Do you like wine? It is one of the most appreciated drinks and they say it has many health benefits, as long as you do not drink it in excess. But there are people who fear wine. Yes, as you read, the fear of wine exists and is called oenophobia . Do you want to know what this disorder consists of? We tell you about it in our dictionary of phobias .
What is oenophobia
Oenophobia is the fear of wine. It is not so strange to us after learning about that other phobic disorder called mephobia , which is the fear of alcohol. But it is true that it causes some surprise and even skepticism. Because we understand that it is an irrational fear in the face of a supposed danger . And what danger can wine have?
Of course, drinking a lot of wine is a real health hazard. That alcohol in excess is dangerous, but from there to panic when you see a bottle of wine goes a world. Nor is it that we have to look for a logical explanation for phobias, right? Since they are precisely characterized by their irrationality and their excessive degree of fear .
Symptoms of oenophobia
Oenophobia or enophobia causes the typical reactions of anxiety when the person who suffers from it is in front of the stimulus. It is no longer that that person is terrified of having a glass of wine , but that the mere presence of wine around him produces an immense fear.
And it is difficult to avoid wine in your day to day. You can go to a cafeteria to have a drink and you will surely see more than one glass of wine in that place. That’s when anxiety shoots up , when you find it hard to breathe, when you start to get dizzy, your legs and arms fall asleep and if you don’t run out of there, you may experience the dreaded panic attack.
All for a glass of wine? No, all because of a phobic disorder called oenophobia. It is not difficult to imagine the limitations that this phobia imposes . It is very easy to avoid drinking wine throughout your life; It is not a problem. What is more difficult is avoiding encountering wine in many of the situations that you experience every day.
Causes of oenophobia
No. Definitely wine is not something you can avoid . You will see it at a family reunion, when you meet your friends and maybe at your work too. You will see it when you are spending time in a cafeteria or when you go out to eat out. You don’t have to drink it, true, but the fear is there, next to that glass of wine that you don’t have to touch.
The question we all ask ourselves is, how does fear of wine develop? We are talking about a totally irrational fear, even though we know that alcohol can cause infinite problems . And precisely the excessive use of alcohol by one of the parents, for example, can be the cause of this oenophobia.
As a traumatic experience, when a person experiences complicated and painful situations due to wine, it can be understood that they develop this phobic disorder. Sometimes it is inevitable to relate the stimulus to the danger , even if it is an increased and distorted danger.
Treatment of oenophobia
You may think that not drinking wine is not a problem in life at all. And that is true. But don’t you drink wine because you don’t like it or because it scares you? At the moment when fear conditions your life, be it in basic aspects or not, you have to seek treatment because that phobia can lead you to suffer other ones .
The treatment of phobias goes through seeking psychological help, it is not something we can do on our own. The psychologist will examine the causes of that fear and will give you useful strategies to face the most feared situations. And any therapy to overcome a phobia includes the usual practice of relaxation techniques , with which you will soon see how the anxiety you suffer is considerably reduced.