Among the rare and curious phobias, ephebiphobia or ephebophobia has caught our attention , a fear of adolescents and young people whose origin is found in social and cultural stereotypes. Adolescents can inspire you many things, but are young people so dangerous that they inspire terror and have to avoid them? There is much to say about this disorder that has youth as its protagonist and we will tell you everything in our dictionary of phobias .
What is Ephebiphobia
Ephebiphobia or ephebophobia is the fear of adolescents or young people in general. It can be a phobic disorder as such that needs treatment or it can also be an attitude towards life and a posture of rejection, although not necessarily of fear, in front of this group of the population.
In the second case it is not a disorder. Many people are suspicious of young people because of a question of intergenerational misunderstanding . Prejudices and stereotypes are at the base of this attitude, although at times it could also signal a certain envy of those who have their whole lives ahead of them.
Surely you know more than one person who constantly criticizes young people, who does not value them, who locks them in a stereotype of immature, unbearable, without aspirations, without value and, at times, aggressive. Those people clinging to the old days do not take into account the younger ones for the simple fact of being different , for doing things differently and they despise them until they are cut off from their lives.
Symptoms of ephebiphobia
But as we say, true phobic disorder occurs not because of the rejection that young people can produce, but because of the terror they inspire. Phobia is the irrational and extreme fear of something or someone and, in this case, it has touched our young people. A person with ephebiphobia is terrified when a teenager is around; and if it’s a group, things get worse.
The symptoms you experience are the same as anxiety . Nervousness , excessive sweating , shortness of breath , rapid heartbeat , numbness of the extremities , dizziness and can lead to a panic attack . All this can happen to you when you are walking down the street and you have to go through an institute, for example, or through an area where the youngest are concentrated.
Ephebiphobia also has psychological symptoms, since the distorted thinking that leads you to see adolescents as a real danger generates other types of obsessive and recurring thoughts . One may not be aware that he suffers from ephebiphobia, but he is aware that his avoidance behavior and the emotional suffering caused by young people is not functional.
Causes of fear of adolescents
We talked about the avoidance behavior that occurs in all phobias and wondered if it is possible to avoid contact with adolescents. It is clear that a certain social isolation is required to avoid young people, which can give us an idea of the risks of suffering from ephebiphobia and not treating it in time.
But to deal with a problem first, you have to understand why it has arisen and that leads us to delve into the cause of fear of adolescents. Or the causes. As with any phobic disorder, the first thing we turn to is the traumatic experience . We can easily imagine a person who in his childhood suffered harassment by his peers and who already in adulthood continues to be related to young people with such a negative emotional charge.
The cultural factor is also present in this phobia. We have already talked about this generational rejection that, if accompanied by a previous anxiety disorder, can lead to a true phobia towards those apathetic, disorderly, irascible, incomprehensible, sometimes violent and always different from previous generations.
Treatment of ephebiphobia
Ephebiphobia is not a frequent disorder, but it is necessary to seek treatment as soon as possible since, in addition, it is often linked to social phobia . Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is generally used to treat fear in adolescents. A change in thought patterns is necessary to stop seeing young people as a danger. And also to stop grouping in the same group what are still individual people with their similarities but also with their differences.
Not all teens are the same . In fact, this stage of life is characterized by the discovery of oneself, which is the beginning of a whole range of independent and different personalities. That they have certain things in common and that many feel the need to feel part of a group does not mean that they cannot have their particularities.
That said, we continue with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to try to transform the avoidance behavior this time. Without distorted thinking it is easier to reason that there is no real reason to avoid teenagers, that you may like them more or less, that you may feel more or less comfortable with them, but that they do not pose any danger .
The habit or avoidance behavior is transformed little by little and with the help of Exposure Therapy . You can start with a visit to the surroundings of an educational center and see how anxiety is reducing because the perception of danger is less and less. But it would also be interesting to introduce the person who suffers from ephebiphobia to some young people who move away from the stereotype of the adolescent so that they discover that, after all, they are people as much or more interesting than adults.
In the case of a phobia, we already know that anxiety problems are very present. So in any treatment for ephebiphobia it is necessary to include relaxation techniques and breathing exercises . The Mindfulness is always a wise move ahead to deal more anxiety phobia and also with a view to preventing a recurrence or new phobias that appear.
Are Teens Dangerous?
This part is complicated because it is true that the stereotype of the adolescent is deeply ingrained in society . Cinema, television and advertising do not exactly help to break these prejudices, but he who seeks, finds.
And it is true that you are going to find unmotivated, arrogant young people, glued to their mobile screen and totally disinterested in what is happening in the world. But it is also true that there are a good number of adolescents involved in social causes , committed to the world around them, with good manners, respectful and who fulfill their obligations.
Are we going to continue promoting that destructive image of adolescents as adults ? That they are going through certain difficulties in their life because it is a stage of discoveries and experimentation, that sometimes they are incomprehensible to their own family as has happened generation after generation and that they move in unknown terrain for adults does not mean that adolescents are dangerous .
But this is already a sociocultural issue that a large part of the adult population should be aware of, not just those who suffer from ephebiphobia.