Cynophobia - Fear of dogs

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Cynophobia is the fear of dogs or rabies. The origin of the word is derived from the Greek kyno meaning dog and phobia meaning fear, cynophobia is considered to be a specific phobia. Typically, the person suffering from cynophobia experiences fear with anxiety even though there is no thereat at all. A phobia is an irrational fear of something and has no real harm like fear of darkens or fear of spiders, the problem with Cynophobia is that there is a possibility even if a very small one that the dog may attack the person, and that's way the person may be convinced that there is a real possibility for harm. Cynophobia is irrational fear of dogs, the difference between normal fear of dogs and cynophobia is that the person suffering from cynophobia will do his best to avoid approaching or passing by a dog, to an extent that he may stay at home to avoid his neighbor’s dog. Cynophobia, or fear of dogs, is an extremely common specific phobia. Although snake and spider phobias are even more prevalent, the average person is far more likely to encounter dogs in his daily life. A phobia of dogs can be devastating.

What are the causes?

Usually the cause for any phobia is a traumatic experience associated with the feared object, in the case of cynophobia being chased by a dog when being a kid may result in acqiring cynophobia.the negative experience need not have affected you directly. many parents warn children about approaching strange dogs. A child's fertile imagination combined with an incomplete or even erroneous understanding of dog behavior could lead to a full-blown phobia of dogs.

Symptoms:-

Individuals with phobias like Cynophobia typically experience symptoms such as breathlessness, nausea, fear of dying, dizziness, excessive sweating, dry mouth, feeling sick, heart palpitations, and inability to speak or think clearly.

Treatment:-

Like all animal phobias, the fear of dogs responds quite well to treatment. Cognitive behavioral techniques such as systematic desensitiztion and flooding are designed to help remove the fear and encourage more helpful coping skills.

Cognitive behavior therapy:

Cognitive behavior therapy will help you change the way you think of dogs and so you may start to fear them less, cognitive behavior therapy is based on the idea that thoughts trigger the emotions and then the emotions triggers the behavior, by controlling the first thing which is thoughts we can control the emotions (fear of dogs) and the behavior (avoiding dogs)

Hypnosis:-
To change your irrational ideas about dogs: usually people with Cynophobia have got strong beliefs that the dog is going to attack them at any moment or that dogs are harmful creatures, by using hypnosis you can install new beliefs about dogs or remove those irrational ones.
NLP:-
Can be used to treat Cynophobia, usually when you fear dogs you will be having false mental image in your mind about the dog, this image may be picturing the dog as being aggressive and having big teeth, by using NLP you can change the false image of the dog in your mind to something more realistic and so your irrational fears may ease.

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