A cartoon, sunlit woodland scene, displaying a myriad animals that Creature Courage help to overcome the fear of

About Animal Phobias: Zoophobia

Please be aware, that animal images are displayed within the profiles of Common Animal Phobias or, more specifically, on external links within the articles. However, we have taken care to provide artistic illustrations instead of real pictures to help minimise any stress and allow you to navigate Creature Courage without worry.

What Defines a Phobia?

We’ll discuss phobias and what effect treatment of phobias can have on your quality of life, but we’ll also address:

Why it’s important to overcome your fears
How the strategies you learn can help you in your day-to-day life
What forms of treatment will give you the very best chance of overcoming your fears quickly and forever.

Further, by clicking on any of the animal phobias listed you can find out more specific information on that animal, not only about how to overcome that particular animal phobia but, also, fascinating facts about each animal that might give you a better appreciation for, well, why they exist!

How Is A Phobia Different From Anxiety?

The NHS describes a phobia as: an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal.

People suffer stress, fear and anxiety over a great many things, but whatever the reason, phobias are considered more extreme than general fears. This is why it’s so important to find out how you can overcome your phobia, especially so it doesn’t begin to affect other parts of your life.

The NHS further explains that phobias are: an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger about a situation or object. Hence, if a phobia becomes very severe, a person may organise their life to avoid that anxiety. So, as well as restricting their day-to-day life, it can also interfere with their friends, family and work relationships.

If you don’t have a phobia, you are beginning to appreciate how a phobia can cause a big problems with how sufferers live their lives? That said, many people don’t experience any symptoms until coming into contact with a phobia trigger:

Cartoon image of a spider scuttling across the kitchen floor

You might be an arachnophobe, yet, it never crosses your mind at all until you see a spider scuttling across the kitchen floor. Your reaction might be to freeze and let it continue its journey back under the washing machine. In that time your heart rate could leap, your body temperature drop and a cold sweat cover your skin. It’s unpleasant and could leave you incapable of entering the kitchen again knowing the spider could reemerge at any moment.

That might sound extreme but many people suffer this kind of reaction, and cannot rid the knowledge fo what’s happened from their minds. Even thinking about the source of a phobia can be enough to cause anxiety or panic – known as anticipatory anxiety.

Symptoms Of Animal Phobia

As we just touched upon, many people can feel physical symptoms coming on, along side the feelings of stress, anxiety and panic. These can include:

Unsteadiness, dizziness and light-headedness
Nausea
Sweating
Increased heart rate or palpitations
Shortness of breath
Trembling or shaking

What are Animal Phobias?

Any fear of animals is termed zoophobia, which usually refers to a person afraid of some or, indeed, all animals – as you can see from the list of animal phobias on this page, each animal has its own ‘phobia name’.

Most people are not afraid of all animals but, rather, have specific phobias around one or a few types of animals.

For example, you could have a general fear of insects – called entomophobia – or you could have a fear of just a single insect, such as a bee – apiphobia. However, all animal phobias are is still housed under the umbrella term ‘zoophobia’.

Of course, knowing the exact name of the animal phobia can be a little complicated, and please use the list to check. However, when you contact us, saying: ‘a fear of bees’ is all the detail we need.

Where Do Animal Phobias Come From?

For many who love animals, it can be hard to relate to suffering from an animal phobia, but for those of you who develop a fear and anxiety around animals and it can severely limit many of life’s enjoyments: especially as many animals are unpredictable and hard to avoid.

Cartoon image of people avoiding bees at a picnic

We use the word develop because though some might think that people are simply born with a fear of animals, (with spiders and snakes coming immediately to mind), its actually not true, sorry Indiana Jones!

There are only two fears we are born with, the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. Everything else is learnt. We quickly learn signs of danger, mostly from the actions of others, although we do sometimes register things as dangerous by accident – better safe than sorry.

Our instincts are to keep us safe and if we encounter something we’re not sure about we subconsciously reduce the risk, usually taking the easiest method…avoidance.

Yet, the more we avoid, the more we reaffirm our survival threat assessment as valid, making the fear stronger until we develop a phobia and it becomes a monster in our minds.

Animal Phobias Are Learned:

We ususally learn fear during our childhood, and it’s usually from one of only two reasons:

If we have a parent, sibling, or another close relative with a phobia it can easily be picked up through our interactions with them. As children, we are easily susceptible and, unwittingly, our care givers pass on their particular understanding of the world around them – both good and the bad. If they have a fear of an animal, there’s a high chance we, too, will fear that animal.
We also learn phobias from negative experiences. Something as simple as walking through a spider’s web or having a mouse startle us by scurrying across our path, can all have a detrimental effect on our perceptions of them. Of course, something worse, like falling off a horse can have an obviously profound effect, too. None of these expressely mean you will develop a phobia, but they are often quoted by people who do.

Traumatic events or those perceived as traumatic can create a subconscious trigger telling us to avoid the thing or the situation in the future. The trigger can become so embedded that many people can’t remember why they are so afraid, it just feels like it’s always been that way!

The Bigger Picture

In our work helping overcome animal phobia, most suffer from more than one phobia. This doesn’t necessarily mean a second animal phobia, but the animal phoboa they do have has seeped into their normal, everyday life and has brought on or increased anxiety to other things such as their job, relationships, travel, and so on.

Additionally, many people with animal phobias can struggle with situations that are not in their control. Many display traits of perfectionism and over responsibility or the inability to delegate, even simple household chores, can also be other areas of struggle. This is because all anxiety habits are tied together. Many people with animal phobias are people who have unknowingly created bad habits with even lower level anxiety triggers.

An internal alarm is sounded at any sign of ‘danger’. This causes a continual avoidance loop to stop any discomfort or even to entertain the slightest ‘risk’ (meeting new people, applying for a new job, these sort of things that most take for granted). These risks are not really risks at all, but opportunities for growth and happiness, which are sadly avoided.

How We Can Help You

The good news is that we find attending just one Creature Courage animal phobia therapy session is sufficient for treating multiple phobias. We have a very holistic approach, combining several different types of proven phobia fighting techniques. These techniques can be used for any anxiety or phobia.

Most importantly we give our clients to face their fears and have gentle but effective exposure therapy to the trigger animal. We design our exposure therapy to also address the deeper fear of uncertainty and feeling out of control.

Creature Courage is the UK’s leading animal phobia specialist, helping people overcome their animal fears. We run powerful one-on-one therapy to equip you with the skills to tame your fear of animals for good. We have spent years specialising specifically in treating animal phobias. Using the power of neuroscience, we enable our clients to get over the fear of animals in just one day! Click HERE to learn more about our therapy.

We, also, offer you the opportunity to do one animal phobia therapy session and then arrange to do the immersive side of a different animal at a later date. Its fully possible to regain your freedom and live your life the way you want: Courageously, peacefully and without fear!

Call us on 0800 970 4417 or message us for more details and we’ll help put your mind at ease.