This can be even worse if hair loss occurs at the same time. They have a similar traumatic reaction every time they have to cut their hair. This is in addition to a dislike for all creatures with hair.
These people exhibit extreme reluctance when visiting any home where an animal, especially a dog or cat, is present.
Choirs like cleaning the bathroom every day become difficult. Every time you talk to or touch something or someone with a lot of hair, it hurts.
When a person sees hair, several physiological reactions happen, including an increase in the autonomic nervous system activity.
These physiological reactions include increased heart and breathing rates, sweating, the inhibition of salivation, stomach contractions, nausea, and diarrhea.
Finally, the individual exhibits a wide range of beliefs about hair and their ability to handle it mentally and emotionally. A precise diagnosis of the etiology of chaetophobia is still pending.
However, in terms of treatments, cognitive-behavioral therapy has proven to be the most effective at addressing the issue.
