Theophobia or Fear of Religion:

Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

5 minutes
Most people don't have a problem with religion, whether or not they have
faith themselves. However, there's a group of people who suffer due to the
fear that religion produces in them

Last update: 29 May, 2022

Some people are extremely afraid of God or religion.

Consequently, they usually completely detach themselves from
anything related to God and spirituality. This irrational fear is
known as theophobia.

The term theophobia derives from the Greek Theo, which means
‘relating to God or deities’. This specific phobia manifests itself
through an inexplicable, intense, and irrational fear of God or
religion. Indeed, the sufferer radically avoids any type of contact
with spiritual and religious activities. They may even avoid
contact with others who fervently believe in God.

In religious life, much is said about the fear of God. However,

how can this be differentiated from pathological fear?

Among the characteristics that differentiate phobias from

normal fears are:

The symptoms of theophobia

Like other specific phobias, theophobia presents with different
symptoms. They can be grouped into three dimensions:
physiological, cognitive, and behavioral.

Physiological symptoms

These are characterized by a set of physiological responses

mediated by the activation of the autonomic nervous system :
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539845/#:~:text=The
%20autonomic%20nervous%20system%20is,sympathetic%2C%
20parasympathetic%2C%20and%20enteric.)

Theophobia can generate anxiety.

Cognitive symptoms

These symptoms are characterized by the presence of ideas,

interpretations, beliefs, or narratives that the sufferer has about
God or religion. They include:

Negative beliefs about God.

Behavioral symptoms

The motor symptoms are those behavioral responses that the

sufferer displays to face their irrational fear of God. The most
common of these responses is avoidance. For example, if the
sufferer perceives that there’s a church or religious cult nearby,
they immediately move away from the situation.

Causes

Next, we’ll review two perspectives that assist in understanding

this phobia.
Cognitive-behavioral perspective

Theophobia may be a consequence of the association between

God or religion with prior aversive, painful, or unpleasant
stimuli. For example, punishments, traumatic events, etc. As a
result, the sufferer learns to fear God, because they don’t want
to relive those unpleasant experiences again.

However, these associations aren’t the only explanation for

theophobia. In fact, it’s also been suggested that it may be the
product of learning from experiences lived by other people
(vicarious learning). For instance, the sufferer, as a child, may
have lived with a relative who had an ingrained irrational fear of
God. Hence, through observation, they learned the same fear.

Other explanations that have been formulated about the

development and maintenance of specific phobias, such as
theophobia, are based on the style of thought. In phobias, they
become distorted as a result of a disturbed internal dialogue. In
the case of theophobia, based on certain religious or divine
experiences, the sufferer builds a story or dialogue that feeds an
unfounded fear of God.

Biopsychosocial perspective

From this perspective, the cause of theophobia lies in a high

vulnerability to situations of serious stress.  Consequently,
sufferers respond with alarm reactions (fear or panic attacks)
and with a characteristic attributional style of uncontrollable
thoughts and unpredictability.

These responses depend on genetic vulnerability, availability of

social support, and the presence of certain personality
characteristics. For example, coping skills, sensitivity to anxiety
and disgust, and negative attitudes. To a certain extent, they’re
the product of the educational style of the sufferer’s attachment
figures (https://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?
script=sci_arttext&pid=S0211-57352010000400003) (Bados,
2017).

The phobic’s learning experiences force their biological and

psychological vulnerability to focus on specific objects. In fact,
fear is a product of the interaction between the biological,
psychological, and social environment or upbringing. Therefore,
a predisposition or biological reason alone isn’t a direct cause
of fear. It requires contextual factors to activate it.

Intervention

Cognitive-behavioral therapy
(https://exploringyourmind.com/cognitive-behavioral-therapy/)
is a good option to treat specific phobias, such as theophobia.
Let’s take a look at some of its techniques that can be extremely
useful in these cases.

Cognitive restructuring

Cognitive restructuring
(https://exploringyourmind.com/cognitive-restructuring/)
focuses on decreasing false beliefs about God and religion.
Those that cause behavioral disturbance and increase more
functional beliefs. In the company of a therapist, the sufferer
learns to identify and question their maladaptive thoughts. They
then replace them with more appropriate ones.

Thoughts are considered to be mere hypotheses about reality.

Hence, both the therapist and the sufferer work to collect data
that determines the validity or falsity of said hypotheses. To do
this, the therapist designs questions and behavioral
experiments. They allow the sufferer to evaluate and test their
dysfunctional thoughts.

Systematic desensitization

The standardized systematic desensitization procedure

includes four fundamental steps (López et al., 2012). These are:

The procedure consists of imagining the first stimulus on the

list (the least anxiogenic) and performing the Jacobson
relaxation technique with it. Then, the same is done with each
stimulus until reaching the ones that provoke the most anxiety.

Systematic desensitization makes the patient get used to the phobic stimulus and can
reduce its physiological manifestation.

Exposure technique

This technique has been widely used and is recognized as more

effective than desensitization. However, the latter may be a
good option for the sufferer to begin to get used to the object of
their anxiety before being exposed to it in a live situation.

Live exposure consists of making direct contact with the

anxiogenic or unpleasant stimulus. For instance, in the case of
theophobia, they’d be religious temples, God, spiritual cults, etc.
The basic idea is that the sufferer stays in contact with the
feared stimulus until their anxiety is reduced (Fernández, García,
& Crespo, 2012).

Finally, theophobia is a rare specific phobia. Nevertheless, it can

seriously affect the life of the sufferer since they’re constantly
exposed to the omnipresence of God. For this reason, they
should consult a health professional. Indeed, a therapist will be
able to prevent the phobia from continuing to affect their quality
of life and well-being.

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