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Cats have their place of honor in many Polish homes, and short films about these animals make the time of bored corporate employees more pleasant. However, contact with purring quadrupeds is not a pleasure for everyone. There are people who feel panicky when they see cats.
- Fear of cats is either ailuro- or felinophobia
- A separate phenomenon is the fear of black cats. This one has a historical background
- As with any other phobia, psychotherapy is also helpful in the case of ailurophobia
- Check your health. Just answer these questions
- You can find more such stories on the TvoiLokony home page
Ailurophobia – what is it and how does it manifest itself?
People can be afraid of many things. In addition to common fears such as spiders, heights, and confined spaces, there are also less common phobias. You can be afraid of holes (even in cheese), buttons, shopping, too long words or conversations with taxi drivers. Or cats.
Source: PAP Infographics
Ailurophobia (also known as felinophobia) is an irrational fear felt in contact with a cat. And it’s not just about meeting this animal face to face. To develop symptoms typical of phobias, it is enough to talk about cats or their pictures.
- See also: Do you know what the umersmophobic is afraid of? Phobia quiz
As with any phobia, exposure to an anxiety-inducing object causes symptoms such as increased heart rate, shortness of breath, increased blood pressure, a feeling of dry mouth, and the need to escape immediately.
Fear of black cats
Cats cause anxiety in people suffering from ailurophobia. On the other hand, the mustache, black-colored quadrupeds have aroused anxiety for hundreds of years, also in people who have no problems with phobias. The fear of black cats is due to historical reasons as well as superstition. In the Middle Ages, quadrupeds with this color were supposed to be messengers of the devil or even his personifications. People believed that black cats had paranormal abilities and were responsible for all sorts of misfortunes, including death and disease.
- Check also: Witches of Salem – the devil “pretended” ergot?
Currently, we associate black cats primarily with bad luck. This superstition is common not only in Poland. For those who believe in superstition, seeing a black cat running its way can evoke negative feelings. Moreover, this may then lead to a mechanism known as the self-fulfilling prophecy – the belief that the day will fail determines behavior and the perception of it. As a result, minor failures will become great failures caused by an unlucky meeting with the black cat.
How are phobias treated?
The catalog of phobias is practically unlimited. Some fears are socially accepted and common (such as the already mentioned arachnophobia). Others (fear of getting wet or swallowing) seem irrational, and for people who suffer from them, they are a source of shame and serious difficulties in everyday functioning.
- Also read: “The mere fact of contact with soft fur causes the release of happiness hormones”. Why else is it worth having a cat?
Phobias can be treated with psychotherapy. For this, behavioral therapies or psychoanalysis are used. In the first case, the goal is to teach the patient how to cope with the anxiety they experience. Psychoanalysis, in turn, aims to get to the root of the phobia.
We encourage you to listen to the latest episode of the RESET podcast. This time we talked about supplementation. What is their phenomenon? How to use it to help yourself and not to harm? What is worth paying attention to in supplementation with thyroid problems? Why you need to be careful with biotin? You will hear about this and many other things below.
Also read:
- Phobia and its treatment. How to reduce fear and anxiety?
- What is generalized anxiety disorder?
- Seven diseases that we can catch from cats
- Diseases that can infect your dog or cat