Gymnophobia (fear of nudity): causes, symptoms and treatment

Also known as 'knotophobia', it generates uncontrollable anxiety.

The nudity of the human body has been the subject of ethical and moral debates for centuries.. While some people consider it as a natural state of a person, others perceive a naked human body as something ordinary or vulgar, which should not be exposed to the view of other people.

When this aversion to the perception of a naked person goes beyond the feelings of abhorrence or tyranny and becomes fear or exaggerated fear, we may be facing a case of gymnophobia.

What is gymnophobia?

Gymnophobia, also known as knot-phobia, is a type of specific phobia categorized within the classification of anxiety disorders.. In the case of this particular phobia, the person experiences a pathological fear of nudity, both their own and that of others.

This fear, which is experienced as an exaggerated, persistent and irrational sensation, is present in those who feel a pathological aversion to the possibility of being seen naked or seeing other people, even in those contexts in which nudity is something natural and acceptable, such as the changing rooms of a gym.

One of the most distinctive characteristics of people with gymnophobia is that, in certain cases, the anxiety response does not appear in a generalized way with all people, but is restricted to a small group of the population.

In the same way, through the case study, it has been observed that in many of the patients with gymnophobia there is a feeling of inferiority with respect to their own bodywhich remains underlying the development of the phobia.

These people tend to compare their bodies with those that appear in the media and publications, in which the ideals or canons of beauty are so distorted that including some natural features of the human being are seen as imperfections, which leads the person to experience high levels of anguish and frustration.

This pathological terror of seeing a naked body, including one's own, can cause great interference in the most intimate levels of the person, who may refuse to maintain physical or sexual contact, due to the anxiety caused by the idea of having to be naked in front of someone and that someone else is in the same state of undress.

Similarly, a gymnophobic will avoid situations that involve taking off clothes, such as showering in a locker room with other people or even going for certain medical check-ups.

Characteristics of a phobic fear

As mentioned above, gymnophobia is an anxiety disorder, so the fear experienced in gymnophobia is substantially different from a normative or adaptive fear.

The main characteristics that distinguish a pathological fear from a fear considered normal are:

• Sensation of excessive and disproportionate fear compared to the actual threat posed by the phobic situation or stimulus.
• It is irrational, so that the person is not able to find a reasonable explanation for his reaction.
• It is uncontrollable, so that the person is unable to control the sensations experienced.
• It generates avoidance and flight behaviors.
• Although it only appears in the feared situation, this fear is constant over time and situations.

Symptoms of fear of nudity

Although the main symptom of gymnophobia is the experience of great fear at the appearance of the feared stimulus, in this case nudity, there are many other symptoms of the anxiety reaction that the person experiences, there are many other symptoms typical of the anxiety reaction that the person experiences when experiencing nudity..

These symptoms do not necessarily appear in the same way in all people with gymnophobia. However, these symptoms can be classified into three different categories, depending on whether they correspond to physical, cognitive or behavioral symptoms.

Physical symptoms

The first symptoms that the person consciously perceives when confronted with the phobic stimulus are physical symptoms. These are due to a hyperactivity of the nervous system which provokes all kinds of changes and alterations in the organism:

• Increased Heart rate
• Increased respiratory rate
• Palpitations
• Shortness of breath
• Muscle stiffness
• Increased sweating
• Headache
• Gastric disturbances such as stomach pain and/or diarrhea
• Nausea and/or vomiting
• Sensation of dizziness or lightheadedness
• Fainting and loss of consciousness

2. Cognitive symptoms

The physical symptoms of gymnophobia are always accompanied, in turn, by a series of cognitive symptoms manifested by distorted and irrational thoughts about human nudity. about human nudity.

These ideas are characterized by being irrational and intrusive and, in addition, may be accompanied by mental images of catastrophic content in relation to the possible dangers or threats of the phobic stimulus.

3. Behavioral symptoms

As usually occurs with specific phobias, the symptoms themselves end up interfering with or conditioning the person's own behavior patterns.. These tend to alter the way in which the person behaves in daily life, generating two types of responses considered as behavioral symptoms: avoidance behaviors and escape behaviors.

By avoidance behaviors we mean all those behaviors that the person with gymnophobia performs in order to avoid the feared situation or stimulus. For example, avoiding entering the locker room of a gymnasium.

However, escape behaviors originate when the subject has not been able to confront the object of phobia, so he/she performs all possible acts or behaviors that allow him/her to escape from the situation as soon as possible.

Causes

At the beginning of the article it was commented that the basis of gymnophobia may be related to a feeling of inferiority towards one's own body, which has been enhanced or developed into a phobia.

However, there are many other factors that can play a special role in the development of a phobia, the most common being the experience of highly traumatic or highly emotional experiences in which nudity played a more or less relevant role.

Although it can sometimes be difficult to determine the specific origin of a phobia, there are a number of mechanisms or risk factors that may favor it. These are:

• Genetic elements
• Personality
• Cognitive styles
• Direct conditioning
• Vicarious learning

Treatment

By chance, there are a number of very effective treatments that, regardless of the severity of the phobia, can help reduce the symptoms and allow the person to lead a normal life.can help to diminish the symptoms of the person and allow him/her to lead a normal rhythm and lifestyle.

In the case of gymnophobia, and any type of specific phobia, the most successful type of intervention is cognitive behavioral therapy, in which, in addition to cognitive restructuring to eliminate distorted thoughts, live exposure or systematic desensitization (SD) techniques are used.

In this type of technique, the patient is gradually exposed to the situations related to the phobia, either live or through imagination. Along with this, training is performed in relaxation techniques that allow the level of physical symptoms of anxiety to decrease.

Bibliographical references:

• Bourne, Edmund (2005). The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, 4ª ed. New Harbinger Publications.
• Wolpe, Joseph (1958). Psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition.. Stanford University Press.