Human beings can develop fears about anything, and sometimes these fears are irrational and persistent. This is what is known as phobia, a disorder that usually develops as a consequence of a traumatic experience from the past .

Phobias come in many forms. Some of them are very strange as we explain in our article “The 15 rarest phobias that exist”. Some phobic disorders can surprise many people because of the harmlessness of the feared stimulus. A clear example is chronophobia or fear of clocks.

Many readers may wonder how such a useful and harmless device can cause fear. In this article we will answer this question and look at the causes, symptoms and treatment of this disorder.

What is chronophobia

As we said at the beginning of the article, phobias come in many forms. You can check it out in our article Types of phobias: exploring fear disorders.

These irrational fears can be classified as social phobias, agoraphobia, or specific or simple phobias. The latter are distinguished from the former because the phobic stimulus is an object, an activity, a situation or an animal. Phobia of clowns (coulrophobia), of dogs (cinnophobia) and, of course, phobia of watches (chronophobia) belong to this type of phobia .

Phobias fall into the group of anxiety disorders, so anxiety, in addition to extreme fear, is one of the characteristic symptoms of this disorder. People who suffer from chronophobia, in the presence of clocks or their imagination, feel extreme fear, anxiety, confusion, the need to avoid the feared stimulus and many other symptoms that cause discomfort.

The relationship of this phobia to the fear of time or chronophobia

Clocks are objects that tell us the time and allow us to know the moment in time we are in. For the life of the human being today, these devices are very useful.

But some people develop these phobias for different reasons. In some cases, this phobia is associated with chronophobia or fear of the passage of time . This disorder is complex, and according to experts, older people and individuals who are in prison experience it more often. For those in prison, this disorder is called prison neurosis.

  • If you want to know more about this pathology, you can read our article: Chronophobia (fear of the passing of time): causes, symptoms and treatment

Causes of watch phobia

But watch phobia doesn’t just appear as a consequence of chronophobia. The most common cause is a consequence of a traumatic experience, usually during childhood . Chronophobia is developed by classic conditioning, as it occurs by the association of a stimulus that initially provokes a reflex response of fear and another that originally does not provoke it. This latter stimulus is called a neutral stimulus. After these stimuli are presented together, and as a result of the traumatic experience, the neutral stimulus can elicit a fear response.

Ivan Pavlov originally researched this phenomenon; however, the first researcher to succeed in developing a phobia in humans was John B. Watson, an American psychologist who conducted a series of studies that are now considered unethical.

  • To go deeper into this subject, you can read our article "Classic conditioning and its most important experiments"

Symptoms

However, this phobia also has an effect on the behaviour of the subject, who, in the presence of clocks, tends to avoid them. Other characteristic symptoms, known as physical symptoms, are

  • Accelerated heartbeat.
  • Increased heart rate.
  • Feeling of shortness of breath and hyperventilation.
  • Hypersuduration.
  • Dry mouth.
  • Intestinal discomfort
  • Headache.
  • Tension in the muscles.

Treatment

Anxiety disorders are very frequent reasons for consultation in psychology clinics . Among these are phobias, which cause great discomfort. Patients are often aware of the problem they are suffering from, but fear is an emotion that takes place in the primitive brain and not in the neocortex (rational brain) so phobias do not usually respond to logical arguments. The best way to treat a phobia is through exposure therapy, which belongs to the therapeutic model known as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

CBT is a form of psychotherapy that has produced many results, and includes other techniques that are useful for treating phobias, such as relaxation techniques, which help the patient to control the symptoms of this pathology.

One of the most widely used techniques is systematic desensitization, which includes the two previous ones, and consists of gradually exposing the patient to the phobic stimulus . This means that, for example, first the patient is exposed to photographs in which clocks appear, and then, in the last stages of the treatment, the patient can have direct contact with the feared stimulus.

Other types of therapy are being employed successfully today. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy or acceptance and commitment therapy are some examples. In addition, as we explain in our article “8 apps to treat phobias and fears from your smartphone”, new technologies are also at the service of treating phobic disorders.