User:Alexa0406/Myrmecophobia

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Adding to the why myrmecophobia is possible, here is a list of symptoms that come with having the fear of ant. Myrmecophobia can cause psychological symptoms and physical symptoms. In psychological symptoms people can experience anxiety, intrusive thoughts, sleeping problems, and avoidance. In physical symptoms people can experience sweating, increased heart rate, shortness of breaths, tumbling, panic, nausea, dry mouth, dizziness, headaches, and numbness. "Myrmecophobia may be the result of earlier traumatic experiences that can be directly (or indirectly) linked to the object or situational fear, but this is not always the case because phobic responses can also be inherited as learned behaviours from the social context in which they were brought up" This is informing us that having this phobia might not be triggered by it self but by other causes like things that you have experienced earlier in lfe that reminds you of something that can connect to ant or insects.

Adding on to ways reduce or over come this phobia is by therapy, not only regular therapy but exposure therapy. In Psych Times studies "Exposure therapy may be able to help reduce the symptoms of myrmecophobia also. This form of therapy would work by slowly exposing the patient to ants. Depending on the severity of the patients myrmecophobia, the exposure therapy treatment may start off by showing the patient pictures of ants, videos of ants, and then to ultimately have them be near ants in real life with little to no irrational anxiety." This can be one of the many was to reduce the fear of ants and to insects, futhermore there is more therapies that help with this fear, for example, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT is a therapy that will help by changing the mind perspective on many things and it will help overcome any complications, in this case it will help with myrmecophobia by making you calm down and process what you are thinking and feeling so you can realize what is the reason you feel the way you are feeling.