Fear of undressing (deshabiliophobia): causes, symptoms and treatment

A rare phobia that can compromise interpersonal and intimate relationships.

Human beings feel many emotions, some of which are pleasant, and others that are not so pleasant, but which, although they sometimes do not seem so, are adaptive and have a function. Fear is an emotion that puts us in alert mode, so that, in the face of danger, we can react quickly. Therefore, it is an adaptive emotion, but in the current context, it can often appear irrationally, causing a great sense of anxiety and discomfort. In these cases we speak of a phobic disorder.

There are many types of phobias and they appear in front of many stimuli. Today we will talk about the phobia of undressing, a phobia that can be disabling and can seriously harm a person when it comes to having sexual intercourse..

What is a phobia of undressing.

Phobias can be classified in different ways. We usually talk about three types of phobias: agoraphobia and specific phobias and social phobias. Disabiliophobia belongs to this group. If you want to know more about what a social phobia is, you can read our article "Social phobia: what is it and how to overcome it?".

The phobia of undressing also belongs to those known as sexual phobias, which are those that interfere with a person's normal sexual behavior.. People with a fear of undressing can have a really hard time in situations where they have to take off their clothes, whether in a gym or when having intimate relations with another person. In extreme cases, the phobia may appear even when no one is around, simply by imagining someone watching when the affected person is naked or when someone is nearby but not necessarily in the same room.

Causes of this phobia

The most frequent cause of the development of this phobia is having suffered a traumatic experience, usually in the privacy of a bathroom or locker room, or in a situation involving nudity. This fear is therefore produced as a result of learning, specifically by classical conditioning, a type of associative learning initially investigated by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov.

However, one of the most important experiments in the history of psychology, in which John Watson succeeded in making a small child named Albert develop a phobia, took place in 1920 in the United States.

• You can learn about all the characteristics of classical conditioning in our article "Classical conditioning and its most important experiments".

Other causes of fear of nudity

Now, this phobia is complex, like the rest of social phobias. Some experts claim that it is related to low self-esteem and a distorted image of one's own body, known as body dysmorphic disorder. A disorder in which the sufferer feels an exaggerated concern about some defect (usually imaginary) in a physical feature of the body. These people suffer great anxiety when they have to show their body to other people and try to avoid situations in which they must undress in front of other people.

Phobias can also develop by vicarious conditioning, i.e. by observing unpleasant experiences in other people.. Vicarious conditioning has different characteristics than observational learning. You can check it out in our article "Vicarious conditioning: how does this type of learning work?

Finally, experts affirm that human beings are biologically predisposed to suffer from phobias, since fear is an adaptive emotion that does not respond to logical arguments. The reason for this is that it is produced by primitive, non-cognitive associations.

Symptoms of deshabiliophobia

Phobias, although there are different types, share the same symptomatology. These symptoms are usually of three types: cognitive, behavioral and physical.. Regarding the first ones, fear, anguish, embarrassment, lack of concentration or catastrophic thoughts stand out. As for the behavioral symptoms, the person with this disorder tends to avoid the feared stimulus. The most prominent physical symptoms are hyperventilation, headache, dry mouth, increased Heart rate and nausea.

Treatment

Fear of nudity is a complex situation that requires psychological treatment, as it can cause great discomfort and an inability to have not only sexual, but also loving relationships. There are many types of psychotherapy, but according to scientific studies, the most effective for the treatment of phobias is cognitive behavioral therapy..

There are many cognitive behavioral techniques, but the most effective have proven to be exposure techniques and relaxation techniques. A very popular and widely used technique in the treatment of phobias is systematic desensitization, which contains the two previous ones and exposes the patient to the phobic stimulus gradually. Before but, it is necessary for the patient to learn a series of coping strategies.

• You can learn more about this technique in our article "What is systematic desensitization and how does it work?" Now, there are other types of therapy that have also proven to be very effective in the treatment of these pathologies. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy are some examples.

In addition, nowadays, new technologies have also had a positive influence on the treatment of phobias, since virtual reality is used to simulate the presence of the phobic stimulus.