How to Treat Pharmacophobia – The Fear of Medicine

Pharmacophobia is the fear of taking medicine. The common symptoms are breathlessness, excessive sweating, nausea, feeling sick, fear of dying, becoming angry, mouth becoming dry, shakiness, excessive anxiety, and a sensation of total detachment from the real world. This phobia, to the surprise of both the sufferers and non-sufferers, is not at all uncommon, even though it may seem strange.

Adults who suffer from this fear, albeit realizing that their fears are irrational, get sever panic attacks even while thinking about medicines, let alone while facing medicines.

However, there is a way out.

Imagine yourself in a situation where you no longer have fear of medicines, consequently becoming confident and at ease with yourself and everyone around you, when you can freely talk about your phobia as something of the past, like a character in fiction, not you. The aforementioned scenario is indeed possible.

Following are the treatments for pharmacophobia:

1.Hypnotherapy

2.Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP): It is the study and practice of how we create our reality. According to this, a phobia occurs when your programs or “constructs” that you have created don’t work very well. With NLP, these constructs are revealed and “re-programmed” so that the phobia is minimized and often eliminated. Usually the interventions are quite rapid and effective.

3.Energy Psychology: Energy Psychology is a very good and effective therapy for curing phobias as it is a rapid, safe, effective and long-lasting method. Even though few have heard about it, this sort of therapy has been around for a couple of thousand years. It could be called emotional acupuncture – without the needles- as it has the same foundations as acupuncture. Energy Psychology combines the benefits of the above treatment therapies.

Here are some myths about phobias

Myth 1. Phobias can be cured by exposure.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy: This consists of exposing you to the very thing you are afraid of and deconditioning you to the fear. For instance, if you have lizard phobia, you get exposed gradually to lizards. If you have fear of heights, you go to the top of a tall building gradually.

Even though this method can be successful, it involves a great deal of mental pain. It also requires frequent therapy sessions over several weeks, which for the modern day man, may not be possible.

Myth 2. Phobia can be treated by talking about it.

Talk Therapy: Traditional therapy, in which you sit or lie down and pour out your problems to a therapist, takes months or years to bring relief, and the results have shown to be not very predictable.

It is quite probable that you may feel at ease when you are talking about your phobia, but the real deal is when you actually encounter the situation, where you still find yourself wanting.

Myth 3. Drugs for the treatment of phobias are effective.

This method is very disadvantageous due to the expense, the possibility of side effects, the necessity to keep taking medication indefinitely and most of all, the existing probability of the phobia not even getting cured. After all, when it comes to medication, prevention is better than cure.