Possible Androphobia (fear of men)
[I haven't been clinically diagnosed with this, just diagnosed with PTSD] No graphics used
Around 2 years back, I was gan*rap** and nearly killed by 4 strangers and before that was stalked, harassed and was almost thrown ac** by different 10-15 men I have since then developed a debalitating fear of men. Incident happened in November 2019 so fortunately soon pandemic started and I am safe at my home.
I cry seeing men over video conferences too, I cannot look anyone in their eyes, I start feeling an urge to hide myself, run away and cry even when virtually any man is even a bit dominating or taking up space or talking to me. I am okay with hearing the ones who have soft voices but the ones who even speak a little loud, I feel they are shouting at me, at home I cannot even stand near my dad, I feel shaky, few days back someone accidently touched me while walking and i kneeled on the ground crying publicaly. I cannot look at pictures of men for longer than few seconds. I have a guy friend who supports me a lot so I do trust him but I cannot imagine myself standing next to him physically. I cannot see even music videos in which group of men perform together. Can't see groups.
I don't hate men, it's just I fear even the innocent ones...how will I survive with so much fear...I leave important online college lectures, important opportunities...
@energeticThinker3129
Hello. I am very sorry that you had to experience such traumatic experience.
To me phobias sounds like having extreme and unrational fear to something that your brain has no reasons to be fear of. Like I have an extreme fear to flies, or to small spiders, or to plants.
Having an extreme fear to dogs after being almost killed by a 20 dogs... I am sure if I would call that a phobia. I just make the difference because it may be important making a distintion in order to find the solution.
My first question to you is about this. Do you want to find a solution? I mean, do you want to get along with men like you (may) did before the event?
Lets ilustrate that question with an example of a climber that has phobia to ropes.
So if Ms climber wants to climb everest but have phobia of ropes, she may found a substitude for ropes, or may find a way to solve that problem (maybe wearing gloves do not touch the ropes).
But if Ms climber do not want to be close to a mountain ever again, and instead go to the beach, that phobia of ropes may be a symptom of something more going on.
Ms climber could also want to just walk some small nice mountains in company of others but stay away of ropes and big mountains.
So what do you want for your future?
Now I will share some ideas to "lessen" the fear, just in case you think some of them could be useful. The first one is to search for professional help, on phobias and/or trauma.
Second one is to work your fear. There are some different aproaches to dealing with phobias. Hipnosis, inmersion in the fear (like enter a room full of spiders and be forced there for a day so your body is forced to understand that there are not that bad) I would not go this route because you may have a trauma, and this could make things worse. The one I like more is to make small advances.
So you could start with men that are totally un-agressive to you, like for example seen a conference of Stephen Hawking, or maybe see videos of men who have strong disabilities and thus you can see them as not menacing. And may small baby steps from there.
If you are interested in a certain video made by a menacing man, you could get the audio of that video translated to text and just read the content (for example). Or try to work arround the limits of your fears.
To finish this wall of text, I would add that many people neglet their fears or get angry on that fears. Fears have a purpose, protection purpose. So listening to your fears and get protective measures (even if other people think they are silly) may be of great effect to reduce those fears, as they body may understand that as you are taking fears into consideration and doing protective measures, those fears are no longer needed.
I hope you can find a way to deal with this and be kind to yourself.
Hugs. =)
First of all, take a deep breath. Everything will be OK.
Tell yourself this. I am sorry that you had to go through such a traumatic experience. I had a similar experience to yours and I understand how painful and traumatic it can be.
I suggest taking care of yourself and being gentle. Once you're ready, you can slowly open up more. Being in the safety of your home is probably the best right now.
Hugs <3
@energeticThinker3129 Hi, i can't possible understand what you are going through, but you are in the right spot. It's "normal" to feel fear when you are exposed to your object of your trauma, but in order to be able to live a normal life, you need to overcome it.
CBT states that in order to be able to get over your fear, you need to be exposed to it, for example if you are afraid of heights, you should go on a ladder, if you are afraid of spiders you should expose to them.
Now for your case, when you are dealing with trauma, it's impossible to be exposed to the trauma that caused it, but what you can do is expose mentally, gradually to the thing you fear the most, 15 minutes a day (even less in the beginning). So fantasise (not a sexual one, but a normal interaction with a men) for a few minutes every day.
The second step can be as described by meandros to expose to male that pose no treat, you can start with kids at the beginning and slowly increase the age of the persons you expose to.
I hope this helps and you can overcome your fears! Lots of love!