Vagrants are people who have no permanent place to live and are therefore forced to roam the streets at least during the day. Whether you are in a poor or rich country, you will always have vagrants. Even if you have a social shelter, sometimes people don't know the way to it or even enjoy wandering around. Yet many people are afraid of these vagrants and that is a great pity, because it is often unnecessary.
To overcome the fear of vagrants, in this article I will discuss that fear and techniques to overcome it.
Fear of Bums
Fear of vagrants can arise in several ways. For example, your parents may instill in you that vagrants are dangerous and that you are therefore better off staying away from them.
One of the earliest memories of a friend of mine was going to the free market in Amsterdam with her parents and seeing an unkempt man sleeping on some cardboard boxes. His hair was tangled and his toenails were unkempt. Her father explained that that was a vagrant and that he had to sleep somewhere anyway and that she had best leave him alone so he could rest enough.
To a child, that man looked pretty scary and so a small uneasy feeling about hobos arose. Gossip in elementary school about weird people walking around with shopping carts full of stuff didn't help reduce fear of vagrants either, rather the fear increased.
The fear didn't stick, however, because in her adult life she saw an old classmate turn into a bum. He had all sorts of emotional problems and had apparently been evicted from his childhood home. A terrible condition.
That bums are people and each have their own story made her know she didn't have to be afraid of bums, after all, she had had a normal conversation with her former classmate.
Unfortunately, that trust was often too high, because when she was walking through Groningen with a friend, a tramp suddenly lashed out at her with a belt. So that was less fun and it also made her more careful about which vagrants should be kept at a distance.
Origin of fear of vagrants
So the fear of vagrants can be passed down from your parents depending on how your parents view it.
Anxiety can also arise from an unpleasant experience you have had with vagrants or from hearing from other people that they have had unpleasant experiences with vagrants.
Even if you have never come into contact with vagrants before, you may have a fear of vagrants. It is then, for example, the fear of the unknown, because vagrants do not dress "normally" and often look less groomed than people who do have a home.
Symptoms of bum anxiety
If you see a vagrant, you may experience the following symptoms if you have fear of vagrants.
- Increased heart rate
- Vibrate
- Difficulty breathing
- Nausea
- Runaway
If you suffer from these symptoms when you see a bum it may be wise to seek help to overcome the fear.
Hatred for wanderers
If you have repeated unpleasant experiences, that fear can turn into hatred for vagrants. You just barely kick a bum when he/she sells a magazine for 1 euro at the supermarket.
Reduce fear and hatred of vagrants
The fear and hatred of vagrants can be reduced in several ways. First, it is important to see the vagrant as a human being again; how a person becomes a vagrant is good to know.
Seeing wanderer as human: Becoming a wanderer
People who become vagrants often do not do so by choice. Financial and mental problems make it difficult to properly organize their lives and maintain housing and also social contacts that ensure they have a roof over their heads.
In the process, mental problems can be treated with medication, and you often keep it in your home. If you no longer have a home and you need medications for mental disorders, it is often difficult to store them properly, and this puts them further into a spiral of decay that is difficult to stop. Sometimes these individuals come across as "confused men," as in the incident of the vagrant who suddenly lashed out with the belt.
Checking beliefs about bums
Perhaps watching too many YouTube videos about tramps has given you beliefs about tramps that aren't true. For example, you may think that hobos are lazy and all beg.
This is not true, in fact, only a small percentage of bums beg.
By checking the beliefs you have about bums, you can find out if they are true and how to change them.
Changing beliefs can also be done in multiple ways, but 1 of those ways is to use hypnotic suggestions. You then repeat daily the beliefs you want to make stronger, such as:
Wanderers are people with feelings.
Vagrants are not necessarily aggressive.
Hobos are not lazy.
Etc.
Confronting Fear
Another way to overcome your fear of bums is to confront that fear. Now I am not suggesting that you should have a chat with every vagrant, but once someone is selling a magazine or street paper you can buy 1 and maybe ask something about what is in that magazine.
There is even someone who has gone roving to overcome fear of rovers, but that may be a little too extreme.
If you find it scary to approach someone directly to buy such a paper, you can first practice with a hypnotherapist to stay calm in such a moment.
You then work with the hypnotherapist to list your fear of vagrants from least scary to most frightening. For example, you might find a vagrant standing 100 meters away the least frightening and a vagrant approaching you for money the most frightening.
Next, you will confront that fear, from least and to most scary.
The hypnotherapist then helps you with a guided visualization that begins with a bum at a distance and then of how to buy such a newspaper, for example, and ask something about what it says. During such a visualization, you may suffer from the feelings of anxiety, but you also learn techniques to calm down immediately so that you control and overcome the anxiety.
These include breathing techniques and keeping your mind in the here and now. The fantasy of what that bum can do is then stopped so you stop giving yourself anxiety and react to what is happening and not to what you think might happen.
By practicing this through visualizations, you will find that when you speak to a bum in real life you have much less anxiety and are more relaxed.
Research also shows that anxiety about people with mental problems, such as some bums, is best reduced by contact with people who have mental problems. So by buying a newspaper you can already do a lot to overcome your fear of vagrants.
Helping wanderers
Another way to overcome your fear and see vagrants as human beings again instead of exotic creatures is to help vagrants and then not just by giving money, but by giving your attention.
There are many organizations that need volunteers to help bums. For example, with finding housing, increasing their knowledge for finding a job and actually finding a job.
By volunteering, you can really lend a helping hand to bums. You will see that this is not only good for the bums, but also for your own self-confidence and self-esteem.
Want to learn more about mental techniques to overcome fears? Then come to a seminar or workshop and check out Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' trainings.
Sources:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002214650404500105
