VENUSTRAPHOBIA: SYMPTOMS, TREATMENT AND CURIOSITIES - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The venustrafobia or caliginefobia is an anxiety disorder that involves the irrational fear of beautiful women. It should not be confused with gynophobia, which is the fear of women in general.

Tachycardia, dry mouth, a sudden and exaggerated flush on the cheeks accompanying a certain inability to articulate meaningful phrases… Who has this not ever happened to when faced with a tremendously attractive person?

A priori, being with a beautiful woman does not have to cause any problems, on the contrary, it is always nice to have good company. However, there are people for whom such an apparently harmless situation is an ordeal.

If you think this is happening to you and being around beautiful women causes you great discomfort, it is very likely that you are suffering from venustraphobia.

Characteristics of venustraphobia

It is normal that when you meet someone you like and are attracted to, you get nervous, flushed and even stutter, due to the large amount of chemicals that the brain is secreting at that time as a result of excitement.

The problem comes when these symptoms are experienced in a very intense way and cause such discomfort that they prevent any type of contact with attractive and beautiful women.

Although it can affect women, it is men who suffer the most from this phobia. Symptoms may manifest even without having any contact with women, simply observing them in photographs or films.

People who suffer from this problem tend to feel, in addition to shame and shyness, feelings similar to those of an anxiety attack and tend to avoid any type of situations that include attractive women in order to be safe.

So, if when you are surrounded by beautiful women you feel a bit ashamed but you are able to face the situation, don't worry, you don't suffer from this problem.

And the truth is that it can be quite annoying since approximately 50% of the world's population are women. In addition, the book of tastes is not written so within that percentage, the number of women considered beautiful and attractive can be very high.

Symptoms

The symptoms that venustraphobia produces are those of problems grouped within anxiety disorders:

• Tachycardia.
• Feeling short of breath
• Excessive sweating
• Sickness.
• Tremors
• Fear of losing control.
• Feeling of disconnection from reality.

It must be borne in mind that the problem does not manifest itself in the same way in all people, as it depends on their characteristics, what caused the problem, the environment in which it operates, etc.

In the end, the important thing is the degree of discomfort that is felt and how much it interferes in the life of each one.

Causes

In general, most phobias occur as a result of the experience of some negative or traumatic event, except in some cases where the mere observation of such an event may be enough to trigger them.

In the case of venustraphobia, being involved in embarrassing situations due to lack of skills to deal with women of a certain attractiveness, having been teased by one of them or a failed romantic relationship, may be the origin of the problem..

However, this type of problem cannot be reduced to a mere cause-effect relationship (negative event -> fear) because, unfortunately, fear has the ability to feed back on itself. In other words, most of the things you do to avoid being afraid end up encouraging it and delaying its disappearance.

In fact, the most frequent and, after all, the most natural response to fear is to flee. So people avoid what causes fear in order to reduce discomfort.

However, although it may seem paradoxical, the relief you feel at having avoided meeting that beautiful woman is contributing to your continued fear and even to increase the next time.

Cognitive distortions

Other things that affect the maintenance of venustraphobia (and any phobia) are cognitive distortions: rumination, catastrophic beliefs, self-criticism, anticipation of aversive situations… that do nothing other than feed the monster.

Among the most common cognitive distortions in this disorder we can find:

• Divination of the thoughts of others: "He is thinking that what pints I have."
• Making negative predictions without sufficient evidence: "I'm going to see her and I'm sure to start stuttering."
• Look at the negative and ignore or disqualify the positive aspects: “I went to talk to her and for what? I have made a fool of myself once more ”.
• Generalization: "I will never be able to talk to any woman."
• Magnify or minimize the situation: “It was horrible, as soon as he looked at me I was very red and I did not know where to go. I'm sure he won't want to see me again ”.
• Emotional reasoning: "If this makes me feel so bad, it will be for something."
• Personalization: "He hasn't stopped to talk to me because he knows I'm a freak."
• Dichotomous or "all or nothing" thinking: "If I can't even talk to a woman who is pretty, I'm going to fail at everything."
• Negative labels: "I'm worthless", "I'm useless."
• Demands: "I should be braver."

Treatment

Venustraphobia is a little known disorder in itself as it is identified as a variant of social phobia, which is why it is usually intervened in a similar way.

There are several techniques to combat this type of phobia, both from the branch of psychiatry and from psychology:

Pharmacotherapy

The most used in these cases are antidepressant drugs (SSRIs) and anxiolytics, which can serve as treatment for extremely serious cases.

However, numerous studies have shown greater efficacy of drug treatment when it has been supplemented with psychological therapy, rather than alone. Its use is not recommended during treatment with exposure techniques.

This is because the drugs act on the body to decrease the symptoms of anxiety, which makes you feel good at the moment. However, it does not eliminate the problem as the inability to interact with attractive women is still present.

Cognitive-behavioral techniques (CBT)

Among the techniques recommended from the cognitive behavioral approach we can find:

• Cognitive therapy: it is based on the cognitive restructuring procedure, by means of which one works on automatic and negative thoughts. The patient is taught to identify them and then provide alternatives to those thoughts in order to eliminate the discomfort they produce.
• Relaxation techniques: the goal is to ensure that the person is able to remain calm and reduce activation in phobic situations. The most used are Jacobson's Progressive Relaxation and Schultz's Autogenic Training.
• Exposure: it is considered the star product in the approach to phobias.

It consists of gradually exposing the patient to attractive women so that he can gradually get used to their presence and in turn learn to control his fears until they disappear.

To do this, a list of situations must be made and ordered according to the degree of discomfort they produce. Once done, the first situation in the hierarchy that the patient will have to face is chosen.

• Social skills training: on many occasions, people who suffer from this disorder are due to the fact that they lack the appropriate skills to cope with women and, above all, if they are attracted to them.

Training in social skills is usually the step prior to exposure, so that the patient has sufficient tools to deal with the situation.

Venustraphobia in film and television

Despite being a little-known disorder as such, it has been exploited a lot in the cinematographic field and in television series. You can find multiple movie plots in which a male character appears who is terrified in the presence of attractive women.

Without going any further, the actor and film director Woody Allen is very assiduous in this type of argument in which he himself represents the neurotic character who feels intimidated by women.

If you remember the mythical anime series Dragon Ball, Yamcha's character suffers from this disorder, not being able to even see Bulma without fainting.

Also, in the series The Big Bang Theory the character of Raj appears, who has a high inability to relate to women who seem beautiful to him.

Other examples are films in which the protagonist is the typical misfit who every time he sees the head of the cheerleaders becomes blocked and becomes very anxious, until he manages to overcome his fear and speak to her.

References

1. Alfano, Candice A., Beidel, Deborah C. (2011), Social anxiety in adolescents and young adults: Translating developmental science into practice. American Psychological Association.
2. Beck, J. (2010), Interpersonal processes in the anxiety disorders: Implications for understanding psychopathology and treatment, American Psychological Association.
3. Beidel, Deborah C., Turner, Samuel M. (2007), Shy children, phobic adults: Nature and treatment of social anxiety disorders American Psychological Association.
4. Feske, U., Chambless, DL, (1995) Cognitive behavioral versus exposure only treatment for social phobia: a meta-analysis, Behavior Therapy, 26, 695-720.
5. Rapee, RM, Heimberg, RG, (1997), A cognitive-behavioral model of anxiety in Social phobia, Behavior Therapy, 35, (8), 741-756.
6. Veale, D., (2003), Treatment of social phobia, Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 9, 258-264.