How Is Somniphobia Treated In Psychological Therapy?
If something characterizes phobias, it is their variety. Virtually any phenomenon that we can convert into concepts is capable of giving rise to a phobia, if the right circumstances occur: it does not matter how irrational it is to link that feeling of fear and anguish to a specific stimulus, situation or thought.
Somniphobia, or phobia of the act of sleeping, is an example of this. Most people understand that sleep is part of normal, everyday life; However, there are those who experience the need to sleep as if it were a nightmare.
In this article we will see how somniphobia is treated in psychological therapy and how the improvement process develops for patients who experience this anxiety disorder.
As we have anticipated, somniphobia is the pathological fear of sleeping. Specifically, it is a specific phobia in which the idea or sensation of going to sleep generates moments of very intense stress, which can even resemble panic attacks.
This means that this type of phobia It is not characterized so much by what happens while sleeping as by what happens when anticipating that you are going to fall asleep Those who suffer from somniphobia feel very intense discomfort in the last hours of the day, when they feel that the moment is approaching when they will begin to feel sleepy and when everyone is asleep. In extreme cases, discomfort can appear just by thinking about the possibility of sleeping.
On the other hand, somniphobia can also go hand in hand with similar alterations, such as the fear of being hypnotized, given that it is very easy to relate both states of consciousness and consider them similar.
The typical symptoms of somniphobia are those of all specific phobias in general; In this case, the only thing that changes is the type of stimuli and situations that favor its appearance. Some of the most frequent are the following:
To these typical symptoms, in this case we can add another one specific to somniphobia: sleepiness and fatigue due to problems with little or almost no sleep.
Causes
As with all psychological disorders, There is not a single cause of somniphobia, but many There is a genetic predisposition component to developing anxiety problems, although this alone is not decisive: no one will experience this phobia just because they have certain gene variants.
In specific phobias, the most important causes seem to be those that arise from past experiences, from learning understood in a broad sense.
Thus, situations that have been perceived as problematic, even if at the time they did not cause much discomfort or special distress, over time can become entrenched in our emotional memory, favoring the appearance of phobias.
On the other hand, The causes that the patient identifies as the reason for his fear of sleeping may also vary In some cases it is the fear that something bad will happen while sleeping, and therefore it would be a fear of lack of control over oneself and the environment. In other cases, what generates discomfort is the idea of losing consciousness, something that can be associated with death or a coma.
In any case, patients with somniphobia (and with other phobias in general) usually recognize that their fears are irrational, and that The problem is not so much in the thoughts and ideas through which that fear is expressed, but rather in the emotional states that escape the rules of logic.
When those who suffer from somniphobia go to a psychologist to receive professional care, the techniques and strategies used in therapy vary depending on the characteristics and needs of each patient. However, there are several therapeutic resources that are used more frequently than others; At Psicomaster we use the most effective ones to treat this and many other phobias, both in adults and in the youngest, and we know from experience that psychological intervention is very effective in the face of this type of disorders.
One of these resources is systematic exposure, in which the psychologist poses a situation linked to the phobic stimulus and creates a context in which the patient can face that source of anxiety in a safe environment and where everything is controlled. To do this, sometimes we work by proposing imagination exercises, sometimes we look for more real contexts, and forms of therapy against phobias have even begun to be developed using Virtual Reality systems.
In addition, the professional constantly adjusts the level of difficulty of these challenges so that the patient can progress until reaching a point where the symptoms have been reduced so much that they are hardly a problem.
Another way in which somniphobia is combated in psychotherapy is using relaxation exercise training, which help not let anxiety lead the patient to lose control over their actions. Normally these exercises are based on breathing and awareness of how moments of relaxation are experienced, so as not to focus attention on what causes discomfort. The objective is to associate situations of discomfort due to somniphobia with the moments in which anxiety is reduced thanks to relaxation techniques.
Cognitive restructuring is another therapeutic technique that is especially useful in cases in which there are irrational ideas that fuel the intensity of the phobia. For example, if someone tends to believe that there is a risk of the heart stopping during sleep, or if they fear sleep paralysis, In therapy, situations can be created in which the patient questions these ideas stopping to think about the extent to which they adjust to reality and are a risk that justifies this state of constant alert.
The creation of routines and self-instructions negotiated between the patient and the psychotherapist also helps a lot. The simple act of organizing your time better also helps mitigate the power that somniphobia has on you. In this way, situations are avoided in which the patient constantly postpones going to bed (which generates tension and anticipation of danger that reinforces the fear of sleeping).
