Everyone, as the years go by, gets older . As time goes by, people accept that there is nothing we can do to change this situation. However, some people experience the irrational fear of growing old, which is known as gerontophobia or gerascophobia, as they suffer great anxiety in the face of physical changes and the consequences that reaching old age has for a person.

However, other individuals experience a great fear of the passage of time, something that causes them great discomfort. This phobia is called chronophobia, and in this article we will know its characteristics, its causes, its symptoms and its treatment.

  • Collection of famous phrases about time

What is chronophobia

Chronophobia is a specific phobia and therefore an anxiety disorder . It is an irrational fear that creates great discomfort and anxiety in the person who suffers it, which tends to avoid the phobic stimulus in an attempt to reduce the negative symptoms associated with this disorder.

According to experts, the elderly and people in prison experience it more often. In the latter case, it has been coined “prison neurosis”.

As for the elderly, they are near the end of their lives and may experience high levels of anxiety over time, which can make them feel time slipping away and experience strong fear, anxiety and distress.

Chronophobia can cause significant and serious disruption to the lives of people who suffer from it, since they are constantly in contact with the phobic stimulus, that is, the element they fear. No one can stop time, so this phobia can develop at any time and in any place. When anxious responses appear, it is difficult for the person to avoid the feared situation.

Causes of this phobia

The causes of this phobia are not clear, because the phobic stimulus that elitist is something more complex and abstract than other specific phobias, such as fear of flying, fear of clowns or fear of spiders.

The vast majority of specific phobias are caused by a traumatic experience during childhood . This occurs through an associative learning process called classical conditioning, since an association is produced between a stimulus that provokes a reflexive response of fear and another that at first does not produce it, but with the joint exposure ends up producing it.

This concept, initially researched by Ivan Pavlov, became known mainly through the experiments of John B. Watson, an American psychologist who conducted a series of studies, which today would be considered unethical, with a young boy named Albert. At the beginning of the experiment, the subject enjoyed the company of a beautiful white rat, but after successive trials, he was unable to approach the animal because of the intense fear he suffered in front of the harmless creature.

  • To understand how this type of associative learning takes place, you can read our article: “Classical Conditioning and its Most Important Experiments”

Other causes of this phobic disorder

However, in the case of chronophobia, the development of this irrational fear has much to do with the irrational beliefs that the person has, and with the individual’s lack of acceptance of what life is.

Some experts claim that there may also be a genetic origin, for example, adrenal insufficiency, which causes the adrenal glands to fail to produce adequate amounts of hormones such as cortisol or aldosterone, which tends to make a person more susceptible to anxiety and fear . Some people may also have an anxious personality type, which may make the disorder easier to develop.

On the other hand, other health professionals believe that people are biologically predisposed to suffer from irrational fears, since fears have to do with the primitive brain, and phobias are produced by such non-cognitive associations, so they usually do not respond to logical arguments. This, which may have been very adaptive in the past and has contributed to the survival of human beings over the centuries, can cause this type of disorder.

Symptoms of fear of the passage of time

Like any phobia, fear of the passage of time causes a number of characteristic symptoms. The person suffers great anxiety as a result of his irrational ideas about the passage of time. Confusion, daze, lack of concentration, etc, are some of the cognitive symptoms that the person experiences .

In addition, a number of physical and physiological symptoms occur, such as the following:

  • Headache
  • Dizziness
  • Shortness of breath
  • Hot flush
  • Nausea and Vomiting
  • Tremors
  • Dry mouth
  • Palpitations

Treatment and therapy

Phobias are common disorders, so there are many studies on the effectiveness of treatment. These studies indicate that psychotherapy is really useful, especially cognitive behavioural therapy.

This type of therapy includes different techniques, but the most prominent to treat phobic disorders are breathing techniques and exposure techniques (real or imagined). One technique that includes both techniques is systematic desensitization , in which the patient is exposed to their fear and at the same time is taught a series of strategies that allow them to confront their irrational fear in the best positive way.

For this type of phobia, Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy, which focus on acceptance, context and how the patient relates to the situation and the problem, are also very useful.

In severe cases, pharmacological treatment is indicated, but always in combination with psychological therapy.