Hypnophobia: a description of the disease and its treatment

In order to lead a fulfilling life, a person must get enough sleep. During sleep, the body rests, restores strength and energy reserves, then the production of the most important hormones occurs to ensure the normal functioning of the body. Sleep is a natural human need, along with eating, breathing. For most people, falling asleep is easy. But there are people who avoid sleep just because they are afraid of it - these are hypnophobes.

Pathological fear of sleep is a disease called hypnophobia. This phobia has other terms such as clinophobia and somnophobia. This mental disorder manifests itself as a fear of sleep as such., because in a dream a person is helpless, unable to reflect a sudden danger. The hypnophobe is terrified of losing touch with reality, control over what is happening and his own life. Some people with this phobia fear nightmares that can disturb their peace of mind. There are also hypnophobes who do not sleep just because they feel sorry for the time to sleep. And many are afraid of dying in a dream, and therefore try to avoid the dream itself.

Fear of the natural need of the human body is considered unnatural from the beginning. The person is in a state of anxiety, he is very anxious as evening approaches, when he needs to go to bed.

True hypnophobes can exhaust themselves with insomnia for years, falling asleep only for short periods of time, when the body already refuses to function in wakefulness. In fact, a person simply "turns off" (the protective mechanism of the brain is triggered). In order not to sleep as long as possible, a person can come up with a lot of "necessary", in his opinion, activities and rituals.

Of all the phobic mental disorders, it is hypnophobia that is considered one of the most painful - people with such a disorder quickly bring themselves to exhaustion, exhaustion, and sometimes outright insanity. No wonder in the Middle Ages, and then in the Nazi concentration camps, there was torture with insomnia, when a person was simply not allowed to sleep for several days.

In a mild form, hypnophobia leads to a fear of falling asleep, but sooner or later (rather later) the person still falls asleep. Sleep lasting 2-3 hours in this case, from the moment of falling asleep to getting up, does not bring relief, the person wakes up tired, exhausted, irritated. Gradually he loses interest in life, people, phenomena and events. In his behavior, anger and aggression begin to prevail. Complete apathy gradually sets in.

Lack of sleep is fraught with hallucinations (visual, auditory, tactile), panic attacks, reduced vision and hearing, gradually suppression of the respiratory, cardiovascular, and nervous systems occurs. In extremely severe cases, hypnophobia can be fatal.

From hypnophobia, according to data from historical archives, Joseph Stalin suffered. Then the doctors could not formulate the diagnosis exactly (for obvious reasons, because the doctor also does not want to be shot). Stalin loved and preferred to work at night. He was afraid of dying in his sleep, and therefore did everything possible to prevent falling asleep. From great fatigue, the leader felt bad, and in the end he fell asleep only after a dose of sleeping pills given by the doctors.

The reasons why the natural need becomes inadequately unimportant lies in the fact that we are all afraid of death. To varying degrees, with different frequencies, but the fear of physical and biological death is inherent in everyone. In a hypnophobe, he is irrational, hypertrophied. Outside, a person does not control the situation, he is vulnerable. And the fear of going to bed is most often associated with the fear of suffering or dying in a dream - to be killed, strangled, shot, die due to cardiac arrest, breathing, and so on.

Adult causes of mental illness often have compelling reasons. For example, people who suffer from heart disease often become hypnophobes over the years... They are so afraid that the heart will stop in a dream that they prefer to avoid sleep, it seems to them that in a state of wakefulness they have a better chance of surviving if the heart starts to "junk". Some hypnophobes suffer from apnea, snoring, bronchial asthma - their fear is closely related to the possible prospect of dying from sudden respiratory arrest, asphyxia.

The cause of hypnophobia can be childhood experiences, such as nightmares that the child often saw in a dream. In this case, the first signs of a phobic disorder appear in childhood or during puberty. Often it is children's nightmares that become the main horror for an adult. He understands and realizes that these nightmares are unreal, illusory, but he cannot do anything with fear - fear in this situation is stronger than a person.

Very suspicious, impressionable, experiencing people with a high degree of empathy, prone to depression for any, even insignificant reason, having low self-esteem. Hypnophobia is often not the only symptom. Fear of falling asleep often accompanies persecution mania (a person is delusionally convinced that they want to kill him, they are watching him, he is under threat), schizophrenia.

People with predisposing traits of a mental portrait can be impressed at any age (but more often in childhood) from watching a horror movie, a thriller, reading a book, scary stories that children love to tell each other at night.

The causes of hypnophobia also include a personal negative experience experienced in a dream, for example, a sudden awakening in childhood during a fire, flood, after which a series of events began that affected the mental and emotional state of a person.

Often, hypnophobia develops in a person predisposed to this due to the nervous system and character, after communicating with other hypnophobes. The attacks of panic attack, horror they described, as well as the justification of the reasons that make a person refuse sleep, can make a strong impression, and it will gradually become difficult to fall asleep, since the obsessive thought of a possible danger will be a constant companion.

The symptoms of hypnophobia are numerous and directly depend on the disturbances caused by the lack of sleep in the human body. Both the psyche and the physical condition suffer at the same time. In difficult cases, panic attacks and anxiety are observed even when trying to talk about sleep, this is how an anxious neurosis manifests itself, which is very difficult to treat.

With a fear of falling asleep, a person experiences rapid and shallow breathing., shortness of breath, moderately confused consciousness, sweating sharply increases, there is a feeling of anxiety, dry mouth. The heartbeat becomes more frequent, and signs of nausea may appear.

Given that the prerequisites that lead to the development of phobia are not fully understood, it is rather difficult to accurately diagnose hypnophobia. Psychiatrists are guided by objective signs (lack of desire to go to bed at night, during the day), as well as the results of special tests for the level of anxiety.

In the initial stages, hypnophobia may be available for self-medication. Sometimes it is enough to change your lifestyle, saturate it with movement, physical education, sports, so that the force of fatigue after a day is higher than the forces of fear. An interesting hobby that engages a person in the early stages of a phobic disorder, it helps to reduce anxiety before falling asleep. Useful evening walks before bedtime (which is not a reason to get a dog!), Swimming.

At the same time, independent attempts to get rid of the phobia, to defeat it, do not end in success. Sessions of psychotherapy, aimed at identifying the causes and the formation of new attitudes, which will help a person perceive the process of falling asleep and sleeping as favorable, necessary and positive, help. Simultaneous yoga, meditation, and teaching the patient methods of voluntary muscle relaxation will help. Hypnotherapy often has its place in treatment - the results of new installations in hypnotic sleep can exceed all expectations. The doctor finds all the connections that give rise to fear, and replaces them with new, positive ones.

Thanks to this, the factor of fear is either leveled out or completely eliminated. Help of relatives who agree to sleep next to the patient during treatment is also useful. You can get a pet that will sleep in the same bed with the hypnophobe - a cat, a small dog.A pet is especially recommended for those who are single. The same recommendation is often given by psychotherapists in the case of childhood hypnophobia.