Hadephobia The Fear of Hell
For millennia, one of the most potent ways of gaining control over people and keeping them in order and in line was the threat of hell in the life after. A place of such unspeakable pain and suffering the mere thought of going to hell, made people conform to the rules and regulations of whatever organisation was threatening it. Usually one or more branches of the church. Hadephobia is the morbid irrational fear of hell and going to hell. These persons fear devils and demons which according to legend occupy and inhabit hell. These phobics also develop a fear of anything that would send them to hell, primarily sin in its various forms. To stretch a point, as Satan is considered to be the Prince of Evil, these sufferers fear and see evil in their day to day lives and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to avoid falling into these earthly pitfalls.
Hadephobia is also known by the names of Stygiophobia or Stigiophobia. Hadephobia comes from Greek phrase hades, in the ancient Greece, hades was the underworld of death a place where the damned went to spend their eternity in pain and suffering and phobos being the word for fear.
This fear for most begins in their youth, as this is when people a first generally exposed to religious ideology. Priests and clerics preach about the world of the damned and give very strict rules to follow in order to avoid this fate. These beliefs can carry over to adulthood and cause the same real sense of fear and discomfort.
When working with this fear, the difficulty is dealing with the fear without encroaching on the belief systems of the client. By which I mean therapy is not there to convert these sufferers to being atheists but rather to help them overcome the crippling fear of punishment in this case hell.
