Chrometophobia: symptoms, causes and treatment

Let's see what is known about chrometophobia, a strange psychological phenomenon associated with money.

It is said that money does not bring happiness, but it brings us closer. It is clear that it is better to have it than to have nothing at all.

However, there are people who can become truly afraid of anything related to the mighty money. Whether it is because they see it as something that brings evil or because they are afraid of misusing it, there are people who have a phobia of money.

This peculiar and strange psychological disorder has been given the name of chrometophobia, a phobia that we will explore here.We will explore here its possible causes, symptoms and treatment.

What is chrometophobia?

Chrometophobia (from the Greek "chrimata"; money and "phobos", fear), also called crematophobia, is. the name by which the aversion, fear or phobia of money is known.. This peculiar and strange phobia has not received much attention in the scientific literature, mainly because it does not seem to be very common, in addition to the fact that it does not enjoy much scientific support. Even so, if it is real, this psychological condition would be within the group of specific phobias.

One of the reasons why it is difficult to study and talk about it is directly related to how it is defined. Although the central element in this phobia is money, there are several ways in which chrometophobia can be described. However, in these definitions there is one of the following two ideas, both of which are contradictory:

• Pathological fear of losing money and running out of it.
• Pathological fear of having money, especially cash.

Chrometophobia can also be defined as the fear of carrying out any type of transaction with money, an idea that can overlap with the two we have just seen. That is, it can include the fear of buying or spending money, seen as losing it, as well as the fear of receiving it by selling an object by taking it out of an ATM, implying having to carry it on one's person.

Chrometophobia should not be confused with another phobia in which money is also involved but in a different way: misophobia.. This specific phobia is the fear and anxiety that some people experience when touching coins or banknotes that have been touched by strangers, since they could be a source of germs and contagion, and which, in turn, is considered a form of germophobia.

Is chrometophobia a disorder?

Although chrometophobia is also known as the "disease of not wanting to spend money", to define it as a real mental disorder is to define it as a real mental disorder, defining it as an actual mental disorder is complicated. Both the DSM-5 and the ICD-11 include in their diagnostic classifications the group of specific phobias, which require certain diagnostic criteria to be met in order to be recognized as such, criteria that chrometophobia must meet in order to be considered a real phobia.

The problem is that the very idea of chrometophobia is very varied, so much so that it is difficult to specify what we can understand as this phobia and what we cannot understand as this phobia.. We could consider as chrometophobic those people who have a pathological concern about money, being afraid of losing money, but we can also consider as chrometophobic those who are afraid of carrying money and being victims of a robbery or being corrupted by money. That is why, in addition to the fact that there do not seem to be many things about this peculiar phobia, it is difficult to affirm that it is a real specific phobia.

Causes

But although it is difficult to affirm that chrometophobia is a real disorder, we can talk about its possible causes by relating it to how specific phobias are formed.

Throughout their history, specific phobias have been explained in many different ways, and several theories have been put forward to understand their development and maintenance.. Among these theories we find the biological ones, focused on the genetic or evolutionary acquisition of certain types of phobias, which are not adequate to explain the appearance of chrometophobia, since being afraid of money does not seem to have an evolutionary relationship.

For this reason we will focus on psychological theories to discuss chrometophobia. Among them we find vicarious conditioningthat is, acquiring a phobia through the observation of that fear in people close to us, especially family and friends. For example, if we see that our father is afraid of touching money or that he prefers not to carry it with him, we may acquire that fear and it may become a phobia of money.

Another explanation behind the development and maintenance of phobias is that there are certain irrational thoughts or beliefs, which may be influencing the acquisition of a fear of money. One's own experiences, emotions and feelings about money, along with negative experiences related to it, may cause us to attribute a malicious component to it.. For example, if in our childhood our parents often fought over money and got divorced, we may attribute to money the power to break up marriages.

Conditioning theories state that fear, in this case chrometophobia, can be acquired as a consequence of associating money with an aversive stimulus.. For example, if we have recently been robbed, we may associate having money with negative consequences and always fear that it will happen again. We may also know of the case of a famous person who was kidnapped for a large ransom, which is why we may fear having too much money in our savings account.

All of the above results in avoidance behaviors or running away from any situation where money is involved. In case we have to touch money or manage it, we will start to feel very anxious, which is why we will try to avoid conversations about savings or delegate the management of our finances to other people, such as family members or partners. The more we avoid situations where money is involved, thus alleviating our anxious symptoms, the more we reinforce our avoidance behavior.the more we reinforce our avoidance behavior.

Symptoms

As it happens in most specific phobias, in chrometophobia we can find three main groups of symptoms.

On the one hand we would have the physiological ones. The patient with fear of money experiences physical symptoms such as tachycardia, sweating, nausea, dizziness or increased Blood Pressure when faced with situations in which money has to be managed, or the idea of losing it. These symptoms would also manifest when anticipating that he/she is going to have to handle money or that he/she could have problems associated with it.

Then we would have the cognitive symptoms. In this case, we find a whole set of negative beliefs and irrational ideas about money, both in the presence of money as a phobic stimulus and in relation to thinking about it. For example, a person with chrometophobia may have superstitious ideas such as "if I carry too much money, people will know about it and try to rob me".

Finally, we find behavioral symptomatology, mostly of the avoidant type.. The subject with this phobia will actively avoid being near the phobic stimulus or, if unable to avoid it, will be forced to resist it with great discomfort.

They may also engage in behaviors such as denying their financial reality, avoiding any conversation related to money, or delegating any financial management to their partner or a friend. This problem can become such that the affected person may even have trouble making any day-to-day payments.

How is chrometophobia treated?

Chrometophobia can be treated in a variety of ways, but the main therapeutic options would be two: cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and pharmacological therapy based on anxiolytics. based on anxiolytics. Both therapies are complementary, being especially useful the cognitive-behavioral one since this phobia, as we have seen above, would have an important cognitive component. Within CBT, the following three tools are the main ones:

1. Exposure technique

As its name indicates, the exposure technique consists of exposing the patient to the phobic stimulus or situation..

In the case of a chrometophobic person who, for example, is afraid of going out in the street with a lot of money on him/her, believing that he/she will be mugged, the therapy can consist of making him/her go out with a certain amount of cash on him/her, exposing him/her to this situation for a prolonged period of time and reducing his/her anxiety through habituation.

2. Relaxation techniques

One of the best ways to manage anxiety, whether associated with phobias or any other psychological problem, are relaxation techniques. In these techniques, the patient is taught to control his or her breathing, try to the patient is taught to control his breathing, to try to put the mind in blank or to imagine the phobic stimulus in several ways, staging in his head possible behaviors that he can carry out before that stimulus.They can also be used to stage in their head possible behaviors that they can perform in response to the stimulus and imagine what they should do to successfully overcome the situation.

Cognitive techniques

In the cognitive component of the cognitive-behavioral therapy we find management of irrational beliefs and ideas.

As previously mentioned, among the symptoms of patients with specific phobias are their irrational beliefs about the phobic stimulus or situation. In the case of those affected by chrometophobia, we would have to deal with ideas such as the aforementioned that if you carry a lot of money on the street you are sure to be mugged or, for example, that if you have too much money you will not know how to manage it and will end up losing it.