Last Updated on February 20, 2023 by Mike Robinson
What is Omphalophobia?
Omphalophobia is an irrational and out-of-control fear of the belly button. When someone with omphalophobia is around their phobic stimulus, the navel, they feel a lot of anxiety and discomfort.
People with omphalophobia can fear their own navels or other people’s navels.
Even though this is one of the strangest and least common phobias, it can cause a lot of discomfort and make it hard for the person to function.
Everyday tasks like taking off clothes or taking a shower can be difficult for someone with omphalophobia because they involve seeing or touching the navel.
Also, people with omphalophobia can have difficulty going to places where people go shirtless. They struggle in settings where navels can be seen, like beaches, swimming pools, and changing rooms.
Fear of the Belly Button
Despite being an uncommon psychopathology, omphalophobia has clearly defined symptoms and clinical characteristics. Also, today, there are treatments capable of overcoming the phobic fear of the navels.
In this article, we will cover the main traits of omphalophobia. Additionally, we’ll discuss its symptoms and most common causes.
Characteristics of Omphalophobia
Omphalophobia is an anxiety disorder that is a rare and unusual type of specific phobia.
People suffering from this disorder have an irrational, unfounded, and uncontrollable fear about the navel. This fear occurs from any contact with this part of the body and generates high feelings of anxiety.
In this way, the main characteristic of omphalophobia is suffering a phobic fear of the navels. The fear the individual experiences has the following characteristics:
- Excessive: the fear of the navels in omphalophobia is extreme. Any exposure to navels causes an extremely high level of anxiety.
- Irrational: The navels alone do not create any risk for people. But the subjects with this fear react as if they were highly threatening. This is because irrational thoughts govern the fear of the disorder.
- Uncontrollable: People with a fear of the belly button are often aware that this fear is excessive and irrational. However, they can not do anything to avoid these feelings. They are automatic and uncontrollable.
- Permanent: The phobic fear of the navels is characterized by being persistent and permanent. This fear does not disappear with time and is not subject to certain stages or serious situations.
Common Symptoms
The symptoms of omphalophobia are mainly anxiety related. The anxiety appears whenever the subject is in the presence of their feared elements (navels).
The anxiety symptoms of this disorder are usually severe and intense. Three categories are in place to classify the symptoms of omphalophobia: physical, cognitive, and behavioral.
Physical symptoms
Physical symptoms refer to a series of changes in the functioning of the various body organisms. These changes appear as a response to the phobic fear produced by the navels. The changes are due to increased activity in the brain’s autonomic nervous system.
The physical manifestations of omphalophobia can vary widely in each case, so they do not follow a specific pattern. However, someone with omphalophobia will generally experience some of these symptoms when exposed to belly buttons.
- Increase in the cardiac rate.
- Increase in the respiratory rate.
- Palpitations and/or tachycardias
- Drowning sensation
- Increase in muscle tension.
- Excessive sweating
- Pupillary dilation
- Stomach or head pains
- Dry mouth, dizziness, nausea, or vomiting.
Cognitive symptoms
When an omphalophobic person comes into contact with a navel, other symptoms also manifest in addition to the physical ones. The physical changes are accompanied by a number of cognitive changes. In this context, all of the person’s ideas concerning water are referred to as mental symptoms.
There are several different kinds of belly button fears. Nonetheless, they produce thoughts of imagining a calamity happening. Moreover, ideas regarding one’s own unwillingness to look in the navel surface.
The physical feelings and these thoughts are interconnected. Physical symptoms make people more anxious as they think negatively about belly buttons.
The irrational and contradictory thoughts that an omphalophobic person has about their navels are “cognitive symptoms. These thoughts and feelings can take on various shapes and present themself in many ways. But they are consistently characterized as irrational and regard the feared element negatively (the navels).
Behavioral symptoms
Finally, the fear induced by the navels must negatively impact the person’s behavioral pattern to consider it an omphalophobic reaction. The two primary behavioral symptoms of the change are avoidance and escape.
In the case of omphalophobia, avoidance is the most prevalent behavioral symptom. This symptom occurs by avoiding contact with navels at all times and can have negative consequences. The negative results include avoiding self-washing or other activities that require contact with the navel.
Escape is the behavior that individuals with omphalophobia set in motion when exposed to belly buttons. This symptom happens when the individual attempts to escape or flee situations where they must see navels. This usually involves escaping places like beaches or pools where seeing other people’s navels is very likely.
Causes of Omphalophobia
Although there hasn’t been much investigation into the etiology of omphalophobia, many authors contend that it may have similar roots to other specific phobias. In this regard, having had painful or traumatic experiences involving the navels or hearing negative things about them as a child may be significant factors.
The impact these causes have on individuals depends on their circumstances. Also, not all of them show up or are easy to spot in everyone who has a fear of belly buttons. The main things that cause the disorder are:
1: Classic conditioning
Classical conditioning is the main way that people learn to be afraid of things. Having been in scary, unpleasant, or traumatic situations involving a belly button can play a big part in developing omphalophobia.
2: Vicarious conditioning
Fears don’t just come from bad things that people have seen or done. People can also learn to fear these things by seeing certain things or being in certain situations.
In other words, seeing bad things happen to other people because of their navels, like being teased or laughed at because of how their navels look.
3: Verbal conditioning
The last way that omphalophobia can develop is through verbal processes. A person can develop omphalophobia if they were taught in school that belly buttons are bad and that they should be afraid of them.
Treatments
The treatment of choice for omphalophobia is psychotherapy. Specifically, cognitive behavioral therapy has very high efficacy rates in treating phobic fears.
This treatment is based mainly on exposure. A specialized therapist will expose the subject to his feared stimulus in a controlled and progressive way, aiming to get used to the navels and overcome his fear of them.
Also Read: Anthropophobia: Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Treatment
Likewise, these interventions can incorporate training in relaxation to reduce the person’s anxiety and nervousness and cognitive therapy to correct irrational thoughts about the navels.
