Last Updated on March 12, 2023 by Mike Robinson

Panophobia is a vague and persistent threat or fear of some unknown evil. It is an irrational fear; no logical cause triggers it. This phobia is better known as non-specific fear or fear of everything.

The term panophobia comes from the Greek panto, that is all, and from phobos, that is, fear.

The terms omniphobia, panthophobia, and panphobia also describe this disorder. There is no specific classification for this phobia in mental disorders manuals such as the DSM-5 or the CIE. Still, most believe it can be part of other pathologies such as schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, or generalized anxiety disorder. 

In the latter, one of the main characteristics that define it is the excessive concern about the occurrence of a series of events, as occurs in the case of panophobia.
It is a very limiting and harmful phobia for the person who suffers from it because, unlike other phobias that materialize in some fact, object, animal, etc. specific, the range of fears is much broader in this case.

Causes of Panophobia

It is often difficult to know the causes that cause panophobia because the person does not remember when or in what specific event the fear began.

But most studies agree that the origin of panophobia happens because the person has previously developed other specific phobias. For example, a person who is afraid of flying in an airplane ( aerophobia ), speaking in public ( social phobia ), or spiders ( arachnophobia) may end up extrapolating this fear to the symptoms that cause him to face these situations.

Having these previous fears makes the person more vulnerable, and over time, different events or places can cause the same anxiety as the first phobias. In this way, the fear becomes generalized, and the person begins to avoid and flee from everything that causes it, causing the anxiety to increase and, in turn, creating a vicious circle.

Past Traumatic Event

Another possible cause for the development of this phobia is having lived through a traumatic event during childhood or adolescence.

As a result of this situation, the person develops an intense fear that this will happen again, and therefore generates a fear of that situation and avoids it at all costs lest it occurs again. This avoidance again causes fear to increase.

Genetics

Another cause for the development of panophobia is related to genetic inheritance. Some studies show that feelings of fear and anxiety transfer through the genes, as with some personality traits.

According to research, this transmission does not necessarily mean the person will develop the phobia. Still, they will be more vulnerable or predisposed to developing it if it occurs together with other factors, such as exposure to a traumatic situation.

Learned Behavior

And finally, we can point out the inheritance learned as another cause for developing the phobia. Numerous studies show that by observing the fearful behavior of parents or other reference figures in certain situations, events, animals, etc., a person learns to have that same fear.

The child learns to incorporate the same reaction that he observes in the parents. When a child has not yet reached the capacity for reasoning and sees that his reference figures constantly react with fear and anxiety in different situations, he comes to believe that there is something tangible to fear in them. This learning process contributes to the phobia’s emergence.

The development of the phobia differs in each person, but as a general rule, it increases with time if you don’t address it appropriately.

Symptoms of Panophobia

The main symptom of panophobia is fear or persistent fear of practically everything. It includes fear of objects, animals, situations, people, etc.

The person with this phobia usually has a constant fear sensation, leading him to avoid situations and contacts. One of the first symptoms, therefore, is social isolation.

At the psychological level, the main symptoms are depression, anxiety, sadness or constant crying, low self-esteem, and a feeling of helplessness or guilt. There are also obsessive and recurrent thoughts about the fear that does not allow the person to think about or focus on other tasks.

Sometimes, there is also the fear of losing control or going crazy. The person has intense and persistent anxiety, so the desire to flee or escape the situation is also constant.

Symptoms such as dizziness, palpitations, tremors, excessive sweating, chest pain, agitated breathing, pain or body tension, vomiting, or abdominal pain appear at the physical level.

A concrete symptom of this phobia is the constant adrenaline rush the person suffers due to the permanent state of alertness. A period of fatigue follows these discharges, during which the body needs to recover from the effort. Constantly having these discharges makes the state of exhaustion in these people practically permanent.

Treatment Options for Panophobia

There are different specific treatments for panophobia. The selected option depends on the patient’s characteristics, the severity of the phobia, or the therapist’s consultation.

Systematic Desensitization

Systematic desensitization is one of the most effective techniques in treating panophobia. This strategy, which has become one of the most used, was created by Wolpe in 1958.

Its purpose is to reduce the anxiety responses produced by exposure to dreaded situations and eliminate avoidance or flight responses. It relies on implementing responses incompatible with fear when it appears, preventing it from developing.

The answer incompatible with fear is relaxation. One of the main actions will be to train this relaxation response to start when the person faces the object or situation that produces the phobia.

And on the other hand, a list is made of everything that causes fear in the person. Under the therapist’s supervision, the person experiences all these fears. They begin with those that produce less fear until reaching the ones that cause the most discomfort.

The exhibition can be live (with you directly facing the object of discomfort) or in your imagination. After the exhibition, you practice the previously learned and tested relaxation techniques.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy has also proven effective in the treatment of panophobia. This therapy analyzes what a person thinks or says, which is less important than what they believe.

If the beliefs are irrational or distorted, the person develops disorders such as irrational fear. Just as a person has learned to distort reality and have an excessive fear of objects that should not produce it, he can learn to stop having that fear. He will need to discuss the beliefs that have led him to have these fears.

The person with panophobia perceives everything around him as dangerous and threatening and anticipates that something terrible will happen. With this treatment, the therapist aims to eliminate this type of disturbing thought and replace it with realistic and rational others. Therefore, they do not produce the same fear or physiological activation as the previous ones.

Self-Instructions

Derived from cognitive behavioral therapy, training in self-instruction is another technique that can be effective in treating panphobia.

It consists of a change in behavior in which the self-verbalizations the person makes in any situation that produces discomfort are modified. This technique aims to change what the person says before, during, and after encountering the feared situation. This technique aims to introduce a change in what the person says before, during, and after encountering the feared situation. 

Examples of typical thoughts of this phobia:

• Something terrible is coming; 
• Something terrible will happen
• I will not be ready to face it. 
• It will be horrible.

The therapist proposes that the subject modify this thought with another more realistic and adaptive one, such as:

• In the situation that I fear, I am prepared to face it.
• It is not so horrible.
• I have lived it before, and it has not harmed me. 

 This type of instruction is verified so that the person has correctly internalized it when exposed to the feared situation.

Hypnosis

Another treatment commonly used for panophobia is hypnosis. The fundamental task of hypnosis is to locate in the person’s subconscious the first manifestation of that fear and the reason that triggered it since usually the subject cannot consciously recognize when this event occurred.

Once these data are known, hypnosis allows associating fear reactions with positive ones, causing the irrational fear of that object or situation to reduce until it disappears entirely progressively. Thanks to hypnosis, the negative associations that make the person suffering from panophobia maintain that irrational and disproportionate fear of an animal, a situation, an object, etc., are broken.

Mindfulness and Meditation

Mindfulness or meditation is used routinely to treat panophobia. The main components of this strategy are to focus on the present moment, focus on what happens, eliminate the interpretation that each one can make of that fact, accept the unpleasant as part of the experience, and relinquish direct control over what happens.

In this way, the person learns to stop anticipating that something bad may be coming because it focuses solely on the present moment, on what is happening here and now. He also tries to neutralize irrational fear because he accepts that a slight fear or anxiety in certain situations can be unpleasant, but he accepts it. When the person learns to accept this unpleasant part of the experience, he neither rejects nor fears it.

Drug Therapy

Finally, medications are considered in the most severe cases of phobia and are used to control symptoms when they are excessively disabling.

They are effective in the short term and provide temporary relief, but they do not treat the disorder’s underlying cause. There are three types of medications for the treatment of panophobia.

On the one hand, there are the so-called beta-blockers, whose primary function is to block the flow of adrenaline that appears in situations of fear or anxiety. This way, physical symptoms such as excessive sweating or palpitations are controlled.

Another type of medication is benzodiazepines, which provide a certain level of sedation without becoming very high or dangerous to the person’s health.

They also function as muscle relaxants, and their effect is immediate. On the contrary, they present a high risk of dependence on long treatments. This makes rational use of these drugs necessary, assessing how long the pharmacological treatment will take, depending on the diagnosis and the expected prognosis, and whether the benefits of this treatment compensate for the assumed risks.

Also Read: Cancerophobia: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment

And finally, antidepressants can be helpful when fear is severe and debilitating. In any case, the medical treatment must be controlled and supervised by a specialist, in addition to not being a unique treatment since it will always be combined with psychological therapy to solve the fear at its root.