The xylophobia or hilophobia is the irrational fear of wood, its derivatives or the materials that imitate it. This fear can therefore occur in the presence of wooden objects, forests or any place that contains wood. Fear of objects that simulate wood can also occur. The word xylophobia comes from the Greek xýlon, which means wood, and phobos, which means fear..
Like any type of specific phobia, this fear or irrational fear begins to be harmful for the person who suffers it when it limits them in their daily life. For example, people who suffer from this phobia cannot go anywhere that has wood (homes, offices, restaurants, museums, etc.), nor do they step on or walk on wooden or derived floors, avoiding them continuously.
All this considerably limits the life of the person who suffers from it because they continually have to decide where they can or cannot go depending on the possibility of encountering some wooden object or utensil. At this point it is advisable to go to a professional to help you overcome this fear and be able to develop your life normally..
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Symptoms can appear in the presence of wooden objects or when the person imagines them or imagines himself in the feared place.
Symptoms vary depending on the person and the moment, not all individuals have the same symptoms or suffer them with the same severity. Among the most frequent manifestations of phobia it usually appears:
It is the feeling of discomfort and anguish at the occurrence or possibility of a feared situation occurring. There is the fear that is normal and adaptive that all people experience when faced with certain stimuli.
Thanks to these fears we learn to adequately face difficult, dangerous or threatening situations.
But at other times fear blocks us, we lose control of the situation and the emotion of anguish remains even though the person knows that it is not necessary, that the fear is irrational.
At this point, fear turns into panic and becomes a negative and harmful emotion because it alters the person's ability to cope with everyday situations..
It is a response that is activated in the person in dangerous or threatening situations and will help them to face them. The problem appears when the anxiety response is not proportional to the threat suffered.
In this case, being in a forest or in front of a wooden object should not trigger the anxiety response because it is not necessary to flee from the situation since it is not rationally dangerous.
They include all the sensations that the person notices internally when they are in front of wooden objects or utensils or when they imagine themselves in front of them. These reactions vary depending on the person and the moment but the most common are:
Often there is no single reason why a person develops the phobia, but it is usually a combination of several factors. Next we are going to name the most common, but it is necessary to bear in mind that only one of these factors will not have been the exclusive cause of their appearance.
In the development of specific phobias, a traumatic event is almost always related that left its mark on the person due to its severity or that, without being especially serious, was not resolved correctly at the time.
They are usually experiences that happened during childhood and adolescence, and although at first the person may not remember them or not give them importance, it is usually from this moment when the fear develops.
In this case, they can be events such as getting lost in a forest, having a bad experience in a place with a lot of trees or suffering an attack or injury with a wooden utensil..
After having undergone this experience, our brain once again associates objects that are made of the same material with that traumatic experience, producing the same discomfort as at the time of that first event. For example, a person who was lost in the forest for hours, when returning to a similar place may experience the same anguish and fear as at that time..
These experiences can also be the cause of the development of the phobia indirectly, that is, if the person sees or is informed of how another person has suffered an unpleasant event related to the object of fear..
Many times, phobias develop because the child learns to fear those objects or situations that their parents or reference persons fear.
It is likely that if a child sees how his mother avoids going to a forest or places where she is surrounded by trees and also verbalizes the fear he has of these places, he will develop the same fear response.
When the phobia prevents the person from having a normalized life due to the anguish that it produces and for having to continuously avoid certain places and objects, it is advisable to ask a professional for help to deal with it..
Different treatments have proven to be effective in treating phobias, which is the most appropriate will depend on the needs of the person and the type of phobia they suffer from. Some of the most common treatments are:
This type of treatment is one of those that have been shown to be most effective for treating specific phobias such as xylophobia..
In this type of therapy, different techniques are used to help the patient understand why the phobia is occurring and how to deal with it. Among the techniques used, the most important are:
It is the process by which the therapist informs the patient of the causes and origins of his phobia. This allows the patient to understand their problem and why it is being maintained today.
This technique consists of presenting the patient with the stimuli that he fears, in this case going to a place populated with trees or where there are wooden objects and derivatives.
Exposure to these stimuli is carried out under the control of the therapist and with preparation prior to the situation. The exposure is prolonged until the fear of these situations disappears or diminishes considerably.
Continued muscle tension is a common symptom in fear states. This tension can be adaptive and help us flee from danger, but in cases where the phobia has developed, this tension is not necessary, because the object from which we want to flee is not threatening..
The relaxation response is the opposite of the tension response. When the patient learns to relax, he can put it into practice at any time that this tension causes discomfort..
This technique consists of gradually exposing the patient to feared stimuli in combination with relaxation techniques. The patient together with the therapist draws up a list of the feared objects from least to greatest importance.
For example, the handle of a wooden fork, a wooden shovel, a chair, a large piece of furniture, a room with a wooden floor and furniture, until you reach the most scary stimulus, such as being in a forest..
Once the list has been drawn up, the patient begins to deal with the first stimulus, in a real or imagined way. Until that stimulus does not stop causing the symptoms of fear, do not go to the next one on the list.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is based on the fact that negative emotions such as fear or anxiety arise from how the individual interprets situations.
In this interpretation the danger of the situation is usually overestimated. The objective of cognitive intervention is to get the patient to question these misinterpretations of the situation..
It is a self-control strategy that is used to regulate breathing because it is altered in situations of panic and anxiety.
Hyperventilation frequently appears, which consists of an increase in oxygen in the blood, above the levels that the body needs. This hyperventilation appears before the intensity and frequency of respiration.
The purpose of breathing techniques is to decrease the symptoms of hyperventilation and develop self-control over the situation..
This set of techniques aims to understand the internal processes of the person to reprogram the way of communicating in order to change certain beliefs to achieve personal success.
In this case, it is about eliminating the feeling of anguish and discomfort that is generated in the presence of wooden objects by learning a more appropriate way to face this fear..
The objective of this type of treatment is to reach the subconscious of the person through regression and find the first moment in which the fear was generated. The situation and the reason that developed the trauma is identified.
Once the person is at that moment, some element is introduced into the scene that can help them to face it better or more adequately. It is about associating negative manifestations with other more positive ones with the aim that this irrational fear is reduced or even disappears..
At the end of the process, the individual has control over the situation because they have managed to break the negative association they had with the object or situation since it first occurred. Sometimes this regression requires going back to moments of childhood, which occurred many years ago or that even the patient did not remember..
The different investigations and studies that have been carried out on the use of drugs for the treatment of phobias do not yield decisive results on their effectiveness.
In any case, what does seem to be clear is that the exclusive use of medication is not effective for the disappearance of the phobia.
However, drugs such as benzodiazepines or beta-blockers have been used as a complement to the techniques explained above. But the studies carried out in this regard seem to indicate that the use of drugs could hinder the therapeutic work of exposure, which is why their use in treatment is not common..
Regardless of the treatment that you want to choose to combat the phobia, there are a series of daily indications that contribute to the general well-being of the person.
Performing these indications correctly will not eliminate the phobia but it will contribute to not aggravating the symptoms of anxiety and discomfort of it. Some of the most appropriate behaviors are:
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