Many have heard of uncontrollable fears, also called phobias. Some of them take a bizarre form that seems ridiculous to most healthy people. However, a person suffering from such a disorder does not see anything fun in him. Fear can significantly complicate his life.
One of the most amazing and unusual phobias is the fear of pronouncing long words, which has a Latin name: hippopotomononstrosesquipedaliophobia.
The paradox is that the name of this fear is the longest word that is used in modern Russian.
In order to understand the basis of this phenomenon, we consider what phobias are, why they arise.
Phobia, or obsessive fear, is one of the most common neurotic diseases of our time. The number of people exposed to uncontrolled panic attacks is increasing year by year.
A phobia is an irrational obsessive fear that arises only in certain situations, it can be accompanied by various unpleasant sensations: increased pressure, dizziness, rapid heartbeat, nausea.
A phobia is always associated with a specific object. The main danger of such disorders is that fear can cover an increasing number of objects and situations and seriously complicate communication with people if a person indulges him.
This neurotic disorder does not affect intellectual abilities. People, as a rule, critically perceive their condition, although they cannot control it.
The first cases of such diseases appeared in the late 19th - early 20th century. Psychiatrists and psychologists from various schools and schools studied this phenomenon in detail, thanks to which we can get a fairly clear answer to the question about the causes of phobic disorders.
Obsessive fears may result from traumatic events or be based on organic brain damage. In each individual case, the doctor determines the cause individually and prescribes treatment in accordance with it.
Phobia plots change historically, new objects appear, and old ones become a thing of the past.
Currently, there are about 300 types of obsessive fears.
Phobias are often mentioned in works of art, their strange and poetic names inspire musicians to create new compositions. So, we can say that phobias are gradually becoming an important part of culture.
The fear of long words is manifested in the fact that a person tries not to pronounce complex sound combinations, because he is afraid that he will be lost and will say them incorrectly.
Like any phobia, this fear is irrational, that is, it has no valid basis. A person simply experiences horror at the sight of long words and tries to skip them when reading, especially in colloquial speech.
Consider the fear of long words. In psychology, there are several views on this problem.
Many psychologists believe that the reason for most of these strange phobias lies in constant internal tension, anxiety, "corroding" a person from the inside. Negative emotions seek a way out and find it in the form of bizarre fears or rituals with which a person maintains self-confidence.
Most often, phobias affect people who seek to control their entire lives, any external events, as well as their own characteristics. To feel good, it is very important for them to maintain this illusion. They are frightened by those phenomena that seem uncontrollable to them. If a person is not confident in his ability to correctly and clearly pronounce complex words, he begins to fear them.
In this case, the task of a specialist working with a person is to help him find the cause of increased anxiety and the need for control. In the process of psychotherapy, this cause can be eliminated.
Psychologists from other schools believe that a childhood experience, which was so strong that it became entrenched in consciousness, can become a source of fear. A phobia that occurs in certain situations is a warning sign that signals that a painful experience may recur.
Fear of long words can arise as a result of an unpleasant event when the child could not answer the teacher’s question or caused peers to laugh with the wrong pronunciation of some phrases.
Then the treatment involves working with the patient’s past in combination with the so-called overcoming method, when the patient gradually, step by step, gets used to the frightening object, in this case, tries to pronounce long words under the supervision of a psychologist. This method is very effective and with its help you can achieve rapid improvement.
Fear of long words does not require medical treatment. In most cases, phobia is completely cured after a course of psychotherapy.
The most important step towards full recovery is the person’s desire to change and get rid of fear.