Phobias – what you need to know it’s time to free yourself from fears
if you’ve noticed your anxiety has soared in midlife, you’re not alone. time to free yourself from your fears…
Always been confident and taken things in your stride – but recently started noticing you’re irrationally anxious in certain situations? amanda, 51, can pinpoint exactly when a new fearfulness began to grip her. “last year, my first significant post-divorce relationship ended and i was stressed at work. i flew to berlin for a weekend with an old friend. When i got on the plane to come home, i became convinced we were going to crash.
“the flight was actually uneventful but i spent all of it hyperventilating and crying. i know heartbreak and stress were probably behind it but i haven’t been able to get on a plane since. in the rest of my life, i’m a very self-assured person. this new flying phobia just doesn’t make sense.”
actually women are twice as likely as men to experience phobias, according to research from the Karolinska institute, sweden – and scientists think our fear responses are sharper, perhaps because of our innate desire to keep our families safe.
Why now?
Experts believe there’s a jigsaw of different factors behind phobias in your fifties. top of the list? “Hormonal fluctuations,” says Nicky lidbetter, CEo of charity anxiety uK. “the changes in your hormone levels around menopause can trigger anxiety, potentially making it worse if it was already a problem, or causing it for the first time. unfortunately, not many women are aware hormone changes are a common cause of anxiety, so they don’t make the link. in fact, anxiety can be an early and long-lasting symptom of menopause, even if you don’t have the better recognised signs such as hot flushes.”
It’s a busy time for life events – anxieties can be funnelled into becoming phobias
Emotional issues resulting from menopause may also be at play. “Menopause can affect confidence in all sorts of ways,” says Keren smedley, a counsellor and coach who specialises in working with women over 50 (experiencematters.org.uk). “Changes in the way your body feels and looks can be challenging, from finding yourself suddenly drenched with sweat in a meeting to noticing your body shape is changing. and you lose your identity as a fertile woman. if you’ve never had children and wanted them, menopause can be extremely confronting. Even if you’ve had the family you wanted, it’s still the end of one part of your life. it can also force you to confront the idea of ageing, which can make you feel vulnerable.”
the third key factor is lifestyle-related. “Women in their fifties are often >>
juggling so many things. they may be caring for elderly parents and have children still at home – with more women having babies in their early forties, they could even be quite young children,” says samantha Davey, a therapist who works with anxiety disorders and phobias. “or they may be feeling bereft because their children have left home. Plus women at this age are often at the peak of their careers.”
It’s a busy time for life events, says lidbetter. “on top of everything else, you might be dealing with relationship breakdown and dating again, bereavement or even career changes. When this is all mixed in with hormonal shifts, it’s a perfect storm for anxiety.”
The phobia funnel
anxiety then gets effectively funnelled into a specific area, resulting in a phobia. often, the seeds of which may have been sown much earlier in life – perhaps your mum was always nervous about flying or scared of spiders – but it only develops fully when you’re triggered by the storm of hormonal fluctuations and life stress.
“Fears centred around your personal health and safety are common at this time – if you’re feeling less confident in yourself, you might become hyper-aware of potential physical dangers,” says lidbetter. “some women develop a phobia about germs or get anxious driving on motorways, for example. both of these are reasonable concerns but in a phobia, the anxiety becomes out of proportion to the real threat.”