Fear of feet seems very crazy, but it is a fear that many people suffer from. Did you know that the rapper Puff Daddy suffers from this fear? With him, it is mainly the fear of toes and if one toe is longer than the big toe. When he was still going on dates, women also had to show their feet, so he knew immediately whether they suffered from that "turn-off" or not.
What is podophobia?
If you suffer from podophobia, you suffer from a fear of feet. This can include fear of other people's feet, like the rapper Puff Daddy has, and/or fear of your own feet.
Many people with foot anxiety dislike seeing feet. Feet are either dirty or dangerous, depending on the cause of foot anxiety.
If you are afraid of your own feet, you also prefer to keep them hidden. For example, you then think your feet are ugly or dirty. Most people with fear of their own feet always keep their socks on, even when sleeping.
Foot phobia symptoms
Do you feel like you suffer from foot anxiety but aren't sure? Then check if you suffer from any of these symptoms when you see your own feet, someone else's or a specific type of foot:
- Your breathing changes when you see your feet (usually faster).
- You think about feet all the time and what bad things they can do.
- The sweat breaks out on you.
- You get vibrations.
- You suffer from nausea.
- Feeling giddy.
- You hide your own feet or ask people to hide their feet.
- You don't want to talk about feet or topics related to them, such as socks and/or shoes.
Are these or any of these symptoms recognizable? If so, you may be suffering from foot phobia.
Why is fear of feet bad?
The fear of feet is still something to laugh about in the case of Puff Daddy . The biggest drawback is that he misses out on the love of his life, but if you are afraid of your own feet, it's a different story.
Because people with foot phobia for their own feet often keep their socks on, the chances of developing fungi and allergies are greater. In doing so, it is important to keep an eye on your feet to prevent such fungus from leading to an infection or worse.
So because it can be a danger to your health and social life, it is important to overcome foot phobia.
Overcoming foot phobia: The cause
Sometimes overcoming a phobia is incredibly simple. When you know why you are afraid of feet, sometimes getting rid of it can be a piece of cake.
There are multiple causes of foot anxiety:
Trauma: Where someone kicked you barefoot.
Transferred: Anxiety can be transmitted from parents to children.
Sore feet: If your feet bother you, fear of the pain can lead to foot phobia.
Adrenaline deficiency: People with anxieties and deficiencies can become fearful of feet more quickly.
In cases of trauma, pain or inheriting your parents' foot phobia, hypnosis can do an awful lot to overcome the fear of feet. Trauma processing can already do an awful lot. To process trauma, neuro linguistic programming is generally used. For example, if you got the fear because someone kicked you with bare feet, an anchor technique can make you think of feet without directly linking it to the traumatic event.
If you suffer from sore feet due to a condition, hypnosis can help you suffer less. In fact, hypnosis helps deal with chronic pain and temporary pain. There are several techniques that a hypnosis expert uses to reduce pain. Visualizations are very important for this purpose.
In inheriting the fear of feet, you have inherited beliefs from your parents about feet. For example, your father or mother may have reacted frantically if you didn't have your slippers on once or if a stranger came into the house wearing flip-flops. Depending on your age and depending on how often your parents reacted separately to feet, this may have caused you to make the connection somewhere that feet are scary.
A Socratic conversation under hypnosis can then help you see that there is no basis for your foot phobia, allowing you to quickly learn new beliefs about feet with hypnosis.
Don't have a clear idea where your foot phobia comes from? Then a hypnosis expert can help you with regression. Because many beliefs that create fears originate in childhood, you are not always aware of that moment. With regression you can go back to that very moment and with the knowledge of now you can view that event with more emotional distance. This can already drastically reduce foot anxiety.
Confronting foot phobia
The best way to overcome your fear is to confront it. You can do this with a hypnosis expert. You first make a top 10 fears related to feet. For example:
- Talking feet.
- See feet in a photo or video.
- Feet 10 feet away.
- Feet in transparent tights.
- Feet with toes longer than the big toe.
- Feet with a chalky nail.
- Feet with swimmer's eczema.
- Feet with "normal" toes.
- Hairy Feet.
- Wet Feet.
If some of the examples on this list make you feel impassive, you can assume you have some form of foot phobia. Next, sort the list from least worst fear to worst fear. Then you will work with the hypnosis expert to confront the fear. You start with the smallest fear, for example, talking about feet. As you do this, the hypnosis expert teaches you techniques for staying calm and being able to ignore the physical reaction to fear that keeps your fear from getting worse.
The better this goes, the further you can go. For example, you then start looking at the type of feet in pictures or videos and then in real life. Until you overcome the fear.
Changing beliefs about feet
If you have beliefs that cause foot anxiety, you can also change them with self-hypnosis. The suggestions you repeat during self-hypnosis to get new non-anxious beliefs about feet depend on the very beliefs that are causing the fear.
This is then countered by positive beliefs about feet. For example:
Belief: Feet with uneven toes are dirty.
Suggestion: The shape of the foot is somewhat different than the hygiene of the foot.
Belief: Feet make other people sick.
Suggestion: As long as you don't touch the feet of someone with foot disease, there is nothing wrong.
Belief: Feet are a signal of danger.
Suggestion: People need feet to walk.
These are just examples of suggestions. Depending on your beliefs about feet, you may get other suggestions to take home.
Before you begin self-hypnosis at home, you will practice self-hypnosis with the hypnosis expert. You will then learn how best to relax to bring yourself into hypnosis. This usually requires you to wear nice-fitting clothes, have a comfortable place in your home, and then it's all about your own relaxation and breathing.
Depending on the therapist and anxiety, you may be given an mp3 to listen to just to overcome your foot phobia, or you may have to repeat the suggestions out loud yourself in order to suffer less from fearful beliefs that way.
To practice, you can already start self-hypnosis below.
Post-hypnotic suggestion against foot anxiety
If you find that your fear of feet greatly affects your behavior and you can no longer focus when co-workers or people at a party arrive wearing open sandals, a post-hypnotic suggestion can help you stay yourself during such a moment.
Usually a post-hypnotic suggestion is given at the end of a guided visualization on how to positively deal with your foot phobia. It is a kind of assignment about what you can do when faced with your fear. A post-hypnotic suggestion can be worded in the following way:
"....If you are unexpectedly confronted with your fear of feet you remain calm. You look your interlocutor in the eye and listen intently. You stay focused on what you are doing and relax your body. The moment of fear passes and nothing else happens."
In such a post-hypnotic suggestion, your subconscious is reminded to stay calm in a tense situation that actually prevents the tension from developing.
Hypnosis can cause you to overcome your anxiety in many ways. If you would like to learn more about this or help others overcome fears, you can join the free online master class or enroll directly in one of the training courses of the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands.
Also pin this handy infographic:
Sources:
https://psychologenie.com/podophobia-fear-of-feet
