Pyrophobia is a
fear
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
of
fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products.
At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition ...
, which can be considered irrational if beyond what is considered normal. This phobia is ancient and primordial, perhaps since mankind's discovery of fire. Usually pertaining to man's comprehendable reaction of fire itself, the fear of fire by animals cannot be considered pyrophobic, as animals are thought not to understand its purpose beyond general danger.
Signs and symptoms
When witnessing fire or smoke (even if the fire poses no threat, such as a candle), suspecting a fire is nearby, or (in some cases) visualizing fires, pyrophobes exhibit typical psychological and physiological symptoms of
fear
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
and panic:
acute stress,
fast heartbeat
Tachycardia, also called tachyarrhythmia, is a heart rate that exceeds the normal resting rate. In general, a resting heart rate over 100 beats per minute is accepted as tachycardia in adults. Heart rates above the resting rate may be normal (su ...
,
shortness of breath
Shortness of breath (SOB), also medically known as dyspnea (in AmE) or dyspnoea (in BrE), is an uncomfortable feeling of not being able to breathe well enough. The American Thoracic Society defines it as "a subjective experience of breathing disc ...
, tightness in chest, sweating, nausea, shaking or trembling, dry mouth, needing to go to the bathroom, dizziness and/or fainting. A pyrophobe may also attempt to avoid or flee from fires, and avoid situations where fire may be present (such as a
barbecue
Barbecue or barbeque (informally BBQ in the UK, US, and Canada, barbie in Australia and braai in South Africa) is a term used with significant regional and national variations to describe various cooking methods that use live fire and smoke t ...
or a
campfire
A campfire is a fire at a campsite that provides light and warmth, and heat for cooking. It can also serve as a beacon, and an insect and predator deterrent. Established campgrounds often provide a stone or steel fire ring for safety. Campfires ...
). The severity of pyrophobia can range from inconvenient to heavily disturbing a person's daily functioning.
Causes
The most common cause of pyrophobia is that fire poses a potential threat to life safety (which is identical in animals). However, people who are intensely pyrophobic cannot even get close to or tolerate even a small controlled fire, such as fireplace, bonfire or lit candle. In many cases a bad childhood experience with fire may have triggered the condition.
Treatment
Exposure therapy
Exposure therapy is a technique in behavior therapy to treat anxiety disorders. Exposure therapy involves exposing the target patient to the anxiety source or its context without the intention to cause any danger (desensitization). Doing so is thou ...
is the most common way to treat pyrophobia. This method involves showing patients fires in order of increasing size, from a lit cigarette up to a stove or grill flame.
Another method of treatment is
talk therapy
Talk may refer to:
Communication
* Communication, the encoding and decoding of exchanged messages between people
* Conversation, interactive communication between two or more people
* Lecture, an oral presentation intended to inform or instruct
...
, in which a patient tells a therapist about the cause of this fear. This can calm the patient to make them less afraid of controlled fire.
People can relieve pyrophobia by interacting with other pyrophobes to share their experiences that caused fear. Alternatively, pyrophobia can be treated using
hypnosis
Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologica ...
.
Medication can also be used to treat pyrophobic people, although since it has side effects, the method is not highly recommended.
See also
*
List of phobias
The English suffixes -phobia, -phobic, -phobe (from Greek φόβος ''phobos'', "fear") occur in technical usage in psychiatry to construct words that describe irrational, abnormal, unwarranted, persistent, or disabling fear as a mental diso ...
*
Pyromania
Pyromania is an impulse control disorder in which individuals repeatedly fail to resist impulses to deliberately start fires, to relieve some tension or for instant gratification. The term ''pyromania'' comes from the Greek word (''pyr'', 'fi ...
, its exact opposite
References
{{reflist
Phobias
Fire