Unconscious or emotional learning takes place to keep us safe. In primitive conditions when coming into contact with something dangerous, the mind/body would create the optimum state for survival - a panic attack.
Everyone everywhere is afraid of something, even phobic. But most of the time it gets difficult for people to explain it to others even though it’s there. The impact of a phobia can range from annoying to severely disabling. People with phobias often realize that their fear is irrational, but they're unable to do anything about it.This is because most of the people do not understand the feeling until they are confronted with the same emotional and biological reaction to something. Elina has faced a similar challenge for almost as long as she can remember.
Phobia, according to Elina, is a persistent and excessive fear of the thing she is most scared of. This results into a mixture of unpleasant feelings. Whenever Elina sees the thing that scares her, she forgets everything around her, and feels herself wrapped up by a terrible feeling. It gets difficult for her to concentrate on anything around her and she starts sweating horribly and stays in jitter for a long time. Unfortunately for 22-year-old Elina, her phobia is difficult to understand for many people. She has is Ailurophobia - the fear of cats.
This phobia has several different names. Ailurophobia is also known as Gatophobia (Gato being the Spanish word for cat) and also Galeophobia (where ‘Galeo’, is the Greek word for cats).
It’s been said that when it comes to cats, people either love them or hate them. But there is actually a third feeling many people have for felines: they fear them and Elina is one of them. Even though it’s difficult for most cat lovers to understand why anyone would be afraid of cats, Ailurophobia is very real and can be a genuine problem for people like Elina who suffers from it.
It is considered to be a type of anxiety disorder, where whenever Elina gets in the vicinity of a cat, she gets consumed by blinding fear and experience things like extreme sweating, shaking, heart palpitations, loss of breath, dry mouth, the inability to think or speak clearly, and even a full blown panic attack. Ailurophobia then, is not simply a strong dislike of cats; it’s an intense feeling of fear at the sight of these creatures even if it’s just on TV, any book or sometimes in a cartoon as well.
Sometimes, just the thought of coming into contact with a cat is enough to get Elina’s heart racing. She may understand intellectually that a cat poses no real danger to her, but it doesn’t change her involuntary reaction and at that intense moment when someone tells her “Biral kichu korbe na,” it really annoys her and she starts hating that person for that particular moment. She knows that “Biral kichu korbe na”, but at that time, just the sight of the cat seems to suffocate her.
Ailurophobics may fear physical contact with a cat, such as bites and scratches, or they might fear the perceived supernatural nature of cats.
Everyone around Elina slowly started to understand at some point that her fear of cats is real and it is a serious issue. All the people be, it at home or at the university or at office, always makes sure that Elina does not get to face anything related to cats as they have seen the suffering she goes through while exposed to such circumstances. Everyone has been very supportive to her in this issue, even the cat owners and lovers.
Elina does not know the exact reason of this fear and whenever she focuses on trying to figure the actual cause for this, she starts feeling miserable. She missed out on so many experiences just for this fear and moments were spoilt even at a mere mention cats. She becomes rigid and completely panic stricken many times even after knowing that the people around her would not let any cat come close to her. It’s not a good feeling.
