Androphobia: Fear of Men

Fear of men, androphobia, it is unfortunately more common than we want it to be. Recently I wrote an article about fear of women, but of course there are also people who are afraid of men.

This is often a more intense fear, as men are more often strong enough to physically do something to you than women.

In this blog article, we take a closer look at fear of men, where it comes from, when the fear is real and what you can do to still be less bothered by it so you can date and work with men in a relaxed way.

Androphobia

Androphobia is the fear of men and for blogs like this I always scour scientific studies, but this time something really crazy happened. There is hardly any scientific research on fear of men. There are men who are afraid of things, but nothing about women who are afraid of men and where that comes from.

Perhaps this is because fear of men makes pretty good sense on its own. Men are stronger than women, ergo men are something women should be afraid of.

But in our society, this is not at all convenient. After all, by no means all men are violent or want to harm other people. In addition, men and women work together in many companies, and if there is (suddenly) a fear of men, this obviously complicates that cooperation.

For most fears, at least, it often arises because a traumatic thing has happened [1]. For example, in fear of heights , you may have fallen down the stairs once or something similar. For fear of cats, you may have been scratched once.

With fear of men, then, it makes sense that you have once experienced that a man is simply stronger and can do you harm. The annoying thing is that you can generalize what you experienced with that man to all men, or to all men who have characteristics of that man.

For example, you suddenly become afraid of all men with black hair, or blue eyes or with tattoos or whatever he had that you could be afraid of.

Women are more likely to develop this fear than men. So it often comes from an unpleasant experience, such as:

1. Child abuse/abuse
2. Intimidation by someone in authority, such as your father, teacher or boss.
3. Sexual assault, rape or stalking[2].
4. Being bullied by a man.
5. Being robbed by a man.
6. Indirectly come into contact with something negative, for example, if a friend has experienced something nasty with a man[3].

And that, in our society where men and women work and live together, can make it difficult to have your day relaxed.

You can also get the fear of men because one of your parents had this fear and you have adopted the behavior of, say, your mother (or father with this fear).

By the way, you don't have to be afraid of all men. For example, you may trust your own man quite well, but just find it difficult to be around other men. Because of this, you may also avoid being in situations where there are men. This can make work very difficult, for example.

Overcoming fear of men

Overcoming a fear is often done by exposing yourself to the fear (not literally exposing, but by being around men once so). You can do this very gradually.

Another way is through cognitive behavioral therapy and this combines well with hypnotherapy[4].

Hypnotherapy, for example, helps you shift your focus . If you are afraid of men, you are often totally focused on the danger of men as well. For example, if you are outside and want to go shopping, this "nice shopping" can be ruined because you want to keep an eye on the men around you all the time to see if they are not doing something "dangerous."

Now while it is helpful to be somewhat mindful of your surroundings, you are only human and this takes an awful lot of energy.

So with hypnotherapy you can shift your focus from "all men," to just the men in a 3-meter radius around you and especially to that cute dress you're dying to try on.

Research also shows that hypnotherapy helps you become less preoccupied with danger, when it is not at all helpful and your anxiety otherwise hinders you from living a normal life[5].

Hypnotherapy to figure out the problem

There are a number of ways in which fear of men can be a problem:

1. You've been through something nasty and haven't had proper closure.
2. You've experienced something nasty and as a result have developed negative beliefs about men.

In the first case, it is often the case that you have experienced something nasty that triggered your fight, flight or freeze response, but because you have not been able to shut it down properly you remain in that active state.

This makes it difficult for men to relax and this can even lead to sleep problems.

In the second case, you may be otherwise relaxed, but just think very negatively about men. In that case, you have more limiting beliefs that make it difficult in everyday life to treat men the same way as women.

To find out what your problem with men is, regression is often used. Especially if you're not quite sure what caused the anxiety.

In fact, many beliefs that create fears are created in your childhood. You saw something, heard something or something happened and poof: Your childhood brain came up with a rule about how life works and how the world works.

This may even be a rule about men.

With regression, you find out what happened to make you fear men now. Sometimes these can be surprising memories, such as:

1. Hearing conversation between your mother and a friend about an unpleasant event.
2. You were bullied by a classmate.
3. You saw a movie you were too young for.
4. Etc. etc.

In cases like this, there are often limiting beliefs that can be resolved by engaging in mindful conversation with people from that period. You imagine that you were that age again and so you enter into the conversation at that time.

This can already do much to resolve a limiting belief that causes fear of men.

Hypnotherapy to resolve trauma

However, sometimes there is something more going on and you have experienced a traumatic event that you just can't get closure. A variety of work may then be needed, such as:

1. Fixing the schedule about the world you have.
2. Making it clear to your subconscious that the situation is over.

After all, something is traumatic when it is totally unexpected. For example, have you always had a good relationship with your father and brothers and suddenly out of the blue you are attacked by a man or even "friend." Then this totally does not fit in with the normal and positive beliefs you have about men.

Your beliefs turned out not to be true and that is a big shock to some people. This is often why people in a criminal case want to have the conversation with the offender because they want to "understand" or they want to exercise their right to speak for "closure."

But very often this is not possible and then you are left feeling that the moment is not over yet.

In that case, like regression in mind, you can have this closure.

If despite that you always remain in alert mode and even sleep poorly because of your fear of men, the fast-phobia technique can be performed.

This technique helps your subconscious to realize that the situation is over and that you don't have to be afraid of all the men who are not in your social circle.

Of course, you won't immediately become best friends with strange men, and will be careful not to get mugged and that no one puts something in your drink while going out.

However, you will enjoy life more again after implementing this technique.

This is what hypnotherapists help people with anxiety. It doesn't matter what fear you have.

Learn Hypnosis

Do you want to help people overcome their fear of men? Then knowledge of hypnosis is incredibly helpful. Come to our free master class for an introduction.

Or register for one of our events and trainings. There you will see demonstrations of the above techniques and learn directly how to make people feel at least comfortable.

You can take the training both in class and live online. Online, you join the classroom class. There is plenty of assistance for 1-on-1 attention even if you take the classes online.

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