Electricity is used to power our homes, offices and even cars. It is often considered a clean energy with multiple ways to create more of it. This can be accomplished through wind farms, solar power, algae, coal, hydro and nuclear. Electricity is seen as friendly to the environment, renewable and useful in powering everything from your stove top to your lap top. Yet for all its benefits electricity has a hard time overcoming fear. Individuals who live with the fear of electricity are said to have Electrophobia.
Living with this fear can be difficult because there are so many things tied to the need for electricity. The phobic personality may not have a problem with the use of electricity as long as someone else is responsible for flipping the switch, plugging it in or manipulating an electrical cord.
What Causes Electrophobia?
This fear is typically accepted when someone experiences a personal encounter with electricity in which they were shocked. The significant tingle or even physical burn can instill something more deeply felt than a general respect for electricity.
When I was high school a teen who was a couple of years younger was electrocuted in a farming incident. Experiencing a similar scenario can also result in an already fearful personality accepting Electrophobia as a fear worth embracing.
An overly anxious parent or relative can also contribute to a sense of fear acceptance. Since we follow by example it becomes easy to accept a fear observed by someone you love and trust.
Symptoms of Electrophobia
In worst cases this phobic personality may work to eliminate all uses of electricity in their home. This might mean burning candles for light, using a fireplace for heat and cooking food only on a gas stove that is not plugged in for electrical convenience. Others will simply refuse to personally start any electronic device.
Other symptoms may also include…
- Panic attacks
- Air hunger
- Trembling
- Nausea
- Crying
- Elevated heart rate
- Social anxiety
These individuals may not even want to experience a public setting simply because of the potential of electrical hazards.Their fear may embarrass the phobic personality, but they may feel they have little choice but to react to the fear trigger.
How to Overcome Electrophobia
Gaining a clear understanding of electricity and how positive and negative forces work together to create electricity can be helpful in at least informing the logic sensors in our brains that electricity can be used safely and for personal benefit.
A therapist can take recovery to the next level by learning more about what initially caused the fear and if that fear has a few friends. If so the therapist may need to deal with individual fears while giving you tools to use in managing a better response to the fear.
Even if you were personally injured by contact with electricity there can still be an acceptance of the technology and a reduction in your personal fear response so that you can engage culture again without embarrassment.
The fear of electricity is also referred to as:
- Electricity fear
- Electrophobia
