Cacophobia is defined as an intense fear of ugliness. This is categorized as an anxiety disorder. People who have this anxiety disorder struggle with the fear of becoming an ugly person. The other conditions depicting cacophobia include experiencing severe anxiety and panic symptoms when thinking or seeing anything visually ugly. It is a subjective disorder as people with cacophobia are fearful of all sorts of ugliness. The individual decides for themselves the definition of ugly and thus the conditions get scary. This kind of phobia can be perceived in anything such as; objects, people, animals, or places.
Things Which People are Afraid Who Have Cacophobia
People who have cacophobia disorder are usually very anxious and stressed while thinking or witnessing anything which they perceive to be ugly. Not only does it impact personally as well as professional relationships but People struggling with such conditions may not be able to control their extreme sense of fear. Most phobias are taken as an objective context meaning they are incontestable or something which can not be shown to be wrong by any means. For example; if a person has a fear of snakes. This fear is objective because a snake is a definite thing, it can not be indisputable.
However, Cacophobia is completely subjective. A person struggling with such a disorder defines ‘what is ugly’ and ‘what is not ugly’ for them but another person might not be fearful of the same ugliness. To simply put, an individual having a cacophobia disorder may be afraid of a certain ‘ugliness’ while another individual with cacophobia might not even bother about it.
Causes of Cacophobia
After looking at What is the meaning of Cacophobia? Let’s witness what causes Cacophobia.
Although there are no specific reasons for causing Cacophobia. However, Mental health experts and professionals find it a combination of reasons of these factors causing such subjective disorder:
Environment: Environment plays a drastic role in determining the way certain people develop fears and phobias. Some people grow up in certain conditions where they develop a particular behavior that emphasizes how people and things look or appear.
Traumatic Experiences: Cacophobia is also driven by certain Life experiences. For example, When a parent or a guardian constantly tells a child that he or she is ugly or how certain things and objects resemble ugliness or makes a consistent mockery of somebody the way they look are some of the factors which can lead to cacophobia.
Genetics: It is interesting to know that some people can also derive certain fears and phobias genetically from a long history of extended generations.
Symptoms of Cacophobia
After finding out what is the meaning of Cacophobia? Let’s see some of the Cacophobia symptoms:
- There are anxiety symptoms when a person experiences Cacophobia such as lightheadedness, experiencing chills, and dizziness.
- Constant Upsetting of the stomach leading to indigestion or dyspepsia is another symptom of cacophobia.
- Nausea, Excessive sweating, also known as hyperhidrosis, and trembling or shaking are some of the anxiety-driven symptoms.
- Heart palpitations, also defined as racing of breath, Nausea, shortage of breath are another set of symptoms experienced by a person who has cacophobia.
- Another behavior portrayed by cacophonic people is avoidance of places and circumstances in which there is a fear to encounter ugliness. This avoidance may lead to leaving crucial professional, personal, or educational activities.
- One of the behaviors is to remain in a constant state of low self-esteem and criticizing themselves and others excessively can often lead to discouragement from finding personal worthiness.
- Some people who experience such phobia often invest a lot of time and spend money on surgeries and clinical treatments to avoid their perception of looking ugly. They often take a massive amount of time to organize themselves. Such a constant state of panic leaves them in worry excessively; that they appear to be ugly.
Conclusion
Cacophobia is a critical condition that affects individuals’ mental health drastically. As this is a subjective kind of phobia, it is hard to determine the number of people suffering from a particular phobia. Many individuals aren’t even able to recognize such a fear and may keep this to themselves. According to a study, it is estimated that one adult out of every Ten in the United States and one teenager out of every Five might be prone to a specific kind of phobia. There is no specific treatment for phobia. However, regular therapy can cure and minimize the effects to a certain extent.